Guantanamo detainees sold into bondage?
How many of the roughly 530 detainees in the US detention center in Guantanamo were actuially sold into bondage by bounty-hunters eager to make a fortune from US rewards programs?
Quite possibly, a large proportion of them. AP reporter Michelle Faul has a very shocking piece on the wire today that makes this claim. She's writing from San Juan, Puerto Rico, where she has been following the (far from fair) "military tribunals" staged for many of the Guantanamo detainees to date. She attributes the claim about detainees having been sold into bondage to testimony that detainees gave to the "tribunals", according to trasncripts of the hearings that AP forced out of the US government through the "Freedom of Information Act".
In addition, Faul quotes Gary Schroen, a former CIA officer who helped lead the search for Osama bin Ladenas saying the detainees' accounts,
"It wouldn't surprise me if we paid rewards," said Schroen, who retired after 32 years in the CIA soon after the fall of Kabul in late 2001. He recently published the book "First In: An Insider's Account of How the CIA Spearheaded the War on Terror in Afghanistan."
Schroen said Afghan warlords like Gen. Rashid Dostum were among those who received bundles of notes. "It may be that we were giving rewards to people like Dostum because his guys were capturing a lot of Taliban and al-Qaida," he said.
- [A] wide variety of detainees at the U.S. lockup at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, alleged they were sold into capture. Their names and other identifying information were blacked out in the transcripts from the tribunals, which were held to determine whether prisoners were correctly classified as enemy combatants.
One detainee who said he was an Afghan refugee in Pakistan accused the country's intelligence service of trumping up evidence against him to get bounty money from the U.S.
"When I was in jail, they said I needed to pay them money and if I didn't pay them, they'd make up wrong accusations about me and sell me to the Americans and I'd definitely go to Cuba," he told the tribunal. "After that I was held for two months and 20 days in their detention, so they could make wrong accusations about me and my (censored), so they could sell us to you."
Another prisoner said he was on his way to Germany in 2001 when he was captured and sold for "a briefcase full of money" then flown to Afghanistan before being sent to Guantanamo.
"It's obvious. They knew Americans were looking for Arabs, so they captured Arabs and sold them — just like someone catches a fish and sells it," he said. The detainee said he was seized by "mafia" operatives somewhere in Europe and sold to Americans because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time — an Arab in a foreign country.
She noted that:
- In March 2002, the AP reported that Afghan intelligence offered rewards for the capture of al-Qaida fighters — the day after a five-hour meeting with U.S. Special Forces. Intelligence officers refused to say if the two events were linked and if the United States was paying the offered reward of 150 million Afghanis, then equivalent to $4,000 a head.
That day, leaflets and loudspeaker announcements promised "the big prize" to those who turned in al-Qaida fighters.
Said one leaflet: "You can receive millions of dollars. ... This is enough to take care of your family, your village, your tribe for the rest of your life — pay for livestock and doctors and school books and housing for all your people."
Helicopters broadcast similar announcements over the Afghan mountains, enticing people to "Hand over the Arabs and feed your families for a lifetime," said Najeeb al-Nauimi, a former Qatar justice minister and leader of a group of Arab lawyers representing nearly 100 detainees.
Now, however, since last June's decision by the US Supreme Court that the Gitmo detainees are entitled to legal representation, increasing numbers of them have been able to consult there with lawyers.
This article in yesterday's NYT described how increasing (though still apparently small) numbers of lawyers from the US were willing to take on these cases, and were now traveling down to Gitmo to meet with their clients, and that roughly a third of the detainees now have lawyers.
It hasn't been easy to build these lawyer-client relationships, which in normal times are (and rightly should be) ones of great trust. Some of the lawyers referred to in the NYT piece (which is by Neil Lewis) say detainees tend to fear that the person coming to visit them is a set-up. (Understandable, after all those poor souls have been trhough.)
And there is this:
- Some lawyers have said that interrogators at Guantánamo Bay have tried to discourage prisoners from trusting them. They have said that some inmates have been sharply questioned after their lawyers depart and that others have been told they should not trust lawyers who are Jewish.
In addition, though the entry of some lawyers into the compound to meet with their detained clients undoubtedly has started to pierce the "isolation from the outside world" aimed at by Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller and the other commanders of the prison-camp there, there is still little actual public speaking by the lawyers about the conditions their clients are living in. Evidently, the lawyers all still feel they are treading on egg-shells.
As for the rest of who are not lawyers, we should step up our public activities and our demands that all the detainees being held by the US and its allied forces-- whether in Gitmo, Iraq, Afghanistan, or elsewhere--should have their rights under the Geneva Conventions fully respected; and beyond that, those held on the US-controlled territory of Guantanamo should be afforded normal habeas corpus protections.
So Unca Dick Cheney thinks the Geneva Conventions are "quaint"? Does he think habeas corpus is "quaint" too? How about respect for the life of another of God's children-- "quaint"? It is ways past time to call these leaders of ours to account!
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Anyway, kudos to AP for having persevered with the Guantanamo story. They also now have a good page on their site that's a round-up of all the main news stories and reports available on the web (in English) about Guantanamo. That's a useful resource, too.
There's one-stop shopping for things like the Amnesty Int'l report on Guantanamo, and the protestations against it by Bush, Cheney, Myers, etc...
Helena is outraged that the US is using Bounty Hunters to capture wanted men. Will Helena be outraged tomorrow that policemen get salaries with good medical coverage?
Rewards for capture are not exactly a new idea.
The Geneva Conventions are treaties between nations. The various Jihadists at war with the US are not nations, have not, in any case, signed treaties, and are unlikely to do so.
You can not sign a treaty with al-Queda since there is no way to tell who is a member of the al-Queda army.
Under the Geneva Conventions, foreign nationals found out of uniform can be assumed to be spies and are not given POW rights and status. Sometimes they are shot on the spot. Does Helena thing the Iraqi insurgents or the al-Queda teams will agree to wear uniforms?
Helena,
Thanks for maintaining the pressure on the Guantanamo prisonners.
Warren,
Don't try to deviate the main point of discussion. The real problem is by using this technique, there are a lot of innocent prisonners tortured and kept without any justice for more than two years now in Guantanamo. Before paying the bounty and jailing them, the US should have checked the situation of these men.
The bounty isn't the only problem in Guantanamo; the number of breaches of humanitarian laws and civil rights of these prisonners are so numerous that US now sides with the worst dictatorships.
1) These prisonners have no status : the US invaded Afghanistan, so they should be considered prisonners of war. That's what the ICRC has said all along.
2) IF as the US says they aren't prisonners of war, then they should be tried by the judicial system of their own country, or at least receive a trial in the US, since US illegally brought them there. US brag being the first and best democracy in the world, but treats these prisonners like Untermenshen (undermen).
WarrenW--
Of course the Geneva Conventions (like all international treaties) are between governments. However they do bind the US, which was one of the first signatories, to respect certain clearly stated regulations regarding the treatment of all detainees-- whether these are combatants or noncombatants.
The US has notably not done this. This is a grave breach of the GCs... That is, a war crime.
In addition, the fact that vast financial incentives were offered for people to turn in any apparent foreigners from their societies must taint the value of any accusations subsequently made against these individuals.
The "purchase" of individuals who have been sold into bondage must be something that disgusts, in particular, US citizens, since we have our own terrible history of having done this on a large scale in earlier generations. Maybe I should have made this clearer in my main post.
Policemen work with judges. Bounty hunters deal with the government. Where are the checks and balance here ?
The current Laws of War were hammered out mainly on the battlefields of Europe. The current war is between the US and armed NGO's, and there does not appear to be any way to have Laws of War. The Iraqi insurgents decapitate random citizens, apparently without generating much outrage on the left. I am not outraged by bounties.
The analogy to slavery is gratuitous and misleading. Slavery in the US was an economic exploitation justified with racial theories. The children of slaves were slaves.
The operations in Guantanamo are neither justice nor deterrence. They are keeping enemy soldiers off the field and gathering intelligence.
If there was a chance that the NGO's with whom the US is battling in Afghanistan and Iraq would reciprocate, I would favor granting POW status to the detainees at Guantanamo. But probably not until then. I do not claim they are receiving individual justice.
"Under the Geneva Conventions, foreign nationals found out of uniform can be assumed to be spies and are not given POW rights and status. Sometimes they are shot on the spot."
Posted by WarrenW
Are you saying it is okay under the Geneva Convention to shot civilians on the spot?
"Does Helena thing the Iraqi insurgents or the al-Queda teams will agree to wear uniforms?"
American insurgents in 1770's didn't wear uniforms either.
"The Iraqi insurgents decapitate random citizens, apparently without generating much outrage on the left. I am not outraged by bounties."
And the US military shots at random citizens who get too close to a checkpoint. At the Tal Afar incident last January, they decapitated the unarmed father of six children under age 15, five of whom were there to witness the shooting.
Another time, they took off the right hand of an unarmed women at a checkpoint. Gruesome pictures in both cases.
Which is worse - beheading or having a bomb dropped on your home? I won't know.
I am outraged by any violence, but particularly gratuitous violence coming from well-armed, well-trained, well-funded, supposedly professional and legitimate army that are in a foreign country to bring them "freedom and democracy".
If there is any sincerity in the concept of "making these people free", and any hope for "making these people free", then the illegal detentions, abuse, torture, murders, etc must be taken seriously and STOPPED.
*I am outragd by bounties.* With no checks and balances, and no indication that the US authorites take the issue of inappropriate detention and lack of due process seriously, then bounties are a way for the criminals (and someone with a desire for revenge) to make money off the US government.
"If there was a chance that the NGO's with whom the US is battling in Afghanistan and Iraq would reciprocate,"
oh, they are, they are..... they are turning in their fellow countrymen, whom they don't like or have a resentment against, to the US authorities. They are just pretending to be "on our side" to get the US to do the dirty work.
I knew in August of 2004 that Mosul and Tal Afar police were fulling cooperating with the resistance, and pretending to be on the side of the American troops. Then in November, those police force all melted away, along with their uniforms and guns and ammo...
hey, WarrenW, *some* of the resistance does have uniforms! They are Iraqi police uniforms and ING uniforms!
How can anyone defeat evil if they willing participate in evil to do so?
And even if there is no basis of Amnesty International's claims (which I do not believe) it should still be seen as a deadly serious situation by anyone and everyone who believes we are bringing "freedom and democracy" to Iraq and Afghanistan.
Please take note: the US authorities are not taking this seriously, instead they are just attacking the ones reporting on the situations they see. And if you think there is nothing to their claims, go read the DOD papers obtained by the ACLU - straight from the DOD, these papers give amply evidence of torture of innocents.
I do not claim they are receiving individual justice. -WarrenW
And how come you are not outraged by that? What is justice if it does not apply to the individual?
Eamonn Collins wrote an autobiography called Killing Rage. It tells the story of how an young intelligent man (who was originally neutral on the British intervention in Northern Ireland) changed into one of the most ruthless IRA men of the 20th century. The method of his conversion was simple – he witnessed his father being brutalized by British soldiers during a random search of the family farm. Soldiers are the least mediated instruments of state power and family loyalty is the most basic of emotions; combined they lead to tragic unintended consequences.
Michael nicely summarizes why the ranks of the insurgency in Iraq will continue to grow, and why guerrila warfare is so effective. The relative offenses of the occupier and the insurgents recede once it becomes personal.
I for one think the intimate violence of kneeling behind someone and severing their head from their body on video is different from shooting someone at a checkpoint; but the comparison is irrelevant to someone who has seen their family humiliated, whether or not brutalized, by an occupying power. The calculus of such things becomes meaninglessly abstract.
I'm also not terribly outraged by bounties paid for suspects, but think about it this way: let's say you are a prosecutor in a court of law and you really, sincerely, want to see the bad guys put away. Assume for the moment that you have not succumbed to careerism and don't care so much about your numbers as making sure that terrorists are prosecuted and only terrorists, meaning that you do not put innocents in jail.
How are you to view this practice? Your suspect has been remanded according to a questionable method, and now the burden is on you to sort out whether he belongs there or not. What was he doing in Afghanistan, as an Arab? The overwhelming majority of such cases are people who came there for jihad; but not all of them. Some might be traders from the UAE, for example. How are you, as an officer of the court, supposed to figure this out? Should this not have been dealt with before the case file landed on your desk ... ?
If you also happen to have a broad perspective about your job, i.e. how it relates to an overall mission regarding the security of the US, you also have to question whether you yourself are part of the problem, whether you are contributing to a process that makes things worse for your country, and not better. In that position, my response would likely be something like (at minimum) , oh, thanks; due to poor, dangerous, reckless leadership, this is now the position that I, a committed true believer, now find myself in.
Which is, I think, a question more and more American soldiers in Iraq are probably asking themselves.
"I'm also not terribly outraged by bounties paid for suspects"
Except, of course that it COULD pose a bit of an ethical dilemma for a poor American prosecutor. Not even a passing thought for the hapless victims of this policy, of course. The are not Americans anyway, so what does it matter?
As it happens this practice of offering bounties has created more than a professional dilemma for more than a few perfectly innocent people. I am aware of several cases in Iraq.
Assume for a moment that you are a 30 year old husband and father of three small children, and you have traveled to Northern Iraq because you heard there was work there and you are desperate to feed your family. Two greedy locals decide to turn you in to the Americans as a terrorist and share a nice bounty for it. You are shocked to find yourself surrounded by heavily armed American soldiers who scream at you in a language you can't understand, grab you, twist your arm behind your back very painfully, throw you face down onto the ground and push your face hard into the dirt with their boots on your neck. They cuff your hands behind your back very painfully, force you painfully into a kneeling position, put a bag over your head, and force you to remain there for what feels like - and may be - hours and hours, kicking you or beating you for no apparent reason. You can hardly breathe because of the bag on your head, and feel as if you are going to pass out, which only increases your panic.
To make a long story short, you end up in a filthy, overcrowded prison where you are mentally and physically abused, perhaps even tortured, and maybe even killed.
Now assume for a moment that you are the wife of this man. You have no idea what happened to him, you just know you haven't seen him in months, you have no money to buy food for your children, and if you don't pay the rent soon you will be evicted from your home. You may never see your husband and the father of your children again, and you will probably never know what happened to him. Now assume you are one of his children...his mother...his father...his brother...
These are inevitable human consequences of the odious policy that you just can't get terribly outraged about, although you do have some concerns on behalf of unfortunate American prosecutors who may have some ethical considerations.
One of the cases I know about of people who were turned in for bounties was a European photographer who travelled to Kurdistan to do a photo essay there. The others were Iraqis. One of them was never seen again - presumed killed in captivity.
And if you can't bring yourself to get terribly outraged on behalf of the innocent human beings who are victims of this policy, then think about the fathers, brothers, cousins, uncles, nephews, and sons who may help to swell the ranks of the resistance fighters, and the women who will now support them whole heartedly.
Well, I guess I knew that was coming. Shirin, I'm sorry, but you misinterpreted my post. I'll try to see where I can clarify.
Of course the victims of these policies are the innocents who are caught up in this. And of course I don't mean that you should sympathize with some 'poor' rhetorical prosecutor; I am not sure where you got that idea. And of course the whole process of detentions and renditioning and everything else about this debacle is rotten. I should think that would be obvious, so I didn't feel like saying it. I certainly didn't say anything to defend it (read clarification below before you respond to that). If you understand this, then maybe I don’t need to point out that your ‘of course, they aren’t American’ comment was excessive, and unfair.
A consistent theme of anything I post here will be something like the following: The war is bad not only for the Iraqis, but also for Americans. If someone reading my post were inclined to say, for example, that yeah, war is bad but these things happen in war, or yeah, too bad some innocents got caught up in illegal detentions but what were they (Arabs, Chechens, Aussies, Americans, etc) doing in Afghanistan anyway? Even the Al Qaeda rank and file didn't want to be there ... well, my comments would be directed at them, and attempt to show that there are no winners here. Those arguments are useful, to my mind, and I would prefer making them than letting everyone on my side of the argument know how upright and correct I am by echoing their outrage.
If you can argue with someone by accepting most of their assumptions as premises and still show them how something they support is wrong or misguided, then you have made a strong argument. You might even actually communicate. I make choices about what to write about, because I can't write about everything, at least in one post. It's a rhetorical strategy, and it uses ‘neutral’ devices like my made-up prosecutor; you might try it some time, it’s much more effective than leaping to an unwarranted moral indictment and you might actually change some minds, if that is your purpose. I didn’t see moral outrage changing too many minds before the war, and many of those people have simply dug in. Maybe it’s time to try something else.
I don't disagree with you about how horrible it is when such things happen to innocents. In fact, I have interviewed several such innocents (cousins of staff and friends) and talked quite extensively to them in Afghanistan, after they were released from the Guantanamo gulag. (I have never spoken to a prosecutor). I just didn't choose to pursue that topic. One reason among many is the following. I'm not a moral exhibitionist, and since I'm not, I have to ask: how often can you write in fora like these about how outraged you are? Aren’t other people already doing that? If they need help, I’ll be happy to pitch in. Helena’s original post here was one of outrage, so what am I accomplishing by saying, yes, I am outraged too? What's the purpose?
On the line in my original post that offended you, and which I probably included unwisely, here is what I meant. The fact that someone on the ground would choose a policy of paying for information and capture of people who might have been al Qaeda is not in itself offensive or outrageous to me. It might be to others; I respect that. The choice to engage in such a policy poses a dilemma I wouldn’t want to find myself in, and I like to think that if I did I would make some efforts to make sure that innocent people were not caught up in it. You never know, though. What would your solution be, given the actual circumstances of Afghanistan at that time?
The fact that innocent people do get caught up in it, are sold out by their neighbors and rivals, etc. does outrage me (I had to quell that outrage in Afghanistan to actually be effective in helping other people). Yes, one is the logical result of the other. The inevitability of it is not an excuse, even less of one if no one has tried to prevent, or mitigate, this outcome. If many people on whom you count on for support are outraged by the result, and there is not enough of value to mitigate that, then it is a bad policy. You can view that as a summary of my argument.
You can of course be outraged by the whole thing, by everything, if you like. But my outrage meter is a bit pegged these days. I am outraged that there was a war at all, I am outraged that the Bush administration told such breathtaking lies to pursue it, and also that they did none of the other ‘correct’ things that national leaders in a democracy would have to do to pursue such a conflict; I am outraged that Congress sold out when it came up for a vote; I am outraged at how poorly the post-conflict actions of the American presence were planned; I am outraged that voters in my country not only went along with the whole thing but chose to send the man back to the White House. There are other things I am not so outraged about, because outrage implies some level of surprise, and I am not sufficiently surprised by them. You can be disappointed, greatly saddened, depressed, pained, paralyzed, heartbroken, disillusioned or defeated by things you knew were coming, and spoke up about. Outrage comes with those things that surprised you, even when you thought you were braced for the worst.
Dear Wind:
Thank you for the clarification. I could have done without the condescending tone of some of it. We all bear different burdens, and we all bear them in different ways on different days. That does not entitle one of us to talk down to the other.
PS For you surprise may necessary to generate outrage. I find that for me it is not. I often find myself outraged at things that I have known about for some time, and that do not surprise me in the least. I also find that helpless outrage, as useless as you see it, is all I have. So, you see, it makes no sense to try to dictate how one may or may not react in the face of years of unrelentingly outrageous events.
My relative in Baghdad is reporting to me that the latest piece of brutal American stupidity, known as "operation lightning" has given rise to what he describes as a "massacre" between Sunni and Shi`a neighbors in Al Hurria district sparked by the abusive treatment of Sunnis by the American-trained Shi`a proxy American Occupation forces.
This kind of thing is virtually unheard of in Iraq, and this is what the idiot Americans have brought us to.
I remembered listening aghast the other day as yet another "enlightened" Congress member just back from Iraq admitted that the U.S. has made a complete mess there, and then ended by saying "and we cannot leave there until it is stabilized". By what kind of mindless moronic logic can anyone conclude after watching the Americans bring nothing but increasing instability and continuous deterioration for more than 26 months, that their presence is what is needed to bring stability?
And what is there left but rising despair, helplessness, and yes, outrage?
Shirin, I did not mean to condescend to you; to be clear, I really do view your opinions and positions are being just as valuable as any I might offer. I did not mean to talk down to you, nor assume the right to do so. I agree wholeheartedly with your statement that we bear these things in our own way, no one more legtimate than the other.
I was, however, responding (in what I hope was a measured way) to what I saw as a relentlessly scornful treatment of my own post. I was especially hurt by the 'Hey, they aren't American so what does it matter' thing you attributed to me. It flies in the face of everything my life has been about for many years, in deed as well as in thought. If I misunderstood that, then I apologize. I hope we can move past that.
I also did not mean to 'dictate' anything about your responses; again, I apologize if I did. What I considered precision in my own responses (about the emotion of outrage) need not have anything to do with you, or reflect on the precision with which you think about these things. I do really believe that people's minds can be changed if you engage with them constructively, and that is what keeps me out of despair in these awful years. I have lost people I care about too; none of them were soldiers (or prosecutors). What else is there for us to believe in?
Shirin -
I was very touched by your last post.
I wonder how many US 'leaders' will have the courage, when all this is behind us, to admit that they are culpable in the mess the US has made in Iraq? That they could have forseen, based on how things were developing for months in advance of the invasion, how poorly things would have turned out?
And --- trust me, I do not mean this as a challenge, but perhaps it is something constructive we can all turn our energies to, for the sake of our own mental health --- what do you think it would take to bring such stability, if the Americans were to leave this weekend?
Wind,
I came back to the page to apologize to you for my testiness, and saw your latest post.
I do apologize for being testy with someone I can recognize as being "on the same side". My first comments to you were more about myself, and my own state of mind than about what you were trying to communicate. I am usually a better listener than that.
This is a particularly horrifying time for many of us. As I spoke earlier with my aforementioned relative in Baghdad, I mentioned to him that I feel right now the same as I did in March, 2003. He said he feels much worse than then, and I acknowledged that so do I because at that time we had no notion how bad it would be, and now that we have seen it day after day get worse and worse beyond our most horrible nightmares, we do know. We can see Iraq sliding into a bottomless pit now, and there is absolutely nothing we can do to stop it or even to slow the slide into the deepest pit of eternal hell. All we can do is watch in horror and pray that we are not carried with it.
Also troubling is that I have not been in contact today with my "special correspondent" in Kurdistan, who contacts me at about the same time of day every day, sometimes twice a day, partially to reassure me of his continued existence. And I am hearing news of "incidents" in the region. No doubt there is a good explanation, but my mind is desperately uneasy until I know.
For those who care, "Special Correspondent" just checked in, and all is well. He was out having a well earned good time with some family members. :)
Dear Shirin,
GREAT news that SC has checked in ... having been in that situation with my wife, I have a sense ( no matter how distant) of the relief you must feel. I hope you won't have to go through that too many times more ...
And please, no apology required on my part. Rest assured, we ARE 'on the same side'. I certainly see where you were coming from. I do not have family in Iraq, but I do have friends who are like family to me, if you can understand ...
Anyways. Thanks again for the exchange, which I certainly benefitted from ... and I hope I will see you here more ...
Best,
Tom
What Wind/Tom said about your SC, Shirin.
Phew. (For now.)
Also, big appreciation to both of you for holding such an intelligent conversation here. I've been a little out of doing big posts here for a while so it's great to see you JWN folks carrying on so well without me.