Sour Grapes

The problem with Gitmo

How can we have allowed this to happen?

When Muhammad Saad Iqbal arrived home here in August after more than six years in American custody, including five at the military prison at Guant�namo Bay, Cuba, he had difficulty walking, his left ear was severely infected, and he was dependent on a cocktail of antibiotics and antidepressants.
In November, a Pakistani surgeon operated on his ear, physical therapists were working on lower back problems and a psychiatrist was trying to wean him off the drugs he carried around in a white, plastic shopping bag.
The maladies, said Mr. Iqbal, 31, a professional reader of the Koran, are the result of a gantlet of torture, imprisonment and interrogation for which his Washington lawyer plans to sue the United States government....

But the full stories of individual detainees like Mr. Iqbal are only now emerging after years in which they were shuttled around the globe under the Bush administration�s system of extraordinary rendition, which used foreign countries to interrogate and detain terrorism suspects in sites beyond the reach of American courts.
Mr. Iqbal was never convicted of any crime, or even charged with one. He was quietly released from Guant�namo with a routine explanation that he was no longer considered an enemy combatant, part of an effort by the Bush administration to reduce the prison�s population.

�I feel ashamed what the Americans did to me in this period,� Mr. Iqbal said...

I too am ashamed, Mr Iqbal [from an article titled "An Ex-Detainee of the U.S. Describes a 6-Year Ordeal" in the 6 January edition of The New York Times].

Original post by Hugh at 1/07/2009 08:07:00 PM Eastern time :: 0 comment(s) :: links to this post

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