Done forget after the Americans entered Afghanistan in 2001 people were being lifted willy nilly. Panorama highlighted the case of one man a successful local shopkeeper whose rivals reported for being affiliated to the Taliban and was soon 9n his way to Guantanamo. He was released a few years later but on return found his family on the street and all his property wealth gone. Shaker Amer British citizen or resident doesn’t matter he still had a voice in th8s country and a legal framework to support him. Nobody knows the names 9f the poor buggers from Afghanistan who were wrongly carted off and lost everything.

It often wasn’t as good as that, the youngest Gauntamano detainee was a child, and the “evidence” came down more or less to the difference between the Farsi word for friend and the Arabic word for money.

shameful episode in US history frankly.

He looks like he could use the services of a good barber.
Also I like the way he’s grinning innanely in most of the photos of him, makes it much harder to hate him, curse him and his hairy grin!

Maybe they just forgot to copy you on the memo. Have you asked them where it got to?

Really, I despair.

I have a good friend who moved to Austria 20 years ago. Married an Austrian girl and has since had three kids with her.
They all live in Austria together, as they always have.

He is British. He would never describe himself as Austrian, and neither would anyone else.

So, an Austrian Resident then?

So, an Austrian Resident then?

Yes.

I think youse are missing the important points of this story, by quite a distance! 😆

Why are people so concerned with this resident/nationality thing?
I read the story, it didn’t even occur to me to think about that until I got to all the tedious comments underneath. Mostly I was horrified at the 14 years of torture and illegal imprisonment.

Just heard extracts of his interview on the radio. Cripes, even if half of it was made up, it’s still pretty shocking.

Also, I’ve lived here for 22 years, am married to a British citizen and have a child with a British passport (I’ll sort that one out when I have time 🙂 ). If I was whisked away to be detained without charge in another country, I’d hope that people in the UK would be more concerned about that than my nationality.

Nope you would be on your own you ****

Well, that would depend on the key piece of personal information that you left out ….

Thanks guys. Nice to know whose support I can depend on. 😀

Well, that would depend on the key piece of personal information that you left out ….

Beard size?

Keep up Bravissimo. Oirish terrorists are just, loike, soooooooooooo last century. Bearded or otherwise 😉

So the fella in question (not darcy, the other one) has said that he doesn’t intend to sue the British government, or anyone else. Does this quell your outrage a bit OP?

No he is still a massive fan of illegal rendition and state sponsored torture of folk who will never be charged now shut it you pathetic hand wringing left.

“So the fella in question (not darcy, the other one) has said that he doesn’t intend to sue the British government, or anyone else. Does this quell your outrage a bit OP?”
Countdown to the suggestion that this is proof positive that he has something to hide and is therefore a baddy.

Given that he did say what the charity was and it was examined by the Americans what is your problem now ?

So what is the charity then?

If he shared an apartment with Zacarias Moussaoui, there may’ve been other motives for detaining him:

http://fortressamerica.gawker.com/the-case-that-the-saudis-did-9-11-explained-1683728623

.

Junkyard – lazarus

Nope you would be on your own you ****
A fine sentiment,but one that could be developed…

I would forge tapes praising Emir Darcy and his blueprint for global jihad and send them to the Merican embassy. Look on the bright side DD,having a wet towel on your face would stop you from seeing the Munster/Cheats game…

IanMunro, could you provide us with exact details of your entire life/work history please, just so we can make sure you’re not a terrorist? Thanks.

Of course I could, but as you don’t actually think I’m a terrorist it would be a pointless waste of my time.
Anyway, apparently now he’s said he wasn’t working for a charity, just doing something similar to working for a charity, but not working for a charity. Should have got Lance Armstrong to vet his script first really.

Mostly I was horrified at the 14 years of torture and illegal imprisonment.

No it was legal. The imprisonment and torturing was done in Cuba – which made it all perfectly legal.

The United States has a strong commitment to uphold the rule of law.

Ian I owe you an apology on a more careful reading as opposed to memory his connection to a formal charity was prior to Afghanistan ( but after his work for the US Army.)

At what point did he live with Zacarias Moussaoui?

Oh no here comes the conspiracy.

What’s a little puzzling is that since his guilt is so crystal clear, the evidence plain for all of STW to see, why did the Americans not avoid international condemnation and simply try him?

What’s a little puzzling is…….

What certainly puzzles me is why the United States should hold prisoners on the basis of no evidence, or at best a vague hunch, in conditions which only the most repressive and totalitarian regimes would use, and continue to do so for many years after the complete futility of it has been established.

While undoubtedly the United States feels confident that it can never be held accountable in international courts for any war crimes and other violations of international laws, and that western governments and propaganda will continue to largely support them whatever they do, the Guantanamo torture camp seems to have been a highly costly project with no obvious benefit.

Nevertheless the United States clearly thought that snatching people who they thought looked shifty and transporting them across the world to torture them was necessary – why?

I would be genuinely interested in knowing what the thinking behind it all was. Was it perhaps simply to instil fear and terror?

I know for example it is said that Saddam Hussein didn’t simply kill his political enemies and opponents but that he also deliberately had executed completely innocent and loyal Ba’ath Party members on trumped up charges.

Everyone including Saddam Hussein knew that they were innocent but targeting innocent people on trumped up charges creates a climate of terror which results in the minimal level of resistance.

I have recently been talking to someone working at a language school for Syrian refugees in Denmark. She has heard first hand from some of the students, and it is truly illuminating and horrifying to her some of the stories. For example, it is common for refugees to refuse to go to a hospital because their torturers dressed as doctors. If the teacher wears a white outfit the result can be the same. The torture is quite subtle and sophisticated – the purpose being to instill fear as a warning to others. Crowd noise was played during the torture and company logos prominently displayed (Coca Cola etc.), so that when released the victim has a fear of crowds, and a bad reaction to seeing the logos. As a result he lives in a permanent state of fear which is spread to the community. One student now cannot stand a closed room and insists on the windows being open – which makes learning in sub-zero weather difficult.

I must ask her to verify the charity work status of her students next time I see her.

I am not defending holding anyone for 14 years without trial, however the American diplomat on Andrew Marr show says quite rightly that conversations and treatment on the basis of civil law are irrelevant as this was a combat/war situation and different ruies apply. The US is still at war with Al-Q / IS etc so it can hold prisoners whilst that conflict is on-going. That’s their logic.

Yeah the US government has been claiming that for the last 14 years.

And you are of course trying to defend them. The clue is in your use of the term “quite rightly”.

He says it quite wrongly war has a definition in international law if the US want to hold them as prisoners of war then a) they need to declare war on a state and b) they need to treat the prisoners as Prisoners of war in which case the Geneva Convention applies , someone will say no uniforms there for shoot but the Geneva convention requires a process albeit a summary one to identify spys .

Not logic but a sophistry to conceal wrong doing.

I’m not defending holding anyone for 14 years without trial

*then immediately tries to defend holding people for 14 years without trial*

This only applies to Muslims and/or people with brown skin though obviously, so it’s ok.

Torture is always illegal too, regardless of war status.

I assumed he meant ‘quite rightly’ in the sense of being ‘100% correct’, i.e. almost certainly complete bollox.

Torture is always illegal too, regardless of war status.

Depends how you define torture, and whether you sign up to allow anyone to apply the law to you.

Torture in all forms is banned by the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), which the United States participated in drafting. The United States is a party to the following conventions (international treaties) that prohibits torture, such as the 1949 Geneva Conventions (signed 1949; ratified 1955), the American Convention on Human Rights (signed 1977), the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (signed 1977; ratified 1992), and the United Nations Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (signed 1988; ratified 1994). It has neither signed nor ratified the Inter-American Convention to Prevent and Punish Torture.[13] International law defines torture during an armed conflict as a war crime. It also mandates that any person involved in ordering, allowing, and even insufficiently preventing and prosecuting war crimes is criminally liable under the command responsibility doctrine.

crankboy – Member

He says it quite wrongly war has a definition in international law if the US want to hold them as prisoners of war then a) they need to declare war on a state and b) they need to treat the prisoners as Prisoners of war in which case the Geneva Convention applies , someone will say no uniforms there for shoot but the Geneva convention requires a process albeit a summary one to identify spys .

Not logic but a sophistry to conceal wrong doing. I’m not saying you are wrong, but it brings up a rather awkward fact. Up until the start oft he last century, war mostly consisted of two armies forming opposing lines and charging toward each other into battle. fast forward through trench warfare and into the end of the last century and things get a lot murkier.

Today’s enemies of global peace are, generally, less rogue nations – one which one can ‘officially’ declare war – than rogue, guerilla groups. After the Paris attack though, France says they are at war…

What then?

An act of torture committed outside the United States by a U.S. national or a non-U.S. national who is present in the United States is punishable under 18 U.S.C. § 2340. The definition of torture used is as follows:

As used in this chapter—

(1) “torture” means an act committed by a person acting under the color of law specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering (other than pain or suffering incidental to lawful sanctions) upon another person within his custody or physical control;
(2) “severe mental pain or suffering” means the prolonged mental harm caused by or resulting from—
(A) the intentional infliction or threatened infliction of severe physical pain or suffering;
(B) the administration or application, or threatened administration or application, of mind-altering substances or other procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses or the personality;
(C) the threat of imminent death; or
(D) the threat that another person will imminently be subjected to death, severe physical pain or suffering, or the administration or application of mind-altering substances or other procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses or personality; and
(3) “United States” means the several states of the United States, the District of Columbia, and the commonwealths, territories, and possessions of the United States.

So the US law would suggest Shaker’s treatment was torture and the us signed up to not doing it . I accept that they have passed laws retrospectively to say it was ok and grant immunity from prosecution.