guantanemo prisoner captured by bounty hunters dies without having ever been charged

[zerozero]

Chronicle of a death foretold - Opinion - Al Jazeera English

Two weeks ago, the Pentagon quietly released a statement that another Guantanamo detainee had died in custody, the ninth since the prison was opened in 2001. Adnan Farhan Abdul Latif, a 32-year-old man from Yemen who had spent eleven years incarcerated, was found dead in his cell on September 8.

The cause of his death has been recorded as unknown and may never truly be known, but Latif had long suffered from feelings of extreme depression during his time in jail, having made several suicide attempts in the previous years.

Latif had long complained of abuse by prison staff and of his deteriorating physical and mental condition during his imprisonment. Two years earlier, he had written that guards "entered my cell on a regular basis. They throw me and drag me on the floor... they strangle me and press hard behind my ears until I lose consciousness". In 2009 he slit his wrists in an attempt to end his life, writing about the incident later to his lawyer to say that his circumstances in Guantanamo "make death more desirable than living".

Latif was initially captured by Pakistani bounty hunters in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks when a mixture of confusion and desire for vengeance resulted in the effective labelling of any military age Arab males found in Afghanistan and Pakistan as potential terrorists.

He had been receiving medical care in Amman, Jordan for chronic injuries he had received from a car crash in Yemen that had fractured his skull and caused permanent damage to his hearing. Lured to Pakistan by the promise of cheap healthcare, once the war started he ended up caught in the dragnet of opportunistic bounty hunters who detained him, proclaimed him a terrorist and handed him over to the US military in neighbouring Afghanistan.

Later it would come out that such bounty hunters had been unscrupulous, detaining individuals and labelling them as terrorists baselessly in order to collect large cash incentives from the US military for their handover. No evidence was ever found connecting him to terrorism or violent militancy of any kind, and later medical examinations taken of him upon intake into military custody would corroborate his story regarding the nature of the head injuries he had come to Pakistan to treat. Indeed, when he was apprehended he was found not to be in possession of weapons or extremist literature of any kind - what he had with him were copies of his medical records.

While during all his years in custody Latif has never been charged with nor convicted of any crime related to terrorism or any other offence, his death now is made even more tragic due to the fact that he had been recommended for release from Guantanamo by the Department of Defence since as early as 2004, and again in 2007, which said at the time that it had determined that he "is not known to have participated in any combatant/terrorist training". In 2009 a special task force commissioned by the Obama administration also ruled that Latif should be released, a decision which its internal mandates specified could only be reached by the unanimous consensus of all US intelligence agencies. However despite being cleared for release he remained in military custody as a decision had been made not to repatriate any prisoners to Yemen due to ongoing political instability in the country, effectively leaving him and others like him in a state of indefinite detention.

 

[Type Username Here]

You all already know how I feel about this shyt.

 

[zerozero]

fukk our species breh. at least a parasite never lies about what it's doing.

 

[Dusty Bake Activate]

 

[zerozero]

You all already know how I feel about this shyt.

I know breh not to mention many American citizens in the regular justice system don't have it much better, nor for that matter do people outside america, many going through much worse

damn it to hell.

reading his letters you can't help but think that maybe extra judicial drone strikes are more merciful than this sort of dark limbo

 

[Type Username Here]

I know breh not to mention many American citizens in the regular justice system don't have it much better, nor for that matter do people outside america, many going through much worse

damn it to hell.

reading his letters you can't help but think that maybe extra judicial drone strikes are more merciful than this sort of dark limbo

I feel you. Sometimes I felt I'd rather die on the battlefield and then imprisoned for life or tortured.

The prisons in Brazil are worse. I mean so over-crowded, mainly filled with kids who steal, and they get thrown right there in a tiny cell with murderers and rapists.

shyt is an atrocity.

 

[Techniec]

Disgusting

These motherfukers got the nerve to preach

 

[88m3]

The article sounds highly biased without any sources

 

[zerozero]

The article sounds highly biased without any sources

the article doesn't link to the actual court proceedings it cites. what a tragedy. meanwhile the capture and imprisonment sounds highly suspicious to me without any charges, nevermind evidence, you vacuous troll.

 

[88m3]

the article doesn't link to the actual court proceedings it cites. what a tragedy. meanwhile the capture and imprisonment sounds highly suspicious to me without any charges, nevermind evidence, you vacuous troll.

The article is highly questionable.

 

[zerozero]

The article is highly questionable.

WHAT ARE THE CHARGES

TELL ME WHAT HE WAS CHARGED WITH

WHAT WAS THE EXCUSE FOR KIDNAPPING AND KEEPING HIM

 

[Jello Biafra]

I read an article about this Latif guy on Salon; it is a realy fukked up story. There is a quote from a lawyer who represented some of the Gitmo detainees that says more than half of them have been cleared of any terrorist affiliation but still will not be released.

 

[Brown_Pride]

If they're cleared why not release I wonder. My money is on the fact that if they weren't terrorist before they wer captured they sure have the motivation now to see america burn.

War on terror needs to start at home with places like this.

 

[Type Username Here]

The people who authorize this to go on must be charged with War Crimes. I'm not talking about at the lower levels of the chain-of-command either.

I'm not naive to think that everyone in Gitmo is innocent, but they should be presumed to be so and given a chance to prove their innocence. This is a fundamental human rights concept.

I don't like the line of argument that fears releasing these prisoners will only make them more radicalized and seeking revenge. If that is the case, so what? That's like saying we shouldn't free people we've wrongly imprisoned because they might be angry with society and commit crimes later down the line.

Just an absolute atrocity.

 

[Brown_Pride]

The people who authorize this to go on must be charged with War Crimes. I'm not talking about at the lower levels of the chain-of-command either.

I'm not naive to think that everyone in Gitmo is innocent, but they should be presumed to be so and given a chance to prove their innocence. This is a fundamental human rights concept.

I don't like the line of argument that fears releasing these prisoners will only make them more radicalized and seeking revenge. If that is the case, so what? That's like saying we shouldn't free people we've wrongly imprisoned because they might be angry with society and commit crimes later down the line.

Just an absolute atrocity.

agreed.
There really is nothing "right" about places like these. You can't have rights "except"...

It just doesn't work like that...