Guantanamo prisoner is freed after six years in captivity
Is justice really being served if it takes six years to receive it? I feel sure that Haji Bismullah doesn’t think so.
As told in the New York Times, Afghan detainee Haji Bismullah was released from six years of captivity in Guantanamo Bay prison by a military panel this weekend. Apparently, Bismullah was not just innocent of working with the Taliban, as he was accused, but on the contrary, he and his whole family had “fought to drive the Taliban out of Afghanistan,” according to a sworn statement by his brother, a pro-American Afghan official.
Like his brother, after fighting the Taliban, Bismullah worked as a pro-American government official. His job was coveted by a rival clan associated with the Taliban, so in order to take over the position for themselves, clan members framed Bismullah by turning him into the Americans as a Taliban supporter. Basically, he was framed.
For an administration that places such a high premium on loyalty, imprisoning someone who has fought for our cause, someone who is a friend of our government, on the premise that they have assisted the enemy is the epitome of hypocrisy. In this case, friendship was repaid with prison.
It also shouldn’t have taken six years to find and consider the evidence used to clear Bismullah. It would have taken much less time to find the evidence had the U.S. military only looked. It’s obvious that no effort was made to discover the truth.
This situation demonstrates that for the Bush administration, freedom and justice are principles that are fine to use in speeches, but in reality are applied selectively. This error which the New York Times called “a mistake of grand proportions” is more evidence that Obama can use when he prosecutes the incompetent and corrupt Bush administration. Then, justice will be served.
As told in the New York Times, Afghan detainee Haji Bismullah was released from six years of captivity in Guantanamo Bay prison by a military panel this weekend. Apparently, Bismullah was not just innocent of working with the Taliban, as he was accused, but on the contrary, he and his whole family had “fought to drive the Taliban out of Afghanistan,” according to a sworn statement by his brother, a pro-American Afghan official.
Like his brother, after fighting the Taliban, Bismullah worked as a pro-American government official. His job was coveted by a rival clan associated with the Taliban, so in order to take over the position for themselves, clan members framed Bismullah by turning him into the Americans as a Taliban supporter. Basically, he was framed.
For an administration that places such a high premium on loyalty, imprisoning someone who has fought for our cause, someone who is a friend of our government, on the premise that they have assisted the enemy is the epitome of hypocrisy. In this case, friendship was repaid with prison.
It also shouldn’t have taken six years to find and consider the evidence used to clear Bismullah. It would have taken much less time to find the evidence had the U.S. military only looked. It’s obvious that no effort was made to discover the truth.
This situation demonstrates that for the Bush administration, freedom and justice are principles that are fine to use in speeches, but in reality are applied selectively. This error which the New York Times called “a mistake of grand proportions” is more evidence that Obama can use when he prosecutes the incompetent and corrupt Bush administration. Then, justice will be served.
# Posted by Kathleen : 5:33 PM
Comments:
Kathleen is 100 percent correct. A few journalists, like Carlotta Gall, Andy Worthington and Farah Stockman set out to seek the exculpatory witnesses captives had requested. The captives were told that the witnesses had been ruled "not reasonably available. But these reporters found that the witnesses were trivially easy to locate. In a case even more tragic than Bismullah's Gall and Worthington found that American intelligence analysts were unaware that the Taliban had put a $1 million bounty on Abdul Razzaq Hekmati head. He was accused of plotting to rescue Taliban leaders from prison. In fact he and his son had rescued Northern Alliance leaders from a Taliban prison in 1999. The officers who annually reviewed his case kept telling him he should get letters from those leaders. They ignored his explanation that he hadn't received a single letter during his stay. The cruelest twist is that when they contacted one of the men whose testimony he requested, Abdul Hakim, Afghanistan's Minister of Energy, he told them not only hadn't the State Department asked him to be a witness, he said he had personally sought out the US Ambassador, and personally told him that Hekmati had been frame.
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