Tuesday, January 6, 2009

They Don't Just Disappear

Let's hope this is just the first of many stories about the tortured innocents released far too late from Gitmo.

After Mr. Iqbal was picked up in Jakarta and interrogated for two days, American officials generally concluded that he was a braggart, a “wannabe,” and should be released, one of the senior American officials in Jakarta said. “He was a talker,” the senior American official said. “He wanted to believe he was more important than he was.”

There was no evidence that he had ever met Osama bin Laden, or had been to Afghanistan, the two senior American officials said. But in the atmosphere of fear and confusion in the months after Sept. 11, 2001, Mr. Iqbal was secretly moved to Egypt for further interrogation, said one of the senior American officials.

SNIP

In Lahore, Mr. Iqbal wants to return to teaching the Koran. “It’s easy for the United States to say no charges were found,” he said. “But who is responsible for the seven years of my life?”

Read the whole thing.

1 comment:

Jack Jodell said...

Only under the fascist Bush/Cheney regime could innocent people be illegally detained, kidnapped, moved all over the world for torture and then for secret imprisonment without formal charges. They don't even go to extremes that bad in North Korea! Perhaps Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, John Yoo, Alberto Gonzales, Ari Fleischer, and Dana Perrino should all be spirited away to Gitmo for a taste of their own medicine before being tried for war crimes in the Hague!