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marky 54 Mega Poster
Joined: 18 Aug 2006 Posts: 3293
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Posted: Tue Apr 22, 2008 11:30 am Post subject: Guantanamo Bay detainees "we were drugged" |
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Guantanamo Bay detainees "we were drugged"
WASHINGTON - Adel al-Nusairi remembers his first six months at Guantanamo Bay as this: hours and hours of questions, but first, a needle.
"I'd fall asleep" after the shot, Nusairi, a former Saudi policeman captured by U.S. forces in Afghanistan in 2002, recalled in an interview with his attorney at the military prison in Cuba, according to notes. After being roused, Nusairi eventually did talk, giving U.S. officials what he later described as a made-up confession to buy some peace............
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24250989 |
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TonyGosling Editor
Joined: 25 Jul 2005 Posts: 18335 Location: St. Pauls, Bristol, England
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Posted: Thu Nov 28, 2013 10:15 pm Post subject: |
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Gitmo’s Al-Qaeda ‘Double Agent’ Revolving Door
November 27, 2013 By 21wire Leave a Comment
21st Century Wire says…
http://21stcenturywire.com/2013/11/27/gitmos-al-qaeda-double-agent-rev olving-door/
This might be shocking news on the surface, but it should really come as no surprise to anyone who understands the underlying purpose of both Rendition policy and the Guantanamo Bay operation. RT reports:
“Penny Lane continues the US military’s trend of borrowing famous Beatles’ songs to name their facilities. In 2010, The New York Times broke the story on a clandestine facility disturbingly dubbed ‘Strawberry Fields’, since it was believed that the ‘high value’ inmates detained would be there, as the well-known lyrics say, ‘forever’. These individuals were referred to as ghost detainees, and were held for years by the CIA in secret ‘black site’ prisons across Europe, as well as in the Middle East and Asia.”
Back in March of this year, 21WIRE revealed how at least two high-ranking Al-Qaeda militants were released from Gitmo only to find themselves back out in the field – in quite pivotal positions alongside US efforts in both Libya and Syria. Here are the details:
Libya’s militant governor of Tripoli, Abdel Hakim Belhadj, and the Chechen terrorist group Kata’ib Mohadzherin’s leader Airat Vakhitov were both imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba circa 2002, after being captured by U.S. forces in Afghanistan. Both were released and filtered back into fighting regions to organise Al-Qaeda-type Islamist groups – both active in countries which the US and NATO have been actively vying for regime change – in Libya and Syria, respectively. You can draw your own conclusions here about what Guantanamo is in reality.
This should be a wake-up call to anyone who thought they knew the whole story about Gitmo since its inception in 2001…
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Penny Lane: CIA secret camp for turning Gitmo prisoners into double agents
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RT.com
In the early stages of the ‘War on Terror,’ CIA agents at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility turned detainees into double agents, helping the US to track and kill terrorists, according to US officials.
For some Gitmo detainees, held prisoner on a US military base in the middle of shark-infested waters, the promise of freedom in return for helping the CIA root out terrorists back home may have proven too much of a temptation.
In addition to winning their freedom, co-conspirators were granted safety guarantees for their families, and millions of dollars from the agency’s secret war chest, sources told AP.
The arrangement did not come without some inherent risks, however, since – as the war in Afghanistan has proven on various occasions – it is not uncommon for US troops to suddenly become the target of ‘friendly foreign fire.’
In January 2002, 632 detainees arrived at Gitmo, followed by 117 the next year. Suddenly, the risk of building a strategic partnership with the enemy seemed worth taking. The CIA, recognizing an opportunity for breaching the mountain hideouts of elusive terrorist targets, seemed prepared to release some prisoners from the harsh conditions of their indefinite detention.
‘Behind the shelter…’
A few hundred yards behind the Gitmo detention facility, concealed behind vegetation and rock formations, sits eight unassuming barracks, known to those in the know as ‘Penny Lane’.
Given the relative comfort of the compound’s units, which were said to have had “private kitchens, showers and…real bed with a mattress,” CIA personnel jokingly referred to the complex as ‘the Marriott’.
The intelligence agency was then tasked to recruit potential candidates into the program. Of the ‘dozens of prisoners’ evaluated for the special program, only a handful signed agreements to work for American intelligence.
“Of course that would be an objective,” Emile Nakhleh, a former top CIA analyst who spent time in 2002 assessing detainees but who did not discuss Penny Lane, revealed. “It’s the job of intelligence to recruit sources.”
To qualify for the program, recruits needed good connections with terrorist organizations, notably Al-Qaeda.
A view of Camp X-Ray in Guantanamo Bay U.S. Naval Base (Reuters/Deborah Gembara)
Once accepted into the secret program, candidates were instructed by the US intelligence agency to spy on behalf of the CIA in its effort to capture or kill Al-Qaeda operatives, current and retired US officials told the Associated Press.
The sources spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the program, which ended in about 2006.
CIA spokesman Dean Boyd declined to comment.
“I do see the irony on the surface of letting some really very bad guys go,” David Remes, an American lawyer who has represented about a dozen Yemeni detainees at Guantanamo, told AP.
“The men we were sending back as agents were thought to be able to provide value to us,” he added.
AP sources confirmed that some of the double agents did help track down and kill terrorists, while other operatives ceased cooperation and the CIA lost contact with them.
The biggest fear, former officials involved with the program recalled, was that a former detainee would attack Americans then publicly announce that he had been on the CIA payroll.
The US government had such high hopes for Penny Lane that one former intelligence official recalled discussions about whether to secretly release a pair of Pakistani men into the United States on student or business visas. The hope was that they would connect with Al-Qaeda and lead authorities to members of a US cell.
Another former senior intelligence official said that never happened.
Meanwhile, efforts to shut down Gitmo, which has been labeled the ‘Gulag of our times’, by Amnesty International, remains an unfulfilled promise by the Obama administration, which has met fierce resistance to the idea by members of the Republican Party, most notably former Vice-President Dick Cheney.
“I can tell you that the administration remains committed to closing the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay,” deputy White House press secretary Josh Earnest announced in March.
Of the 779 people initially detained at Guantanamo Bay, more than three-quarters have been released, while others who have been cleared for release continue to remain at the facility. _________________ www.lawyerscommitteefor9-11inquiry.org
www.rethink911.org
www.patriotsquestion911.com
www.actorsandartistsfor911truth.org
www.mediafor911truth.org
www.pilotsfor911truth.org
www.mp911truth.org
www.ae911truth.org
www.rl911truth.org
www.stj911.org
www.v911t.org
www.thisweek.org.uk
www.abolishwar.org.uk
www.elementary.org.uk
www.radio4all.net/index.php/contributor/2149
http://utangente.free.fr/2003/media2003.pdf
"The maintenance of secrets acts like a psychic poison which alienates the possessor from the community" Carl Jung
https://37.220.108.147/members/www.bilderberg.org/phpBB2/ |
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scienceplease 2 Trustworthy Freedom Fighter
Joined: 06 Apr 2009 Posts: 1702
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Posted: Mon Jan 19, 2015 7:49 pm Post subject: |
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Please listen and distribute. This is a must-listen to account. It is witty and deeply insightful.
https://soundcloud.com/guardian-visuals/guantanamo-diary-shami-chakrab arti-reading
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The guards were working in a two-shift routine, day shift and night shift. Whenever the new shift showed up, they made their presence known by banging heavily on the door of my cell to scare me. Whenever the new shift appeared my heart started to pound because they always came up with new ideas to make my life a living hell, like giving me very little food by allowing me about 30 seconds to one minute to eat it, or forcing me to eat every bit of food I got in a very short time. “You better be done!” they would shout. Or they made me clean the shower excessively, or made me fold my towels and my blanket in an impossible way again and again until they were satisfied.
I always showed more fear than I felt as a self-defense technique
To forbidding me any kind of comfort items, they added new rules. One: I should never be lying down; whenever a guard showed up at my bin hole, I always had to be awake, or wake up as soon as a guard walked into my area. There was no sleeping in the terms that we know. Two: My toilet should always be dry! And how, if I am always urinating and flushing? In order to meet the order, I had to use my only uniform to dry the toilet up and stay soaked in *. Three: My cell should be in a predefined order, including having a folded blanket, so I could never use my blanket.
That was the guards’ recipe. I always showed more fear than I felt as a self-defense technique. Not that I would like to play the hero; I’m not, but I wasn’t scared of the guards because I just knew they had orders from above. If they reported back that “detainee wasn’t scared!” the doses would have been increased.
Meanwhile, I had my own recipe. First of all, I knew that I was really just a stone’s throw away from ____________
____. The Interrogators and the guards always hinted at the “God-forsaken nowhere” I was in, but I ignored them completely, and when the guards asked me “Where do you think you are?” I just responded, “I’m not sure, but I am not worried about it; since I am far from my family, it doesn’t really matter to me where I am.” And so I always closed the door whenever they referred to the place. I was afraid that I would be tortured if they knew I knew where I was, but it was kind of solacing, knowing that you are not far from your fellow detainees.
Once I figured out how to tell day from night, I kept count of the days by reciting 10 pages of the Koran every day. In 60 days I would finish and start over, and so I could keep track of the days. “Shut the * up! There is nothing to sing about,” said __________ when he heard me reciting the Koran. After that I recited quietly so nobody could hear me. But my days of the week were still messed up; I failed to keep track of them until I glimpsed _____________ watch when he pulled it out of his pocket to check the time. He was very vigilant and careful but it was too late, I saw MO_______________, but he didn’t notice. Friday is a very important Muslim holiday, and that was the reason I wanted to keep track of the weekdays. Besides, I just hated the fact that they deprived me of one of my basic freedoms.
When I first met Americans I hated their language because of the pain they made me suffer without a single reason
I tried to find out everybody’s name who was involved in my torture—not for retaliation or anything like that; I just didn’t want those people to have the upper hand over any of my brothers, or anybody, no matter who he is. I believe they should not only be deprived of their powers, but they should also be locked up. I succeeded in knowing the names of the ________ ___________________ two of my interrogators, two of the guards, and other interrogators who weren’t involved directly in my torture but could serve as witnesses.
When I first met Americans I hated their language because of the pain they made me suffer without a single reason; I didn’t want to learn it. But that was emotion; the call of wisdom was stronger, and so I decided to learn the language. Even though I already knew how to conjugate “to be” and “to have,” my luggage of English was very light. Since I wasn’t allowed to have books, I had to pick up the language mostly from the guards and sometimes my interrogators, and after a short time I could speak like common folk: “He don’t care, she don’t care, I ain’t done nothin’, me and my friend did so and so, F—this and F—that, damn x and damn y...”
I also studied the people around me. My observations resulted in knowing that only white Americans were appointed to deal with me, both guards and interrogators. There was only one black guard, but he had no say. His associate was a younger, white ___________ but the latter was always in charge. You might say, “How do you know the ranks of the guards, when they were covered?” I wasn’t supposed to know who was in charge, nor should they have given me a hint as to who the boss was, but in America it’s very easy to notice who the boss is: there’s just no mistaking him.
I really looked like a ghost, just bones, no meat
My suspicion of me being near ______________ was cemented when one day I got some of the diet I was used to back in ____________. “Why did they give me a hot meal?” I asked the sarcastic head guard. “Doctor said we had to.” I really looked like a ghost, just bones, no meat. In a matter of weeks I had developed grey hair on the lower half of the sides of my head, a phenomenon people in my culture refer to as the extreme result of depression. Keeping up the pressure was vital in the process of my interrogation. The plan worked: the more pressure, the more stories I produced and the better my interrogators felt toward me.
And then, slowly but surely, the guards were advised to give me the opportunity to brush my teeth, to give me more warm meals, and to give me more showers. The interrogators started to interrogate me ________________________________ ________________________ was the one who took the first steps, but I am sure there had been a meeting about it. Everybody in the team realized that I was about to lose my mind due to my psychological and physical situation. I had been so long in segregation.
“Please, get me out of this living hell!” I said.
“You will not go back to the population anytime soon.” _______ told me. Her answer was harsh but true: there was no plan to get me back.* The focus was on holding me segregated as long as they could and gathering information from me.
I still had nothing in my cell. Most of the time I recited the Koran silently. The rest of the time I was talking to myself and thinking over and over about my life and the worst-case scenarios that could happen to me. I kept counting the holes of the cage I was in. There are about four thousand one hundred holes.
Maybe because of this, _________ happily started to give me some puzzles that I could spend my time solving. “If we discover that you lied to us, you’re gonna feel our wrath, and we’re gonna take everything back. This can all go back to the old days, you know that,” _________ used to tell me whenever he gave me a puzzle. My heart would pound, but I was like, What a jackass! Why can’t he let me enjoy my “reward” for the time being? Tomorrow is another day.
I started to enrich my vocabulary. I took a paper and started to write words I didn’t understand, and ________________ explained them to me. If there is anything positive about _________ is his rich vocabulary. I don’t remember asking him about a word he couldn’t explain to me. English was his only real language, though he claimed to be able to speak Farsi. “I wanted to learn French, but I hated the way they speak and I quit,” he said.
Redactions marked in the text were made by the US government when Mohamedou Ould Slahi’s diary was cleared for public release
• Listen to live and recorded readings by Brian Eno, Colin Firth and others, as well as a panel discussion with Slahi’s lawyer and brother about this remarkable account of imprisonment. Guardian Live: Guantánamo Diary, Tuesday 20 January, 7pm, London
• Guantanamo Diary is published on Tuesday 20 January. To buy a copy for £15 (RRP £20), visit bookshop.theguardian.com or call the Guardian Bookshop on 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p on online orders over £10. A £1.99 charge applies to telephone orders |
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jan/19/-sp-guantanamo-diary-team -realized-about-lose-mind-chakrabarti |
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outsider Trustworthy Freedom Fighter
Joined: 30 Jul 2006 Posts: 6060 Location: East London
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