D. Grant Haynes

How do you repay a man for 7 1/2 years of hell at Gitmo?

2009-06-09T00:39:00-07:00

Held Seven Years, Former Aid Worker Tells ABC News He Was Tortured

By JAKE TAPPER, KAREN TRAVERS, and STEPHANIE Z. SMITH

For 71/2 years, Lakhdar Boumediene was known simply by a number: "10005."

These were the digits assigned to him when he arrived at the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, swept up in a post-Sept. 11 dragnet and accused of plotting to blow up the U.S. and British Embassies in Sarajevo.

In an exclusive interview with ABC News, Boumediene said the interrogators at Gitmo never once asked him about this alleged plot, which he denied playing any part it.

"I'm a normal man," said Boumediene, who at the time of his arrest worked for the Red Crescent, providing help to orphans and others in need. "I'm not a terrorist."

The 43-year-old Algerian is now back with his wife and two daughters, a free man in France after a Republican judge found the evidence against Boumediene lacking. He is best known from the landmark Supreme Court case last year, Boumediene v. Bush, which said detainees have the right to challenge their detention in court.

That decision was a stunning rebuke of the Bush administration's policies on terror suspects. It set up a ruling by District Court Judge Richard Leon, a former counsel to Republicans in Congress appointed to the bench by Bush, that there was no credible evidence to keep Boumediene detained.

After what Boumediene described as a 71/2 year nightmare, he is now a free man. Boumediene: "I don't think. I'm sure" about torture.

In 2001, Boumediene, his wife and two young daughters lived in Sarajevo, Bosnia. He worked for the Red Crescent Society, having done stints for the organization in Pakistan and Albania.

He was arrested by Bosnian police in October 2001 and charged with conspiring to blow up the U.S. and British Embassies. He called the charges false and ludicrous.

"They search my car, my office, nothing. Cell phone, nothing. Nothing. Nothing," he said.

The charges were dropped, and the Bosnian courts ordered him and five others freed. But under pressure from the Bush administration, the Bosnian government handed him over to the U.S. military.

On January 17, 2002, Boumediene's hands and feet were placed in shackles, and he was put on a military plane en route to Guantanamo Bay. It was a time of high anxiety, and the Bush administration was taking no chances.

Two weeks later, in his State of the Union address, President Bush touted the arrests in Bosnia to show early progress in the war on terror.

"Our soldiers, working with the Bosnian government, seized terrorists who were plotting to bomb our embassy," Bush said in his address. To this day, officials of the Bush administration have provided no credible evidence to back up that accusation.

Boumediene said the interrogations began within one week of his arrival at the facility in Cuba. But he thought that his cooperation, and trust in the United States, would serve him well and quicken his release.

"I thought America, the big country, they have CIA, FBI. Maybe one week, two weeks, they know I am innocent. I can go back to my home, to my home," he said.

But instead, Boumediene said he endured harsh treatment for more than seven years. He said he was kept awake for 16 days straight, and physically abused repeatedly.

Asked if he thought he was tortured, Boumediene was unequivocal.

"I don't think. I'm sure," he said.

Boumediene described being pulled up from under his arms while sitting in a chair with his legs shackled, stretching him. He said that he was forced to run with the camp's guards and if he could not keep up, he was dragged, bloody and bruised.

He described what he called the "games" the guards would play after he began a hunger strike, putting his food IV up his nose and poking the hypodermic needle in the wrong part of his arm.

"You think that's not torture? What's this? What can you call this? Torture or what?" he said, indicating the scars he bears from tight shackles. "I'm an animal? I'm not a human?"

Vice President Dick Cheney has been adamant in his defense of the Guantanamo detention center and the treatment of those held there.

Last week Cheney said, "The facility down there is a fine facility. These people are very well treated."

Oddly, Boumediene said no one at Gitmo ever asked him about the alleged plot to blow up the embassies in Sarajevo. They wanted to know what he knew about al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, he recounted, which was nothing.

Boumediene said it was in his interest to lie to the interrogators, who would reward the detainees if they admitted guilt.

"If I tell my interrogator, I am from Al Qaeda, I saw Osama bin Laden, he was my boss, I help him, they will tell me, 'Oh you are a good man,'" he said. "But if I refuse ? I tell them I'm innocent, never was I terrorist, never never, they tell me. 'You are, you are not cooperating, I have to punch you.'"

After nearly four years locked up, Boumediene went on a hunger strike to protest his treatment.

He said he had believed that the United States honored religious diversity but believed guards at Guantanamo took actions to disrespect his religious beliefs. "They shaved my beard, because they don't respect me, because the guards they don't let me sleep. They don't let me read my Koran, they don't let me pray normal like people like Muslim outside the Guantanamo," he said.

Boumediene broke his hunger strike just twice over 21/2 years -- first, when he learned of Barack Obama's election win and next when Judge Leon ordered his release.

Despite the harsh treatment and uncertainty over his fate, Boumediene said he did not want to die because he had something to live for back home.

"Every day, I think about my wife and my daughters," he said.

Boumediene's personal effects were taken from him at Guantanamo, including his wedding ring. He now has a stack of letters, that his wife wrote to him that never arrived, a "return to sender" stamp on the envelope.

"Over there you lose all the hopes, you lose all hope," he said. "Any good news, they don't want you to be happy."

It took more than six years before Boumediene started to receive good news.

Boumediene v. Bush

Last summer, in a landmark war-time decision, the Supreme Court ruled that terror suspects held at Guantanamo have a constitutional right to challenge their detention in federal court.

The decision was a harsh rebuke to the Bush administration's system for detaining and eventually trying terror suspects.

In a blistering dissent, Justice Antonin Scalia said allowing federal judges, rather than military officials, to release terror suspects could have disastrous consequences.

"The game of bait-and-switch that today's opinion plays upon the nation's commander in chief will make the war harder on us. It will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed," he wrote.

Boumediene saw the 5-4 decision as his first victory against President Bush. His second came last November when Judge Leon ruled that the evidence against Boumediene was weak -- a "thin reed," he called it -- and ordered his release from Guantanamo.

The Bush administration never charged him with conspiring to blow up the embassies. Rather they said Boumediene and others had been planning to travel to Afghanistan to fight the United States. To mark the occasion, Boumediene made himself a T-shirt that, like a soccer scoreboard, reads, "Boumediene: 2, Bush: 0."

Last month, in a tearful ceremony at an airport outside Paris, Boumediene was reunited with his family. His daughters, who were toddlers when he was detained, are 13 and 9 years old.

"I cried, just cried. Because I don't know my daughters," he said. "The younger, when I moved from Bosnia to Gitmo, she had 18 months, only 18 months. Now 9 years. Now she's big. Between 18 months, baby and 9 years, she walking, she's talking, she play, she's joking. It's a big difference."

Because of his hunger strike, Boumediene was not in good health when he arrived in France. He was treated at a military hospital and could not eat regular food at first.

After he was released from the hospital, he went with his wife and daughters to enjoy a first meal as a family in seven and a half years. On the menu? Pizza.

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzeyM20GAGI

(Do you Bush apologists possess the cojones to watch ABC's interview with Lakhdar Boumediene, an innocent Algerian who gave more than seven years of his life to the "mistake" you people made in supporting George W. Bush for almost a decade? Watch the video at the URL above and think about how you would feel if Boumediene was your father, brother, husband, or son. -- DGH)

Maddow: Torture directed from White House

2009-04-23T00:15:00-07:00

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908#30356488

Listen to the first segment of the Rachel Maddow Show of April 22, 2009, titled, "High crimes?" and tell me Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld should live out their lives in posh surroundings as wealthy and respected elder statesmen.

Rather, each of these men should be tried for war crimes and crimes against humanity and, if convicted, imprisoned for the remainder of their natural lives.

They are each responsible for too much aggressive evil visited on too many human beings in the unwitting names of all Americans for this case to be swept under the rug or dismissed by President Obama or anyone else.

Justice must be served in this matter for America to regain her moral position in the human family.

D. Grant Haynes

Let's waterboard the waterboarders

2009-04-20T13:50:00-07:00

Memo: Two al Qaeda leaders waterboarded 266 times

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- CIA interrogators used waterboarding at least 266 times on two top al Qaeda suspects, according to a Bush-era Justice Department memo released by the Obama administration..

The controversial technique that simulates drowning -- and which President Obama calls torture -- was used at least 83 times in August 2002 on suspected al Qaeda leader Abu Zubaydah, according to the memo.

Interrogators also waterboarded Khalid Sheikh Mohammed 183 times in March 2003. Mohammed is believed to be the mastermind behind the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States.

Obama released the memo Thursday, saying that "exceptional circumstances surround these memos and require their release."

The memo, dated May 30, 2005, was from then-Deputy Assistant Attorney General Steven G. Bradbury to John Rizzo, who was acting general counsel for the CIA.

It paints a different picture from the one described by former CIA officer John Kiriakou. In a December 2007 interview with CNN, Kiriakou said Zubaydah had been waterboarded for "about 30 seconds..." and agreed to cooperate with interrogators the following day.

In an interview on "Fox News Sunday," Michael Hayden, who directed the CIA from 2006 to 2009, was asked about the number of times Mohammed was waterboarded.

Hayden denounced the release of the memos and did not comment on the number, saying it was his understanding that the frequency of waterboarding was among the operational details that had not been declassified... .

___________________________________________

I'd like to personally supervise George W. Bush's waterboarding for 266 times.

No, I'll take that back.

I'll go easy on George.

We could do him only 133 times and Dick Cheney the other 133 times.

They have besmirched the reputation of my nation by lying, cheating, waging unjustified wars, murdering millions, and visiting unspeakable cruelties on human beings in my name as an American.

They should be tried before a war crimes commission and each sentenced to life in prison without parole.

D. Grant Haynes

More Bush torture memos released

2009-04-17T00:44:00-07:00

Justice Department Releases Bush Administration Torture Memos

Bradbury And Bybee Memos Are Released In Response To Long-Running ACLU Lawsuits

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE -- April 16, 2009

CONTACT: (212) 549-2666; media@aclu.org

NEW YORK - In response to litigation filed by the American Civil Liberties Union under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), the Justice Department today released four secret memos used by the Bush administration to justify torture.

The memos, produced by the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC), provided the legal framework for the CIA's use of waterboarding and other illegal interrogation methods that violate domestic and international law.

The ACLU has called for the Justice Department to appoint an independent prosecutor to investigate torture under the Bush administration... .

The memos are available as PDF files.

http://luxmedia.vo.llnwd.net/o10/clients/aclu/olc_08012002_bybee.pdf

http://luxmedia.vo.llnwd.net/o10/clients/aclu/olc_05102005_bradbury46pg.pdf

http://luxmedia.vo.llnwd.net/o10/clients/aclu/olc_05102005_bradbury_20pg.pdf

http://luxmedia.vo.llnwd.net/o10/clients/aclu/olc_05302005_bradbury.pdf

ICRC report on CIA torture made public

2009-04-08T02:15:00-07:00

Berkeley Journalism professor Mark Danner has been instrumental in the release of an International Committee of the Red Cross report outlining details of the torture of 14 alleged "high value detainees" during George W. Bush's pursuit of his so-called "War on Terror". Graphic details of what Americans did to other humans during this dark time will curl your toes and see you demand accountability from those responsible.

Titled, "ICRC REPORT ON THE TREATMENT OF FOURTEEN "HIGH VALUE DETAINEES" IN CIA CUSTODY", the 40-page report will shock any American who thought his nation was motivated by decency and honor

If the graphic details contained in this report of the medieval cruelties and ghastly inhumanities visited on these men by CIA interrogators don't turn your stomach and produce an unquenchable demand in you that Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld be tried before an international court of justice for war crimes and crimes against humanity, then you are no countryman of mine.

This report has been made available on the New York Review of Books web site at:
http://www.nybooks.com/

It is available in downloadable PDF format at:

http://www.nybooks.com/icrc-report.pdf

D. Grant Haynes