Guantanamo Bay prison, the unlisted prison in Cuba operated by the US is one of those places whose mystery makes you shudder. The prison is used to stack away unwanted militants or ‘alleged’ terrorists which are enemies of the US state. I don’t mean to sound like coming straight out of a hollywood thriller but that’s my point; that’s what Guantanamo Bay reminds me of! It represents the unspoken, the unheard AND the unseen!!
The torturous tactics
Few things: firstly, the US government does not need any reason to detain such people that it finds any damn reason to be of any kind of danger for it or its allies. Secondly, it is not known whether any proper records pertaining to the detainees are mainatined or not. Thirdly, it holds the power to decide whether these militants will be tried in their own home country or in the US. All of this gives one a faint idea of how powerfully this prison operates, and even more bone wrenching is the methods of torture used against these prisoners. In fact, John Turley, a law professor at George Washington University, told the Associated Press:
The administration has been almost pathological in trying to find ways to keep these people from ever seeing a real judge or a real lawyer and the reasons are obvious
He is only one of the lawyers among scores others who believes that terrible torture methods are used against these prisoners. This is believed to be one more reason why the US has been so secretive about this place.
Moving further on, it gets better. Lawyers and other experts like Turley suggest that President Bush not only knew about the torture program but may have ordered it. The lawyer was quoted by the Associated Press:
It seems pretty clear that they’ve been tortured and that the president knew they were being tortured, and may have even ordered their torture through techniques like water boarding
Water boarding
Last September, CIA sources told ABC News that the harshest, technique they were authorized to use on “high-value detainees, such as the 9/11 attacks architect Khalid Sheikh Mohamed...was called ‘water boarding,’ in which a prisoner’s face was covered with cellophane, and water is poured over it (pictured above) — meant to trigger an unbearable gag reflex.”
This sounds as bad as it probably is, actually we may not even be able to comprehend in our sane protected minds of the pains inflicted through such tortures and their after effects. ABC news was told by these experts that
new rules issued by the Pentagon today prohibit water boarding, though there was no clear acknowledgement that it was permitted previously,” and that “CIA officers told ABC News that 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed lasted the longest under water boarding, two and a half minutes, before beginning to talk
The detainees
The detainees at the prison include a number of highly wanted terrorists including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the September 11 attacks, and former al-Qaeda military chief Abu Zubaydah.
As the US government began hearings on Friday to determine if 14 of the accused terrorists may be guilty, the proceedings are coming under heavy criticism for their secretive nature and what some are very rightly calling pre-determined outcomes.
Via: The Raw Story
