– fordi tiden kræver et MODSPIL

11. Jan 2006

Mere tortur - retssikkerhed, hvad er det?

 
Her er et uddrag af et brev fra Al-Jazeeras kameramand Sami al-Hajj, som har siddet indespærret på Guantanamo i nu over fire år:
One night I went to bed quite early. I was exhausted after spending many hours under interrogation. I was awakened by the shouts and commands from the soldiers. "Get your head and your hands out of the blanket!" I was startled so I complied. As a matter of fact, it was forbidden for us to sleep with our heads or hands covered by the blanket.

I went to slept again. Some time later a soldier started hitting the door of the cage as hard as he could and started bellowing, "Why did you put the toothpaste in the place of the toothbrush?" He accused me of refusing to obey military laws and regulations and ordered me to get all my things together. I was punished for a whole week.

And here I am again, asking the same question. Why do they punish me? How can they justify punishing me for a week, taking away all my things, leaving me with no mattress or blanket, obliging me to sleep on the floor? Another time, I was having breakfast, which consisted of the cold contents of a can. When I finished a soldier collected the leftovers and the plastic bags. He stopped at the door of the cage and counted the pieces, trying to put them together again. Suddenly he shouted, "Where is it... the piece that is missing?" I started looking among my things but I did not find it.

He immediately went away to report the problem to his superiors and came back with his orders. I had to be made an example. Yet again, they took away all my possessions for three days and yet again the same old question came back...Why do they punish me? What on earth would I want with a small piece of a plastic bag?Once more, providence reunited me in the same cage block with Yamel from Uganda, Mohamed from Chad and Yamel Blama from Britain. The colour of the skin and the hated orange of our boilersuits also united us. The black of our skins was enough to make the guards hate us and make our lives hell. Often they woke us up during the night under the pretext of searching the cage.

One night the soldiers woke me up for yet another search. They did not find anything suspicious, that is, except for three grains of rice on the floor that I had saved for the ants. This time they punished me for seven days and yet again, the same old question came back to haunt me... Why do they punish me?
Via Richard Stallman, der giver kameramandens beretning disse ord med på vejen:
A letter from a journalist, imprisoned without trial by the US government, describes continual unnecessary punishment--for having one's hand under the blanket, for leaving a few grains of rice on the floor, for a small missing piece of a plastic bag. As well as beatings of shackled prisoners. The only possible purpose is to crush the spirit.

The Bush regime will never let these men go, because they might perhaps want revenge for what the Bush regime has done to them. The Bush regime has reached the lowest level of moral degradation, where one evil already committed becomes the excuse for the next evil.
Og sandt er det i hvert fald, at Sami al-Hajj ikke vil blive dømt for nogen forbrydelse - han har nemlig ikke begået nogen. Alligevel behandles han altså som beskrevet, og kan næppe vente at få så meget som en undskyldning, den dag han bliver løsladt - hvis han da bliver løsladt.

Fanger ved Guantanamo har tidligere anlagt sager ved amerikanske domstole i protest mod tilbageholdelsen den behandling, de bliver udsat for. Sidste år bestemte den amerikanske Højesteret til regeringens fortrydelse, at fangerne havde ret til at anlægge den slags sager.

Bush-regeringens reaktion? Vel, det kan vi læse om i The Observer og sikkert også andre steder:
Last week, President Bush signed into law a measure removing detainees' right to file habeas corpus petitions in the US federal courts. On Friday, the administration asked the Supreme Court to make this retroactive, so nullifying about 220 cases in which prisoners have contested the basis of their detention and the legality of pending trials by military commission.
Altså: Hvis loven giver folk for mange rettigheder, så laver kejserenpræsidenten da bare loven om - med tilbagevirkende kraft, hvis det er det, der skal til! Tag den, lede terrorister! Og tag den, frie og åbne samfund: Vi har alligevel ikke brug for dig mere.

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