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Earl Aagaard’s opinions about everything that interests him. Og also enjoys gardening, travel, reading, woodbutchery, and lots of other stuff.

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HAVE YOU HEARD THAT MOST OF THE DETAINEES AT GUANTANAMO BAY ARE REALLY INNOCENTS SWEPT UP AT RANDOM?

DAVID FRUM would beg to differ, with links and footnotes to reference the sources for his findings - those that aren’t backed up by first-hand observations on his recent 10-day tour of the Center. Those reports will be appearing in a four-part series published by the TORONTO SUN, but the current focus is on whether

Guantanamo represents some kind of “American Gulag” – and that the detainees are victims of a monstrous miscarriage of justice: innocent goatherds and blameless wedding guests swept up by blind American injustice.

The answers, Frum writes, lie in the TESTIMONY OF THE DETAINEES themselves, contained in the

Combatant Status Review Tribunal (CSRT) and Administrative Review Board (ARB) Documents
Released March 3, April 3, and April 19, 2006

Contrary to inflammatory allegations, every detainee has at least one hearing before a tribunal to adjudicate their status. And the testimony they offer is recorded and, in many cases, made available to the public. Here are some excerpts:

One detainee, a Kuwaiti national named as an al Qaida operative on a captured al Qaida hard drive, was captured as he tried to flee from Afghanistan into Iran. He insisted that he had no association with any terrorist organization. What then had brought him to Afghanistan? His answer: He had donated 750 Kuwaiti dinars (“not a lot of money” he added) to an Islamic charity to dig wells in Aghanistan – and had decided to travel from Kuwait to see that his money was properly spent. (Set 4, ISN 229, p. 4 ), emphasis added

A detainee identified by eyewitnesses as a Taliban military judge, who inflicted hideous punishments on hundreds of accused, explained to the tribunal that he was in fact only a humble chicken farmer. The question, “What did you feed your chickens?” baffled this detainee. He answered: “A mixture of foods they sell in the bazaar” (perhaps at the Afghan equivalent of Petco). (Set 3, ISN 581, p. 8 )

A Saudi detainee, confronted with evidence that he had traveled to Bosnia in the mid-1990s, then to Sudan, then to Afghanistan, explained that he had devoted himself exclusively to construction of mosques. But had his travel not been paid by al Haramain, a well-known front group for al Qaida? He knew nothing about that, “If al Haramain is a terrorist organization, why is it my problem? Am I guilty if they are terrorists?” (Set 3, ISN 064, p. 7 .)

It is possible that, among the dangerous Islamist terrorists at Gitmo, are a few innocent men who are no particular danger to the world. It’s also true that in every prison system on earth are innocent people, who ended up there despite the precautions taken to assure that only the truly guilty are incarcerated. However, it is only at Guantanamo Bay that “the answer” to the potential injustice mentioned is to free hundreds of clearly guilty and highly dangerous miscreants to practice their depredations on the world…...

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Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 11/11 at 08:06 PM

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