8:18 am By la Macha · Controversia|Cuba|military|military interventions|Myanmar|Obama|Uncategorized|Violence|Washington DC · Comments Off
21 May 2009Several things have amused me (in a horribly ironic way) in the recent discussions about “Where will the Gitmo Detainees Stay? Not in My Back Yard!“–not the least of which includes the assumption that Cubans really want a bunch of detainees that hate the U.S. in *their* backyards.
But finding out about the torture thug group, The Immediate Reaction Force, has really topped everything. Democracy Now! has an excellent report up about the IRF’s–including descriptions of how these forces have gang beaten men for infractions like having two Styrofoam cups in their cells instead of one.
And while much of the focus has been on the tactical use of torture at Guantanamo, almost no attention had been paid to a parallel force that was torturing prisoners in a variety of ways, including waterboarding them, and that is this riot squad of sorts that you referred to called the Immediate Reaction Force. The prisoners and their lawyers at Guantanamo call it the “Extreme Repression Force.” Read more…
8:39 pm By la Macha · Health|Immigration|Iraq War|race · Comments Off
23 Feb 2009The latest Gitmo prisoner to be released is Binyam Mohamed of Britian. As with previous men who were held at the prison for years without ever being allowed a day in court, Mohamed was charged but never went to trail. He is now asserting that he was subjected to torture (including forced feeding when he was on hunger protests), and actually initially cooperated with British intelligence. Imagine his horror to find out that British intelligence was handing everything he was saying to it over to the U.S.:
From the Guardian
Andrew Dismore, chairman of parliament’s joint human rights committee, said he would lead a private meeting today to consider where their inquiry goes next. Separately, Mike Gapes, chairman of the Commons foreign affairs committee, said: “We will be pursuing the issue with ministers,” adding that his cross-party group had been trying to discover the UK’s role in the rendition of terror suspects for years. His committee intended to question David Miliband, the foreign secretary, and the Foreign Office minister Lord Malloch Brown, over what he called “outstanding issues”. He said they included “rendition, what happened to people in Guantánamo Bay and black sites” – a reference to prisons in Afghanistan and elsewhere.
In the prepared statement issued as he landed in the UK, Mohamed said: “I have to say, more in sadness than in anger, that many have been complicit in my own horrors over the past seven years … I realised in Morocco that the people who were torturing me were receiving questions and materials from British intelligence. I had met with British intelligence in Pakistan. I had been open with them. Yet the very people who I had hoped would come to my rescue, I later realised, had allied themselves with my abusers.”
The high court has heard evidence of British security and intelligence officials’ involvement in secret interrogations endured by Mohamed. What two judges have described as “powerful evidence” relating to Mohamed’s treatment is being suppressed under pressure from Miliband and the US authorities.
Every single solitary one of the men who have been released have spoken of some type of torture–whether it be forced feeding, beatings or sleep deprivation. Will we in the U.S. listen to them and demand that our government at least *pay* these people for the years stolen and the bodies damaged? Will we demand this knowing that if these men can’t get accountability from our government, there’s no way on earth *we’ll* ever be able to?
11:25 am By Maegan La Mala · Controversia|Cuba|Justice|Politics · 1 Comment
22 Jan 2009
Yesterday, I wrote how President Obama suspended some trials of Guantanamo Bay prisoners. Obama will signed executive orders not just shutting down Gitmo within a year, but also other U.S. secret prisons globally.
Some polls are showing mixed public reaction to the expected undoing of Bush detention policies. My question is why? If the United States really wants to clean up it’s global image then it needs to get rid of these centers that amount to torture camps and function outside the rule of law that so many are fond of talking about.
I’m still waiting for Obama to call for a suspension to ICE raids.
Via / NYT
11:25 am By Maegan La Mala · Cuba|Justice|Politics · Comments Off
21 Jan 2009
The new Obama administration is making some positive moves already. President Obama ordered military prosecutors in the Guantanamo war crimes tribunals to ask for a 120-day halt in all pending cases and a judge granted the request on Wednesday in the case against a young Canadian.
When defense lawyers did not oppose the move, a judge froze the proceedings against Canadian Omar Khadr, who was captured at age 15 and is accused of murdering a U.S. soldier with a grenade during a firefight in Afghanistan.
Also potentially impacted is the death penalty case against five prisoners accused of plotting the September 11th 2001 plane attacks.
Via / Yahoo! and The Latin Americanist
4:14 pm By Jennifer Woodard Maderazo · Cuba|Justice|Politics · Comments Off
29 May 2008Something is seriously wrong when animals inside Guantanamo Bay are protected but the people detained inside Guantanamo Bay are not.
U.S. law protects endangered iguanas on the naval base, but the Supreme Court is struggling to determine whether it also applies to the 305 men imprisoned there.
What escapes the analysis of most is that the majority of those detained inside of Gitmo are people of color, specifically Arab men, Middle Eastern men. The message is clear, the rights of iguanas are other animals are valued more than the lives of detained men of color.
Via / ACLU Blog
Image Via / Second Chance Reptiles
7:44 am By Jennifer Woodard Maderazo · Controversia|Cuba|Internet|Justice|Politics · Comments Off
14 Dec 2007
It seems as if our troops in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba may have too much free time on their hands because they have time to log on to Wikipedia and make some questionable edits. Some of those edits question Cuban president Fidel Castro’s sexuality.
Specifically, the Associated Press, the New York Daily News, and ZDNet have stories up about the changes Gitmo servicemembers have been making to Wikipedia; comments to articles about Gitmo detainees. Some of the changes on Wikipedia, per the articles:
- “Fidel Castro is an admitted transexual” (misspelling the word transsexual)
- deleted prisoner identification numbers from three detainee profiles (example: Prisoner No. 766, Canadian-born Omar Khadr. Khadr, 21, who has been held since 2002 and accused of killing a Special Forces medic in Afghanistan)
- changed the phrase “invasion of Afghanistan” to “war in Afghanistan.”
Via / Alternet
VivirLatino is a daily publication published by Mamita Mala Media, dedicated to featuring all the latest politics, culture, entertainment of interest to the diverse Latin@ diaspora.
About | Advertise with us | Contact | Twitter