Transcripts of Guantánamo hearings: a window into Washington’s gulag

The documents were released by the Defense Department on March 3, following a judicial order. The AP had filed a lawsuit against the Defense Department seeking release of the documents. More than 5,000 pages were handed over, consisting mainly of partial transcripts of the Combatant Status Review Tribunals, kangaroo courts in which prisoners have sought to challenge their status as “enemy combatants.” However, the documents were not organized or indexed, and the AP has taken two weeks to put together a list of 186 names of prisoners.

These names represent only a fraction of those who have been held at the prison in Cuba, all of them deprived of basic democratic rights. According to the AP, more than 600 individuals held at Guantánamo Bay are not mentioned in the transcripts. However, this is the first time that anything approaching a list of prisoners—and their backgrounds—has been made available to the public.

Most of the 186 prisoners in the transcripts are Afghan, though many come from other countries throughout the Middle East and Central Asia, and some are from Europe. They were mostly picked up as part of the American invasion and occupation of Afghanistan. During the illegal invasion, the US military and its allies rounded up thousands of people, some with some relationship to the Taliban or the resistance to the American invasion, some arrested by accident or association.

A number of the prisoners said they were turned over to the American authorities because they refused to pay a bribe to the new government installed by Washington. Others said they were turned over to US troops for political reasons, because they had come into conflict with some other government officials following the invasion.

Many of the prisoners transferred to Guantánamo Bay first passed through US-controlled detention facilities at Bagram air base, or through other countries such as Pakistan, where they were routinely tortured. In the transcripts, many complain that they have no idea why they are being held and have not been shown any of the evidence against them. Transcripts of the hearings in which this secret evidence was presented were not included in the material released by the military. One prisoner noted during his hearing, “In our culture, if someone is accused of something, they are shown the evidence.”

Among those arrested and held in Guantánamo Bay are:

* Abdullah Khan, an Afghan shopkeeper. Like a number of the prisoners, he says that he was falsely identified as a Taliban official. “Americans were giving an announcement that if you turn over a high-ranking Taliban member or the governor, we will give you a lot of money,” he said. “I have very small kids and I don’t know what my kids are doing.” Khan passed a polygraph test given to verify his claims.

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http://wsws.org/articles/2006/mar2006/guan-f17.shtml