Freed after 14 years in prison without charges, Guantánamo torture victim speaks out

Well .. if you think electric shock therapy .. one lead attached to your testicles .. the other to your right nipple - is torture .. you may well be a masochist.

 

Why would I believe that happened at Guantanamo? What causes you to take the word of a terrorist as gospel? Anti Americanism I suppose.

 

Because the US government admitted what they did this.

 

falsely imprisoned and tortured without trial for decades. Seems rather fitting that he's innocent because the US failed to prove otherwise, and so he should be getting millions in damages for the gross human rights violations inflicted upon him. Total failure of far right policies.

 

Sorry, I don't believe that. Federal government doesn't admit its mistakes.

 

https://www.prisonlegalnews.org/new...ederal-prisoner-17246575-wrongful-conviction/

50,000 bucks for each year of wrongfully imprisonment. So that's 700,000 bucks already for just being in Gitmo. But the US had already imprisoned for a year somewhere else. So it's 750K. That's besides he should be compensated for the treatment as well. Lavishly.

 

Being imprisoned without trial is a human rights abuse by itself. I get it if we are in an emergency situation and need quick information from this person. But after 14 years there is no benefit from not putting these people on trial and actually seeing if they are even guilty.

 

Why don't you people use google?

Mohamedou Ould Slahi wasn't imprisoned that long without trial. ACLU led a long legal battle on his behalf, from 2009 (joining an already existing habeas corpus counsel for Slahi). Slahi was freed not because he was found innocent - he wasn't - but because the court decided he was no longer a threat to the US.

https://www.acludc.org/en/cases/slahi-v-obama

 

Are you American?

 

Definitely not a place you want to end up.

 

Not that long? You name 2009 when he started to fight his detention in Gitmo when he already was THERE! He got picked up in 2001, and flown all over as a prisoner to be tortured. And got in Gitmo in 2002, wrote a book about it and released in 2005. And eventually got out in 2016.

Dude! You are innocent by default, until judged otherwise. And the US failed to prove he was guilty or that he even was a threat. They had nothing on him. They never had. It took 7 years to beat that through other peoples skulls. Literally nothing was ever changed about who he was. He would never have been held captive if that courtcase of 20016 happened in 2001!

 

The problem here is that you believe the narrative and I don't. These people are prisoners of war. They have no right to a trial. Prisoners of war are normally incarcerated until the war is over. Not fair? What does fairness have to do with it? It is what it is.

 

These are prisoners of war. Prisoners of war are not tried for anything historically. They are incarcerated until the war is over.

 

Sorry, I don't believe him. He was a prisoner of war. Since the war isn't over he was lucky to be released early.

 

He wasn't a POW, and never was. That was the policy of the US government. He simply was imprisoned without a trial and extensively tortured. He won his court case that the US government did not have any reason to keep him like that, to the extend that they never had any reason. There simply is no proof, there never was. And nobody cares about your opinion.

And I proved you wrong about the US government not following through on their mistakes. They gave a victim of their 50K a year for a wrongful conviction. That guy had a trial and was convicted. This guy never got a trial to be convicted, but was tortured. Massive difference.

 

Yes, but I live abroad.

 

So what you are saying is that if that if there is an ongoing occupation and fighting against a resistance movement the government has the right to indefinitely detain people and claim without even trying to provide evidence they are foreign combatants and not even give them military tribunals?

 

So basically if the government claims someone is a prisoner of war, it doesn't have to provide any evidence they are a foreign combatant and those people have no rights? So if I'm a politician and I don't like you I can do that to you? Claim you are a terrorist and throw you in a hole and throw away the key?

 

No need to repeat what I said earlier. You can go back and read it again.

 

What year was Slahi tried? I thought people are found guilty not innocent.

 

But my worry is that the government will use this as an excuse to detain people it doesn't like. If there are no checks and balances this power will be abused.

 

I don't believe that either. Sorry.

 

It will always use it to deal with prisoners of war. If you don't wage ware against the U.S. you won't be taken as a prisoner of war. Our government doesn't have checks and balances. It has three independent power centers that vie for power. I view that as an improvement over a single power center, however. I have always been a supporter of competition.

 

Do you think corruption doesn't exist? You don't think this power will ever be abused? Do you think the government never falsely accuses people? If the government's identification of foreign combatants has a 100% accuracy rate I will of course agree that is trial isn't necessary.

Checks: Something that limits the government's power. E.g. the constitution. Requiring a trial to imprison people.
Balances: Creating different power centers that are often at odds to prevent one from gaining too much power. Basically what you said.