Wikileaks: Five illustrative cases of prisoners at Guantánamo (+ Video)

Wikileaks: Five illustrative cases of prisoners at Guantánamo (+ Video) - español

Iroel Sánchez / Cubadebate

Translation: Machetera / Tlaxcala

New evidence of the upside down world that governs the United States is found in the Wikileaks documents which reveal information about the treatment of prisoners at the concentration camp in Guantánamo – maintained by Washington on territory it is illegally occupying against the will of the Cuban government and people.

The files say that 60% of the more than 700 prisoners were imprisoned by mistake.  Here are five cases that reflect the humanity of the USAmerican authorities at the prison opened by Bush that Obama promised to close.

• Mohamed Sadiq.  An 89 year old prisoner with senile dementia, prostate cancer and osteoarthritis.  Captured because of “suspicious documents” found on his son.  Repatriated to Afghanistan.
• Haji Faiz Mohammed.  Arrested at the age of 70, in a mosque where he had spent the night after going out in search of some medicine.  His file says that “there is no reason” for having transferred him to Guantánamo.
• Jamal al-Harith was in Guantánamo solely because he’d been arrested in a Taliban prison and it was thought that he knew something about their interrogation techniques.
• Naqib Ullah.  Captured at the age of 14, he spent a year at Guantánamo.
• Omar Khadr.  Captured at the age of 15, he has spent nine years at Guantánamo for being the son of a supposed Al Qaeda leader in Canada. Video of his interrogation:

It’s worth remembering that the country that has behaved in this arbitrary manner in the name of a war on terrorism is the same that refuses to try people such as Luis Posada Carriles, the man behind numerous terrorist actions against Cuba, as a terrorist, and who has ended up being feted in Miami.

Iroel Sánchez is a Cuban journalist, frequent Cubadebate contributor and editor of the blog La pupila insomne. Machetera is a member of Tlaxcala, the network of translators for linguistic diversity.This translation may be reprinted as long as the content remains unaltered, and the source, author, and translator are cited.

Orlando Bosch, history’s first passenger plane bomber, dead in Miami

A few of the victims of Orlando Bosch & Luis Posada Carriles

Terrorism and media double standards

The two things you’ll notice immediately if you do a Google news search right now for the newly deceased Orlando Bosch are that first, mainstream press articles are calling him a “militant” rather than a “terrorist” and second, there is an unusual focus on his politically motivated “acquittal” in Venezuela for his involvement, along with Luis Posada Carriles, in history’s first bombing of a passenger airliner.  The 1976 mid-air bombing of Cubana Flight 455 resulted in the deaths of all 73 passengers and crew on board.  Here’s the carefully crafted whitewashed sentence the wire services are peddling:

Prominent Cuban exile militant Orlando Bosch, who was acquitted in Venezuela in the 1976 bombing of a Cuban jetliner, died Wednesday at 84…

Let’s just imagine for a moment what the general reaction might be for another obit crafted in a similar fashion:

Prominent Saudi exile militant Osama bin Laden, who the U.S. blamed for the 2001 attacks on the Twin Towers in New York, but then somehow never could locate, died Wednesday at 84…

El País and NY Times on Wikileaks Guantánamo: From Casios to shwarma

You know that things are going from bad to worse when the spin coming from the newspaper of record in Franco’s country* on the newly leaked files from the U.S. concentration camp in Guantánamo, Cuba, looks like it was written up by leftists in comparison to the NY Times version.  Purely by accident I happened to read the El País version first, where I learned that some of those imprisoned at the camp were considered by their captors to have received explosives training based on nothing more than the fact that they wore Casio F91W wristwatches.

Which is absurd because the U.S. Army (the world’s original explosives trainers) knows perfectly well that real explosives experts like Posada Carriles and his fellow traveler Felix Rodríguez prefer Rolex’s, especially ones stolen from their murder victims.  And then you also have to wonder, Casio F91W’s anyone? 

U.S. Soldiers: Posada Carriles, Juan Carlos Castillón and Ernesto Hernández Busto

Left to right: BFFs Posada Carriles, Castillón & Hernández Busto

U.S. Soldiers: Posada, Castillón and Hernández Busto

Posada Carriles: U.S. citizen by virtue of “spilt” blood, according to Castillón

Enrique Ubieta Gómez, La Isla Desconocida – español

Translation: Machetera / Tlaxcala

From time to time, one has to be grateful to [Ernesto] Hernández Busto for the clues he leaves in his blog about the darker regions of his little brain.  Today he posted a priceless article by Juan Carlos Castillón – a regular collaborator of his, and I suppose, a friend.  Let’s see, it’s titled “Bambi, acquitted.”  The author, apparently distanced from Posada, nevertheless dedicates all of his argumentative efforts to justifying him:  “In good conscience I can’t approve of many of the things that he’s done, but I admire the fact that a man, alone, or with the help of very few friends, at an age when many of them are in nursing homes, has taken upon his shoulders the work of keeping alive a Cold War in which those who were his bosses no longer believe.  Is Posada in the right?  He was in his day.”  Castillón talks without embarrassment about the legitimacy of a dirty war “against communism,” and elevates Posada to hero status; when he says that “he was right,” it is a reference to an era in which a bipolar world still existed, to the years in which the man he admires and defends plotted the mid-air bombing of a Cuban passenger airliner and caused the death of the 73 persons on board.  But there are also some fragments where Castillón says who he, Posada, and Hernández Busto serve:

“A (USAmerican) society to which Posada rightfully belongs, no matter how much it bothers his critics in Havana, Caracas and the United States itself.  The French legionnaires, who may become citizens once they’ve performed certain duties, often say that they are French by blood, not inherited blood, but through spilt blood.  This is true.  Few fight harder for their adopted countries than immigrants.  U.S. history has plenty of examples (…) Posada Carriles has been a U.S. soldier in times of war and this gives him the right to be in the United States.  Because Posada, despite having fought on a different battlefield, is not all that different from other soldiers.  Although we may have forgotten it and put it away in that drawer where bothersome mementos are kept, the Cold War was a real war.  A war in which plenty of exiles participated in order to oppose the governments who led their nations (…) Many Cuban American exiles sympathize with Posada Carriles because he was a combatant in that war.”

They were men, Castillon finally admits, “who enlisted in ‘The Company’ or supported it, in order to struggle for their countries by fighting for the United States.”  “The Company” is what the CIA is often called.  I’ve never read a more open argument.  The fascists Castillón and Hernández Busto admit frankly that they are U.S. soldiers, in a war against the governments that lead their countries; that they have enlisted with the CIA to fight for the United States.

Machetera is a member of Tlaxcala, the network of translators for linguistic diversity. This translation may be reprinted as long as the content remains unaltered, and the source, author, and translator are cited.