Glenn Greenwald on the Pentagon’s self-serving conclusion that conditions at Guantanamo Bay meet the standards of the Geneva Convention:
For reasons that human rights groups and detainees’ lawyers immediately pointed out, this self-exonerating Pentagon report, from the start, was suspect in the extreme. But a sign of how broken our discourse is and how in love with ourselves we continue to be is that, on the question of current Guantanamo conditions, the conclusions of the United States Pentagon released this week were treated not only as credible, but authoritative. If the DOD — which has long overseen Guantanamo and continues to do so — says that everything is great there, well, that’s the end of that. What else is there to know?
Well, according to his lawyer, US Army Lieutenant colonel Yvonne Bradley, Binyam Mohamed was beaten at Guantanamo, right up until his release today:
He has been severely beaten. Sometimes I don’t like to think about it because my country is behind all this.
According to The Guardian:
… doctors discovered injuries and ailments resulting from apparently brutal treatment in detention.
Mohamed was found to be suffering from bruising, organ damage, stomach complaints, malnutrition, sores to feet and hands, severe damage to ligaments as well as profound emotional and psychological problems which have been exacerbated by the refusal of Guantánamo’s guards to give him counselling.
Mohamed’s British lawyer, Clive Stafford Smith, said his client had been beaten “dozens” of times inside the notorious US camp in Cuba with the most recent abuse occurring during recent weeks. He said: “He has a list of physical ailments that cover two sheets of A4 paper. What Binyam has been through should have been left behind in the middle ages.”
But it wasn’t. It wasn’t left in the middle ages. If those responsible for the torture are not held to account, it won’t be left in the 21st century either.
mirabile dictu 