Whatever is going on at Guantanamo is like everything else this administration is doing- in flux and in chaos. This NY Times article was gifted to me and is shows was a clusterfuck this idea of turning Guantanamo into a place for holding maybe undocumented individuals at the base.
Even more disturbing is the placing of these maybe undocumented individuals into the prisons that were set up for the Guantanamo detainees. Those conditions are deplorable. Even reading the accounts from the men that were held in these conditions for a period of two weeks - until transported back to their homelands- brings back to me the harsh reminder of what we did to my clients and so many other men. Men who were held indefinitely and never accused of a crime.
I (of course) no longer have a subscription to the Washington Post. However if you are still supporting that paper (why, I might ask?) you can read this in full here.
But here are a few quotes from the article that should give you chills as to what we are doing to these men:
He
couldn’t tell when the days started and ended within the windowless, peeling
yellow four walls of his prison cell in Guantánamo.
Diuvar
Uzcátegui kept track of them by putting a small tear in the last, blank page of
a Bible after every third meal. The book was given to him by the military
guards along with a blanket and a ¾-inch foam pad to sleep on. He went to the
bathroom in a bucket connected to a tap in the cell.
And
though he couldn’t see his fellow detainees, he could hear them.
Some
of the men screamed. Others threatened to kill themselves. One interviewed by
The Washington Post said he attempted it.
During
his two weeks at the Guantánamo Bay naval station, Uzcátegui, 27, said he was
rarely let outside. Both times, he was shackled and placed in what he described
as a cage. It was the only sight of the blue Cuban sky he got, so otherworldly
it felt like a dream.
“They
didn’t treat me like a human being,” he said, his voice flustered with
indignation. “They threw me in a cage.”
----
The
Trump administration flew nearly 180 migrants from the United States to
Guantánamo and deported all of them to Venezuela on Thursday. The Post spoke
with three men who were detained in the U.S. military prison that has been used
to house suspected terrorists since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. All had
crossed the border illegally, and although Homeland Security Secretary Kristi
L. Noem called the migrants transported to Cuba the “worst
of the worst,” The Post could find no other criminal record for those
interviewed.
Uzcátegui,
José Daniel Simancas and Franyer Montes said they were denied calls to lawyers
or loved ones after repeated pleas. They said they were subjected to
humiliating and invasive strip searches. They described prolonged periods in
isolation, with only two one-hour opportunities to go outside over two weeks.
Their
testimonies echoed the fears expressed by human rights groups — that migrants
transferred to a place known for its isolation and history of torture
allegations could be vulnerable to abuse.
Of course this is all a dog and pony show for the trump people to show their base... and yes, the cruelty is the point.
Supposedly the latest group to go down there- after the above group was moved on- has now supposedly been moved out too. There is litigation going on and pressure by lawyers to get down there and interview these men. Meanwhile the trumpers are establishing the same procedures that they had in place for the war on terror captives held at the base- making it difficult for attorney to communicate and get down there to check out the conditions and figure out who is actually there.
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