Guantánamo Diary exposes brutality of US rendition and torture

[swag]

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jan/16/-sp-guantanamo-diary-exposes-brutality-us-rendition-torture

. . .

US military officials told the Guardian this week that despite never being prosecuted and being cleared for release by a judge in 2010, he is unlikely to be released in the next year.

The journal, which Slahi handwrote in English, details how he was subjected to sleep deprivation, death threats, sexual humiliation and intimations that his torturers would go after his mother.

After enduring this, he was subjected to “additional interrogation techniques” personally approved by the then US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld. He was blindfolded, forced to drink salt water, and then taken out to sea on a high-speed boat where he was beaten for three hours while immersed in ice.

The end product of the torture, he writes, was lies. Slahi made a number of false confessions in an attempt to end the torment, including telling interrogators he planned to blow up the CN Tower in Toronto. Asked if he was telling the truth, Slahi replied: “I don’t care as long as you are pleased. So if you want to buy, I am selling.”

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[brer cat]

1. The republicans

are going continue to fight tooth and nail to keep this hell hole open. They need to spend some of their considerable vacation time there and find out just what it is like.

[KoKo]

2. A bit more from the article....that is very disturbing:

Slahi’s manuscript was subjected to more than 2,500 redactions before declassification, ostensibly to protect classified information, but with the effect of preventing readers from learning the full story of his ordeal. The book is being published with all the censor’s marks in place, and the publishers – Canongate in the UK and Little, Brown in the US – hope they will be able to publish an uncensored edition when Slahi is eventually released.
Guantánamo Diary: ‘I saw the cockpit. I saw the guards. I saw the ghosts of my fellow detainees’
Read more

Although one federal court has ordered his release on the grounds that the evidence against him is thin and tainted by torture, Slahi has been languishing in a form of legal limbo since December 2012 after the justice department entangled the case in an unresolved appeal. Several US officials have indicated that he is unlikely to be released this year. One, who spoke to the Guardian on condition of anonymity as he had not been cleared to do so, said getting Slahi out of Guantánamo was not a priority. “Our focus is acutely on the individuals who have been approved for transfer,” he said. Slahi is not among them.

[blkmusclmachine]

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