Now that the Supremes have told Bush and his creative destruction cronies that kidnapped foreign nationals held at the Gitmo torture camp should have access to lawyers and civilian courts, the Bushites have quickly formed a five member military tribunal to try three “terrorism suspects” held at the torture camp on land stolen from Cuba.
“This is an important first step,’’ Air Force Maj. John Smith, a lawyer who helped draft commission rules, told the Guardian in a telephone interview from the Pentagon. “We’d like to have a case tried by the end of the year.’’
In other words, now that even the reactionary Supremes find the detentions at Gitmo suspect, Rumsfeld’s Pentagon wants to make sure it processes and more than likely execute as many kidnapped foreign nationals as possible. No doubt this is crucial, especially since more people released from Camp Gitmo will translate into more bad PR for the fascistic Bushites who believe in rounding up people and executing them without a fair trial or public hearing. Dead detainees tell no tales about “enhanced interrogation techniques,” including “feigning suffocation, “stress positions,” light and noise bombardment, sleep deprivation, feigned drowning, and making captives think they are being interrogated by another government, etc. (See CIA Puts Harsh Tactics On Hold.)
First up for secret trials and probably a date with the executioner are David Hicks of Australia, Ali Hamza Ahmed Sulayman al-Bahlul of Yemen, and Ibrahim Ahmed Mahmoud al-Qosi of Sudan.
Last December the sadists at Gitmo told David Hicks that he would be left to rot unless he confessed to crimes against the criminal US military as it invaded Afghanistan. For some reason or another, Hicks was allowed to see a lawyer. “Under the agreement I have with the US government, I’m cleared to say that David Hicks has never killed or injured any civilian or any US military or Australian military personnel. Unfortunately, that is all I can say,” Stephen Kenny told ABC News.
But here’s what Kenny didn’t say about Hicks. According to Military Commission Charges filed against him, Hicks “traveled to Tirana, Albania and joined the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) … Hicks completed basic military training at a KLA camp and engaged in hostile action before returning to Australia.”
Gee, I wonder if this is the same Kosovo where NATO and the US State Department sent Mujahideen mercenaries back in 1998-99 (matching Hicks’ timeframe)? “The US DIA approached MI6 to arrange a training programme for the KLA, said a senior British military source. ‘MI6 then sub-contracted the operation to two British security companies, who in turn approached a number of former members of the (22 SAS) regiment. Lists were then drawn up of weapons and equipment needed by the KLA.’” (The Scotsman, Glasgow, 29 August 1999) This operation was akin to what the CIA and Pakistan’s ISI had done in Afghanistan a decade before, even though officially the KLA was listed as “a terrorist organization [that] was financing its operations with money from the international heroin trade and loans from Islamic countries and individuals, among them allegedly Usama bin Laden … Another link to bin Laden is the fact that the brother of a leader in an Egyptian Jihad organization and also a military commander of Usama bin Laden, was leading an elite KLA unit during the Kosovo conflict.” But don’t believe me; the previous quote is not from some paranoid conspiracy theorist, but taken from the Ralf Mutschke of Interpol’s Criminal Intelligence Division, to the House Judicial Committee, 13 December 2000. (See Michel Chossudovsky, “OsamaGate,” Centre for Research on Globalisation, October 9, 2001).
Clinton, Madeleine Albright, Senator Joe Lieberman (“Fighting for the KLA is fighting for human rights and American values”), and others in the government should be flown to Gitmo in orange jumpsuits with hoods over their heads for supporting the KLA. Clinton, Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney, and the perfidious neocons, these are the real criminals, not the Afghans, Pakistanis, and Arabs in Gitmo, most of whom are likely innocent of any crime, as are 90% of the detainees in Iraq. Remember, the US invaded Afghanistan, and most of the people killed or captured were defending their country, even if many of them followed the Taliban or corrupt and brutal warlords (remember, as well, Bush never presented evidence implicating Afghanistan in 9/11, let alone Osama bin Laden). Far worse crimes have been committed by Bush, far more than 3,000 people have been killed (between 11,000 – 20,000 in Iraq alone).
