Guantanamo Bay: ‘Icon of lawlessness’ enters fourth year as torture allegations mount

Today is the 3rd anniversary of US Naval Base “detentions” at Guantanamo. Even the FBI is now making allegations about torture and ill-treatment.

There are more than 500 – called “detainees” rather than “prisoners” who remain there without charge or trial.

So this is America:

“The detainees, a few of them children, are strapped, shackled and blindfolded, into transport planes. Some are forced to urinate and defecate on themselves during the long flights to an island military base. In this offshore prison camp they are held incommunicado in tiny cells, denied access to lawyers, relatives or the courts, and subjected to repeated interrogations and a punitive regime aimed at encouraging their “cooperation”. A presidential order announces plans to try some of the detainees in front of executive bodies with the power to hand down death sentences against which there would be no right of appeal to any court.”

Meanwhile, we reward Gonzales with an appointment – after he planned with Bush & Co for how US agents could avoid prosecution for torture and war crimes committed during interrogations in the “war for national security”.

Meanwhile, there are allegations that some of the detainees are being shuttled to countries where they can be tortured even more ruthlessly – and shuttled back again.

If the US has nothing to hide, why are documents being withheld? If we don’t condone torture, why all the effort to redefine terminology and find workarounds or outright transgression of both national and international law?