http://www.guardian.co.uk/guantanamo/story/0,,1724495,00.html
Guantánamo detainee told Geneva rights 'irrelevant'
· Tribunal proceedings revealed in US documents
· Transcript shows Briton's clashes with colonel judge
Vikram Dodd and Stephen Bates
Monday March 6, 2006
The Guardian
A senior US military officer at Guantánamo Bay told a detainee that he did not care about international law and that the Geneva conventions did not apply to proceedings at the military prison, according to thousands of Pentagon documents released over the weekend by the US government after a court action by the Associated Press news agency.
The outburst by the air force colonel came during a hearing to determine the status of Feroz Abbasi, a Briton held for more than two years without charge or trial, and who was released last year. The officer was presiding over a tribunal convened to decide whether detainees were enemy combatants, as alleged by the Bush administration. Critics dismissed the hearings, called combatant status review tribunals, as kangaroo courts.
During the hearing Mr Abbasi, originally from Croydon, south London, said he should be accorded prisoner of war status, and demanded his rights under international law and the Geneva conventions. The tribunal president, not named in the documents, says: "Once again, international law does not matter here. Geneva conventions do not matter here. What matters here ... [is] your actions while your were in Afghanistan."
The clash continues, with Mr Abbasi trying to raise the issue of his rights under international law. He and the tribunal president are recorded speaking over each other, until the latter says: "Mr Abbasi, your conduct is unacceptable ... I don't care about international law. I don't want to hear the words international law again. We are not concerned with international law. I am going to give give you one last opportunity..." Mr Abbasi was later removed and his case considered behind closed doors.
The US government claims the Muslim faith of detainees has been respected at all times, but Mr Abbasi claimed in written evidence that a guard tried to feed him pork. He also claimed two guards had sex in front of him, that a male guard groped the breasts of a female colleague in front of him, and that he was tricked into praying towards America rather than towards Mecca. He also says he was drugged with a mind-altering chemical. The US military says it captured him on the battlefield in Afghanistan, and also claims he was recruited to fight for al-Qaida after attending the Finsbury Park mosque in north London where Abu Hamza preached. Mr Hamza is serving a seven-year sentence in Britain after being convicted of inciting murder and religious hatred.
The released documents are transcripts of tribunals and reviews conducted at Guantánamo, Cuba. In the tribunals the detainees were presumed from the outset to be enemy combatants by the US military officers hearing their cases, had limited rights to call witnesses, had no lawyer, and were tried on the basis of hearsay evidence.
The documents show detainees for the most part denying they were terrorists and claiming they were wrongly held without charge or trial; they also provide more names and detail regarding the total of detainees held by the US. One man was found with a gun in Afghanistan, while others range from peasant farmers to wealthy businessmen. Bisher al-Rawi, a British resident originally from Iraq, was held for association with the preacher Abu Qatada, accused of providing inspiration to those responsible for the September 11 2001 attacks on the US. He claimed to have being passing information to MI5, but was told by the tribunal president that the British government neither confirmed nor denied his story.
Some 490 detainees remain at Guantánamo. Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, yesterday added his voice to criticism of Guantánamo Bay. In an interview with Sir David Frost for the BBC, the archbishop warned: "Any message given that any state can just override some of the basic habeas corpus-type provisions is going to be very welcome to tyrants elsewhere in the world, now and in the future."
Extracts: Six prisoners' stories
Here are six of the stories told in more than 5,000 pages of unedited transcripts from 'enemy combatant' hearings, which have just been released by the Pentagon
Emad Abdalla, Student, from Yemen
Mr Abdalla, 25, was captured at a university dorm in Faisalabad, where he was studying the Qur'an. He is accused of travelling to Afghanistan to participate in jihad. He spent 19 days in Afghanistan before being taken to Guantánamo Bay.
Abdul Razak, Minister of commerce, Taliban government, Afghanistan
Abdul Razak worked as the minister of commerce in the Taliban government. He said the Taliban had given him a civilian job because he had no military training. After the Taliban's fall, he said he took up farming, but months later Afghan authorities arrested him. At the time he had a Kalashnikov rifle, which his lawyer said he was carrying for protection. Razak said he did not oppose Afghan President Hamid Karzai's government.
Fouad al-Rabia, Engineer, from Kuwait
Fouad al-Rabia, 45, said he worked as an engineer for Kuwaiti Airways and is a part-owner of a health club. He acknowledged he saw Osama bin Laden four times while visiting Afghanistan in 2001 but denied accusations of providing money to al-Qaida. Rabia told the tribunal he returned to Afghanistan that October to gather evidence that would persuade people to support a relief effort there, but was handed over to the Northern Alliance.
Kadir Khandan, Pharmacist, from Khowst, Afghanistan
Kadir Khandan was accused of links to the Taliban and running a safe house for an explosive manufacturing cell in Khowst. Khandan told the tribunal he worked for the Karzai government and opposed the Taliban and that he was a pharmacist who had studied in Pakistan. He said explosives destroyed people and were "truly against my ideology". Khandan said he was tortured by US soldiers in Afghanistan. Later he said: "Here in Cuba, I have been treated nice. Overall it is fine here."
Karam Khamis Sayd Khamsan, Soldier, from Yemen
Karam Khamis Sayd Khamsan denied accusations of links to the Taliban and al-Qaida. He said a Yemeni drug dealer arranged to send him to Pakistan to act as human collateral in a drug deal. "He offered me some money because he knows ... I needed the money." He was detained in Pakistan.
Zain ul-Abedin, Taxi driver, from Tajikistan
Zain ul-Abedin (initially listed as Jumma Jan), was captured in Mazar-i-Sharif, Afghanistan, by coalition forces in 2003. He told the tribunal that US forces had arrested the wrong man. He is accused of being a Taliban and Hezb-e-Islami Gulbuddin leader, and of carrying out a mission in Tajikistan with al-Qaida.
Associated Press
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