Wednesday, July 20, 2005

"Enemy Combatant"

From Talk Left, here's a link to an interview with Moazzam Begg, who was arrested at his home in Pakistan, held in prisons in Kandahar, Bagram, and Guantanamo, and finally released after three years with NO charges filed.

Begg was beaten, kicked, hogtied, and hooded during his captivity--but in all probability, he was one of the lucky ones. He was a resident of Pakistan, but holds British citizenship, and grew up speaking English--so at least he could communicate with his captors. If you click over to read the interview, you'll see that Begg also points out that some guards in Afghanistan and Cuba were relatively decent; however, he witnessed numerous abuses, including the murder of two detainees. He also notes a phenomenon observed by numerous others: plenty of detainees had NO ties to terrorism prior to their incarceration, but might be angry enough upon release to either look for revenge, or at least look away when fundamentalist lunatics take action.

Reverse this--assume for a moment Begg was an American citizen taken into custody in, say, Arizona, hustled across the border, subjected to "intensive interrogation," shipped halfway across the world (say, to a prison in the Canary Islands), then, three years later, released without charge. Is that justice, by ANY stretch of the imagination?

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