800 years of freedom sunk in Guantanamo Bay

Adele Horin writes:

"I don't know if Mamdouh Habib is a good guy or a bad guy. But I do know if the North Korean Government had captured him, held him without charge in an interrogation camp for years, and denied him contact with lawyers, family or friends, the Howard Government would be apoplectic.... It is a scandal the way our Government has abandoned Habib, and fellow detainee David Hicks, to the legal black hole that is Guantanamo Bay.

Dozens have been released from Guantanamo Bay in recent months to governments that lobbied hard for their citizens' rights. They included a 90-year-old shepherd, cobblers, taxi drivers and foot soldiers of the Taliban, conscripted to fight against their will.

Of the 147 released, only 13 have been sent to jail, according to the Centre for Constitutional Rights in the US. "The other 134 were guilty of absolutely nothing," said Michael Ratner, co-author of Guantanamo: What the World Should Know...

The Bush regime has taken us back to medieval times. Before the signing of the Magna Carta in 1215... The US Government used September 11, 2001, to override 800 years of progress on human rights, the Magna Carta, the Habeas Corpus Act of 1679, the Declaration of the Rights of Man, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the Convention against Torture. Rather than treating the attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon as acts of terrorism or crime, with perpetrators subject to criminal law, it treated them as acts of war. But even so, it refused to abide by the international rules of war."