I Was Just a Nobody

[realFedUp]

http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/english/0,1518,322571,00.html

"I was just a nobody"
GEORG MASCOLO

Guantanamo, the world's most controversial prison camp and, for many, the epitome of American capriciousness, is about to change. By holding hearings of terror suspects and implementing modernization programs, Washington is trying to at least preserve the appearance of due process.

The man who is pushed into a tiny office on this afternoon has an unruly beard and an unusually friendly smile on his face. A heavy chain is placed across his hips, and he is handcuffed.

Number 78 is nameless, that is, his name is not permitted to be disclosed. The soldiers who bring in the suspect wear blue rubber gloves, as they always do whenever they are likely to come into physical contact with one of the prisoners here in Guantanamo, the American military enclave in Cuba. 78 was supposedly a big number – the Taliban's chief of intelligence in the Afghan provincial capital of Mazar-i-Sharif.

Now the man squats on a white plastic stool, his leg irons lashed to a ring embedded in the floor. An air force colonel and two observers sit facing the Afghan. Only the hastily assembled pedestal from which the trio gazes down on the prisoner is remotely reminiscent of a courtroom. The issue being discussed is whether it was truly necessary to keep Number 78 locked up for almost three years – in the name of the war on terror – or whether this supposed Taliban leader is innocent after all, as he continually claims.

snip

Number 78 has the final word. "You are wasting your time with us," he says. "If you have no evidence, why don't you let us go home to our families? It doesn't do you any good to keep us here. It just makes people hate you even more." After an hour and a half, the hearing is over and the recording clerk turns off the tape recorder. "The decision will be made in Washington," says the colonel. The soldiers waiting outside in the hall put on new rubber gloves.
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