Gitmo Detainee Speaks - Addendum, We Listen

We are scarcely surprised to hear this, but at last being released, one detainee confirms what many decent people have been saying. Hell on earth is a mild description of what the war criminals in the executive branch have done.

Ait Idr spoke briefly to reporters. "For almost seven years," he said, "I was at the end of the world, at the worst place in the world. It would have been hard even if I had done something wrong, but it is much harder if one is totally innocent."
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Celebrations for the three released men were muted by the knowledge that two other prisoners whose release was ordered by Judge Leon remain in Guantánamo. Lawyers for Sabir Lahmar and Lakhdar Boumediene explained that, although the government had offered no explanation, they believed that they were not released because Lahmar was only ever a Bosnian resident, and Boumediene was stripped of his citizenship after a disagreement with the Bosnian authorities. However, the website Balkan Insight explained that local media were reporting that the two men "could soon be joining" Mustafa Ait Idr, Hadj Boudella and Mohammed Nechla.

The time for their release is clearly long overdue. As another of their lawyers, Stephen Oleskey, explained, Boumediene "has been on a hunger strike to protest his detention." In the meantime, however, spare a thought for other prisoners, still largely unknown after nearly seven years in "the worst place in the world," whose habeas cases may also show that the government has no credible evidence against them, and for the 17 Uighurs, wrongly detained Muslims from China's oppressed Xinjiang province, whose release into the United States was ordered by Judge Ricardo Urbina on October 7, but who remain in Guantánamo because the government has appealed the ruling, even though no other country has been found that will accept them.

The torture of being in prison for no reason except that there are evil people in control of this country will be a shame to this country forever. We have to work for their release because it is our duty to the U.S. to end the shame.

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Addendum: US Defense Secretary Robert Gates has ordered plans to be drafted for the closure of the Guantanamo Bay detention centre, the Pentagon says.

A team was looking at moving inmates from the facility in a way that continued to protect the American people, a spokesman said.

It's about time. This is a time that will live in infamy, to paraphrase FDR.