Detainee nearly tortured to death

If the Bush regime is so cocksure that someone is a terrorist, why don't they, like, put him on trial, you know? That way they wouldn't be illegally detaining him without a trial for 5 years.

For years, a British resident named Benyam Mohammed, now 28, has been held at Guantanamo Bay after American authorities claimed he trained at an Al-Qaeda camp - an accusation his supporters deny. Before he was transferred to the Guantanamo Bay death camp, interrogators tortured him by slicing his penis with a scalpel. He also claims he was transported to a secret prison where authorities injected him with heroin so he would become addicted to the drug. Lately, British authorities have demanded that Benyam Mohammed be freed from his extrajudicial detention.

Now it's been reported that the detainee has been driven so insane by the torture that he's smeared feces on the wall of his cell and is about to commit suicide. Following his smearing of the fecal matter, guards at Gitmo compounded the problem by cutting off the water supply to his cell, creating more unhealthy conditions.

Is he a terrorist or not? Maybe he is, maybe he isn't. I'm not the judge or jury in his case, so I can't make that judgment. I say that if he's a terrorist, imprison him with no amusements. But what if he isn't? Like I said, they need to put him on trial to find out if he's innocent or guilty.

I know they'll say that they can hold him without a trial because they regard him as an enemy combatant - more or less a prisoner of war. If that's the case, then shouldn't the Geneva Conventions apply? The Geneva Conventions prohibit torture of prisoners of war. You can't very well claim he's an enemy combatant just to deny him a speedy trial, while claiming he's not an enemy combatant just so the Geneva Conventions don't apply. You can't have it both ways - though the Bush regime has tried doing exactly that.

Torturing someone who's either a prisoner of war or a detainee who hasn't been convicted of a crime isn't exactly what I call displaying leadership in human rights. Then again, America is ruled by an incompetent neo-Nazi dictator, so what do you expect? No democratic government would allow a situation like this to go on for so long.

Doctors have found that Benyam Mohammed suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder because of the torture. The legal director of a group that represents him says he's never even seen a Death Row prison - where people who have actually been convicted of murder are held - where conditions are that insufferable.

But if the government disobeys the Geneva Convention and the Constitution in one setting, you know it has to be going on at other government facilities too - or it soon will be. What makes you think the government will break the law at one place and then stop? Today it's foreign detainees. Tomorrow it'll be the average American accused of merely having the "wrong" opinions.

(Source: http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article3260709.ece)