With calls growing for President Biden to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay, an inmate of the notorious detention facility appealed to the president for his release in an article for the Independent.
Ahmed Rabbani described the nightmare he has lived since he was kidnapped in Karachi, Pakistan, back in 2002 and sold to the CIA for a bounty. Rabbani was falsely identified as Hassan Ghul, an al-Qaeda member who was eventually captured by the US and later released.
Rabbani said he was captured around the time he learned his wife was pregnant. “President Biden is a man who speaks of the importance of family. I wonder if he can imagine what it would be like to have never touched his own son,” Rabbani wrote. “I have been locked up for his entire childhood, without charges or a trial.”
The 2014 Senate Intelligence Committee Report on CIA torture found that Rabbani was tortured at a CIA black site for 540 days before being sent to Gitmo. “I can confirm that the torture did take place, although I couldn’t have counted the days myself: the days and nights blended into one while I was hung from a bar in a black pit, in agony as my shoulders dislocated,” he said.
Rabbani said he has been on a seven-year hunger strike to protest being held without charges. He is force-fed by guards in Gitmo, something he described in detail back in 2014 in an article published by The Express Tribune.
He wrote: “Twice a day, a team of guards in riot gear barges into my cell to take me to be force-fed. They pin me to the floor and sit on my back causing extreme pain, before hauling me out of the cell to the force-feeding room. There, they strap my head, arms, and legs to a chair and push a tube down my nose and throat into my stomach. Two hours later, they unstrap me and throw me back into to my cell — often pushing my face into the dirty hole, which passes for a toilet in my cell.”
In his appeal to Biden, Rabbani mentioned that the Obama administration failed to fulfill its promise to close Gitmo and urged Biden to let him go home.
“President Biden has the power to do something. I would like justice, obviously, for all the abuse I have suffered, but most importantly, I do not want to go home in a coffin or a body bag. I just want to go home to my family, and to finally — for the first time — hold my son.”
Over 100 human rights organizations recently sent a letter to President Biden urging him to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay. Biden has previously pledged to close Gitmo, but so far, his administration hasn’t taken any steps to do so.
There are currently 40 inmates in Gitmo, and the prison costs over $540 million each year to operate. Meaning each prisoner costs about $13 million per year, something Rabbani mentioned.
“The US is currently paying $13.8 million a year just to keep me here, so he could save a lot of money by just letting me go home. I am just a taxi driver from Karachi, a victim of mistaken identity,” Rabbani said.
Most if not all of the Guantanamo inmates were delivered up by bounty hunters grabbing any convenient poor soul that would serve the US goal, so as to be appearing to do something about terrorists. Years ago the US Supreme Court ordered trials for these tortured innocent captives. It was never done because there are no grounds for trials. . . . It’s called: “Rules-based international order.”
Yes, Rabbani is eloquent, excruciating, testimony to the surpassing malignity of the US Oligarchs and their lackey Government. It makes us all feel filthy and deeply shamed.
More BS from the Russian/China/ Iran Lobby.
You forgot Korea, dumbo.
Does anyone know why he is still there? Mistaken for a guy they actuall caught and let go. What possible reason is there for him to be languishing there?
Read for yourself the Wikileaks Gitmo Docket (NY Times Guantanamo Docket) dump on him and others. He is a KNOWN al Qaeda operative. He has a history. He has a terrorist life before 9/11/2001. He could have been lawfully killed on the battlefield. He is lucky to be alive.
He is definitely just a cab driver.
And I am an educator. Also a citizen warrior (retired). Some al Qaeda were farmers, drug addicts, soldiers of fortune, Bedoins, mercenaries, murderers, linguists, engineers, explosives experts, martyrs.
Rabbani is a known, admitted and identified high level al Qaeda member. Read it for yourself in the NY Times Docket here: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/guantanamo/detainees/1461-mohammed-ahmad-ghulam-rabbani Your sympathy with the devil lies have fallen on deaf ears.
You do realise confessions produced under torture have no validity right?
What torture would that be? Only Enhanced Interrogation Techniques (EIT) were performed on a handful of detainees to obtain valuable information which saved many lives. EIT were legal and approved when performed on detainees. EIT did not meet the legal internationally accepted definition of torture. Who said Rabbani confessed to anything? Information was obtained through a series of interviews and interrogations, given freely. He never had to say a word. Of course others corroborated his information, or not. You’ll have to do better than that to try and show unlawful combatant Islamists who want to kill us are actually the victims here. Your sympathy with the devil is revealing.
“Unlawful combatant” is a legal determination. When and if they’ve had their days in court (real court, not extraconstitutional military tribunals) and are convicted, they might be “unlawful combatants.” Until then, they’re just illegally held abductees.
If the remaining detainees held at the US military detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, were being held illegally (a legal determination), then there would be legitimate outcry from the International community, which there is not. You are obviously NOT familiar with the Geneva Conventions and Law of Land Warfare. As the unlawful combatant Islamists who want to kill us are NOT signators to the Conventions they are not entitled to its privileges and protections. In the Law of War you are either a lawful or unlawful combatant. Kind of like being pregnant; you either are or you are not. This determination is made upon capture based on the circumstances at hand. If there is doubt about one’s status the captured individual is give a tribunal to determine the facts pertinent to one’s status. Detainees at Gitmo were either determined at capture that their status was unlawful, or it was determined after a battlefield tribunal. Not about guilt or innocence, about status. During WWII over 400,000 lawful combatant mostly German POWs were held without charge or trial, as per the Geneva Conventions, “until the end of hostilities.” Yes, their lawful POW status was determined on the battlefield. Wearing a uniform of a country who signed and followed Geneva Conventions? Bingo! Not? And you could be tried as a spy and executed. A common sense approach.
On the evidence, you wouldn’t recognize common sense if it walked up behind you and whacked you across the ass with a base fiddle.
-That was nasty. Not surprised it was published, though. You all HATE the truth, especially when it doesn’t fit your sympathy with the devil narrative.
I’m not sure what “narrative” you’re talking about.
The US regime could have given the Gitmo abductees the speedy public trials to which they were entitled if accused of violations of law, and punished them if they were duly convicted.
Instead, it illegally held them without either the protections given criminal defendants or the protections given prisoners of war.
That’s on the US regime, not on the abductees.
You’re being intellectually dishonest. Your “narrative” is anti-US, pro-terrorist (“sympathy with the devil”). Words like “regime,” “abductees.” Seriously? Rhetoric isn’t proof or truth, it is your uneducated OPINION. 95 percent (731) of Gitmo detainees have been RELEASED, and NONE have been executed, beheaded, blown up, hacked to death, dragged naked and lifeless through the streets, drowned or burned alive. Things our enemies have done to US and/or our allies. There is no moral comparison between how our enemies treat their captives and Gitmo. 10 of 40 who remain are accused of war crimes. Unlawful combatants are entitled to NOTHING. They exist due to the benevolence of the United States – probably a BIG mistake made by Donald Rumsfeld and GW Bush, but they decided to treat detainees “within the spirit of Geneva.” That doesn’t give them civilian rights, BUT, the Military Commissions Act of 2009 governs tribunals; Obama gave detainees accused of war crimes virtually the SAME rights a US citizen would enjoy in a federal court of law. THAT is why it is taking so long to go to trial. There you have it! American justice for unlawful combatants who could have been legally shot dead on the battlefield. Surely you consider that a WIN!
“our enemies”
Not sure who this “we” you are alluding to might be.
People who engage in torturing their fellow human beings are psychopaths and downright perverts. Normal people don’t do that sort of thing. This commentator is defending the indefensible. Shame on him to reveal such a pervert attitude.
You can’t just make up definitions of terms and expect to have your opinion be respected. There were International definitions of torture during the time a handful of Gitmo detainees were waterboarded, which helped obtain valuable information that saved many lives. For legal rules to apply, accepted definitions of words and terms are essential. The Enhanced Interrogation Techniques used on detainees were legal, approved and did NOT fit the Internationally accepted definition of torture at the time. Period.
Yes, there were international definitions of torture during the time that the Gitmo abductees were tortured.
You can say “period” as many times as you like. Saying it won’t change the fact that waterboarding is torture under both international and, prior to the Bush regime deciding to use it, US definitions.
Then a trial should be real easy then. You know, give people trials, that’s what Americans do.
This is the real america,
And the Empire never makes mistakes!
As much as I complain about Covid lockdowns, this poor guy has been dealt a very bad hand. This situation must end and the injustice of it must always be remembered.
Any American government thug involved in this travesty of justice deserves to be executed. America is rotten to the core.