Come sit with me for a moment or two. I want to talk about two men, how US foreign policy affected their lives, and how the American media handles the stories about them. Because I never hesitate to look for other stuff to do when I should be working and I feel better about it when I can get someone else to play hooky with me.
The first guy I want to talk about is James Foley, who was a free-lance journalist and video/photog dude. He was beheaded by ISIS last week, leading to calls for the US to seek revenge. Foley mostly worked for a paper called the GlobalPost. He had embedded with the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan for awhile and then felt the call to represent the viewpoints of oppressed people everywhere. Well, okay, the US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan weren’t really oppressed, but one finds one’s calling where one can. To that end, he later embedded with the “Libyan rebels”. You remember those guys, the Libyan rebels, the ones who rose up against the evil dictator strongman tyrant despot Ghaddafi. Yeah, the ones Ghaddafi said were CIA-funded operatives and later it turned out they were CIA operatives and the whole “rebel” thing was a bullshit undercover op to overthrow Ghaddafi and snatch Libya’s gold and oil resources. Foley “embedded” with them to bring their revolution and plight to the attention of the world. Unfortunately, he did not ever seem to discover the CIA and black-ops machinations behind the “rebel uprising” while covering the story. I have no doubt he really meant well and was a very nice man, and surely a brave man, but the history of Libya has been forever altered in part because all kinds of well-meaning people did not see the truth, or the ones who did, did not report on it until after Libya was destroyed. We are to refer to this period of history, the so-called rebel uprising, as “Libya’s civil war”, according to the new Truth Protocols set out by the Council on Foreign Relations and PNAC, although some of us “fact hard-liners” might decline to do so at our own risk. Anyhow, Foley was “in country” in Libya for a mere matter of weeks before being captured by the despot’s military forces and held captive for 44 days. His captivity, and that of the 3 other journalists with him, was said to be one of the final straws leading to the “humanitarian intervention” in Libya. Near the end of his captivity, he could hear the NATO bombs falling and knew that help was on the way and that his suffering had not been in vain. Mission, as they say, accomplished.
As to his ordeal while being held by the evil despot’s Torturous Torturers and Torture Brigade, Foley later recounted events for the public thusly [this is from two different articles]:
[…] Myself and two colleagues had been captured and were being held in a military detention center in Tripoli….Later we were taken to another prison where the regime kept hundreds of political prisoners. I was quickly welcomed by the other prisoners and treated well….[he was allowed a phone call to mom] “How are you, Jim?” [his Mom asked]. I told her I was being fed, that I was getting the best bed and being treated like a guest.
“Are they making you say these things, Jim?”
“No, the Libyans are beautiful people,” I told her.
[…] He said he was treated fairly well, fed regularly, and never tortured or beaten. He shared a cell with political prisoners, incarcerated for acts such as sending disparaging texts about Khadafy. Foley said he saw physical evidence that some of the other prisoners suffered electrical shock, beatings, and whippings. Foley said he became worried when the other two journalists were moved from the Tripoli prison on April 29 and he was left behind without explanation. Then, eight days later, Foley said he was blindfolded, placed in the back of a van and driven to a luxury villa. He was greeted by Gillis and Brabo, who had been staying there since their removal from the prison. Another captured journalist, Nigel Chandler, a British freelancer, was also there.
Foley said he spent his last days in custody at the villa, eating three-course meals, sleeping in a room of his own, and watching cable television, which included world news reports on the BBC. He said he was told that Khadafy’s son, Saadi, believed Western journalists should be treated well. Foley, who completed his graduate studies in 2008 at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, worked as an embedded reporter with US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan before arriving in Libya about three weeks before his capture.
http://www.prwatch.org/news/2014/08/12576/remembering-james-foley
and: http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2011/05/27/after-release-james-foley-recounts-dark-secret-libya/Q0HClqVr8iat181WHO7YuL/story.html
Partly in response to the despot’s temerity at housing a journalist in a luxury villa (on a beautiful warm, white beach; I’ve seen the photos), feeding him three-course meals and letting him watch cable TV, we ruined Libya. Foley flew to Milwaukee to thank the US-ians for their prayers during his captivity. (And for the tens of thousands of dollars donated to his family to secure his release.) Being the intrepid reporter that he was, he then flew back to Libya and was there reporting on the “civil war” when Ghaddafi fell and eventually died. Remember that? When Ghaddafi just fell and died? According to Foley’s own newspaper, GlobalPost, there was no bounty placed on Ghaddafi’s head by the US State Dept., there was no illegal invasion, Ghaddafi’s murder was not orchestrated by the US pointing the “rebels” to the place where Ghaddafi was hidden, the US did not condone (and perhaps instruct) Ghaddafi’s torture and assassination, nor did the US media gleefully circulate the video of his torture and murder repeatedly while Hillary giggled maniacally in orgasmic joy at the thought of a man, the leader of a sovereign nation, being tortured at her behest. No, no, no: Ghaddafi just “fell” and “eventually died”. The video of Foley’s death at the hands of ISIS, on the other hand, is deemed too brutal to be watched by the same media that slavered over Ghaddafi’s murder.
[…] While covering the Libyan civil war in 2011, Foley and two other journalists, American Claire Gillis and Spaniard Manu Brabo, endured a 44-day captivity in April and May of that year at the hands of then Libyan strongman Col. Muammar Gaddafi. A fourth journalist, South African Anton Hammerl, was killed when the journalists were captured by Gaddafi fighters near Benghazi in eastern Libya. Foley later returned to Libya to cover Gaddafi’s fall and eventual death. Foley and GlobalPost correspondent Tracey Shelton were at the scene of Gaddafi’s capture in October,2011[….]
The above summary, written in recent days as part of Foley’s biography, implies that Foley was right there when Ghaddafi was captured and that he witnessed Ghaddafi’s murder. In fact, he did not witness the event. He went to the scene after the fact to do on-the-ground interviews and to describe the event and the place. The wording is ambiguous, perhaps intentionally so. All kinds of media outlets are linking to the above to baldly claim Foley was present when Ghaddafi was killed as though this [false] story somehow adds to Foley’s luster. Even Truthdig made the claim, without doing any research, when they named Foley as their “Truthdigger of the Week”: “[…] Foley returned to Libya after a short time spent in the U.S. after his release. He wanted to speak with some of the people he had met in prison with the aim of telling their stories, and he ended up witnessing Gadhafi’s capture.[…]”
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/truthdigger_of_the_week_james_foley_20140824
The true story of Foley’s involvement in Ghaddafi’s death was published by the same paper (the paper Foley freelanced for), GlobalPost, which wrote that so-misunderstood remark in the first place.
[…] “Jim couldn’t bear to watch from afar as the rebel tide finally turned against Gaddafi,” recalls Solana Pyne, his video editor at GlobalPost. On that last day in Libya, “rebels claimed Gaddafi had been killed in a firefight, but Jim found eyewitnesses who confirmed the despot had in fact died at the hands of his former subjects.”
That scoop would change the narrative of Gaddafi’s demise, and prompt United Nations officials to call for a war crimes investigation. It would also win the prestigious Overseas Press Club award for Foley and for colleague Tracey Shelton, who obtained the video of Gaddafi’s final moments [….]
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/americas/140827/what-james-foley-meant-to-us
To his credit, and this is what should actually be used from his reporting to burnish his biography, Foley and Shelton exposed the brutal assassination of Ghaddafi and did not sit on the story out of fear that it would make Foley’s rebels look bad. It’s odd that Truthdig, et al, are not reporting the event in this light:
(Reuters) – “The death of former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, who was captured and killed by rebels in October, may have been a war crime”, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court said on Thursday. The U.N. Security Council referred Gaddafi’s crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators to the ICC in February and authorized military intervention to protect civilians in March. The ICC indicted Gaddafi, his son Saif al-Islam and the former intelligence chief for war crimes.
Saif al-Islam is now in the custody of the Libyan authorities who have said they plan to try in him in Libya instead of handing him over to The Hague-based ICC. Moreno-Ocampo has said this was possible.
Moreno-Ocampo has also said he was investigating allegations that the anti-Gaddafi forces and NATO were also guilty of war crimes during the civil war.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/12/16/us-libya-icc-idUSTRE7BF08820111216
As a side note, if Foley had been there at the exact moment, one would have to wonder how he knew where to be and when to be there. It would be odd, to say the least. You may think about that for one second. Okay, moving along.
Foley then went to Syria. To report on the repressed and oppressed Syrians who were rebelling against the evil tyrant Assad. He wanted to tell the story of the “rebels” belonging to such groups as al Nusra Front and the Free Syrian Army. Bring their plight to the world and support their cause of overthrowing the Assad government. You know the drill. We will ignore, as did Foley, that these “rebels” were funded by the US, the CIA, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey, trained by the CIA and given arms and cash (oops, I mean “non-lethal aid”) by the US and Sauds. We will also pay no attention to the fact that these groups, along with parts of al Qaeda in Iraq, later morphed into the Dread Terrorists now known as ISIS. (We will also ignore, as we have for 11 years now, that there was no al Qaeda in Iraq before we invaded.) We will ignore the coincidence that Foley happened to embed with rebels who later turned out to be CIA front groups in two different countries and that both these countries happen to be on the neocon list of countries to destroy. It is vitally important that you ignore these facts, as you will see while we go through the narrative here.
We were originally told that Foley was kidnapped in Nov, ’12 by one of Assad’s militias, the Shabiha militia. He was held, the story went, by the Assad government in a Syrian Air Force complex, although the translator kidnapped with him was released. This brought us undeniable proof of the horrible horribleness of the Assad regime. The US State Dept. insisted that Assad had Foley, as well as numerous other reporters, and repeatedly said through their spokesmen that “of course the Assad regime denies it. What else are they going to do?” and words to that effect. Foley’s family and the GlobalPost stated it as fact, as well.
BOSTON — The family of a New Hampshire journalist abducted in Syria on Thanksgiving last year says they believe they now know where he is. James Foley’s family on Friday claimed the Syrian government is holding him in a military detention center. […]
However, we now know, because they told us so, that Foley was beheaded by ISIS. Now how on earth did they get ahold of him? A new “The Wire” article [See: http://www.thewire.com/global/2014/08/timeline-of-james-foleys-captivity/378898/] with a (partially theoretical) timeline that suggests al Nusra Front had Foley by March ’13, although no explanation is given as to why they would want to hold him (he reported favorably on the “moderate rebels”, remember), or where he was before the al Nusra Front had him (he disappeared in Nov ’12 and the timeline simply remarks that from Nov ’12 to March ’13 his whereabouts were “unknown”. Nor does the article suggest who captured him in the first place.) The Wire article offers that he was transferred to an ISIS training camp around Sept ’13. In Nov., the US gov’t was given Foley’s location by a former fellow ISIS camp prisoner who had “left the camp”. Escaped? Just walked away? Who knows? The article does not say. It was in May of 2013 that GlobalPost and the Foley family reported that they were confident that the Syrian government had him in a detention center, yet, according to The Wire, he was held by al Nusra well before that. If, by November, the US knew that he was being held by ISIS, nothing was ever done to correct the erroneous reports that he was being detained by Assad’s government.
So how did ISIS or al Nusra Front get Foley from Assad? I’m glad you asked. American media has provided us with the answer. And their answer is not that the “rebels” kidnapped him in the first place. Conveniently, the answer reveals further proof of the god-awfullness of the Assad regime, who perversely collaborated with the same guys who originally banded together to take down his government. He is obviously the worst of the worst, worse even than ISIS, since he not only hates his own people and the misunderstood repressed rebels, he hates his own self enough to want to take himself and his regime out. He is secretly working with the very group that wanted him gone! (You have to say this breathlessly, hence the exclamation point.)
[…] What is unclear is if previous investigations into Foley’s whereabouts were inaccurate, if ISIS militants somehow captured Foley from some of the regime’s most elite security, or if the Assad regime provided Foley to ISIS.
“Until recently, James Foley was thought to be in hands of pro-Assad forces. If Assad is handing over Westerners to ISIS to be killed, it indicates Assad feels cornered, looking for leverage,” BBC’s Kim Ghattas tweeted, adding that the assessment jibes with what her sources in Damascus have told her recently.
Ghattas added that Assad providing Foley to ISIS “would confirm Assad tacitly working [with] ISIS and silence any suggestions Assad is the better alternative. “[…]
http://www.businessinsider.com/how-did-isis-kidnap-james-foley-2014-8]
I am not sure what “leverage” Assad would gain by kidnapping an American citizen and then turning him over to Assad’s own enemies to be killed, nor do I understand how it is possible for a rational person to think that Assad is “tacitly working with ISIS”, but then I can’t figure out why the fuck the press writes any of the crap they do nowadays. But now you know why not only must ISIS be destroyed, but forcing Assad out must happen as well (preferably by bombing Syria to the same place we bombed Libya to: hell). Any idea that Syria might be an ally in taking out ISIS is flat off the table. And you surely see what a fine president Hillary would make; she is verily a prophet. Did she not say shortly after the despot Ghaddafi’s murder – I mean, his fall and eventual death – that the tyrant Assad’s days were numbered as well? We’ll go into Syria to get whatever part of ISIS remains there, and we don’t need to inform Assad of this decision. If a few bombs take out some other stuff, like Assad’s air force, well, shit happens. The beauty part of all this is that with one atrocity blamed on two different entities, the US might get to bomb both of them. Now, if only we could find a way to blame Russia for ISIS as well…
If some of the stories are beginning make no sense to you, I can only remind you that bullshit, propaganda, and obfuscation are the prime purposes of the US media. To make matters even more confusing, GlobalPost is now saying they knew for some time, although not immediately, that Foley was not held by Assad’s military.
But on Thanksgiving day in 2012, near the Turkish border after reporting from the war zones near Aleppo, he was captured by armed militants, a fact that remained under media blackout, to improve his chances of release. […]
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/americas/140827/what-james-foley-meant-to-us
By Nov. of last year, the GlobalPost knew he had originally been taken by the rebels and was still in their custody, and that information had been given to the US, but the paper continued to let the US government publicly blame Assad. I see. Furthermore, Syria has given information to the United Nations that Foley was actually killed a year ago, with the video and photos only now released by ISIS. They also repeat that Foley was originally captured by the very rebels he embedded with. We will never know the absolute truth on the matter here in the US.
August 26 (RIA Novosti) – American journalist James Foley may have been murdered by Islamic State militants a year ago, The Daily Mail reported, citing Syrian President Bashar Assad’s official spokesperson, Bouthaina Shaaban.
“James Foley was first arrested by the Free Syrian Army and he was sold to ISIS [an earlier name for the IS]. You can check with the UN…James Foley was killed a year ago, not now, they only released the pictures now, but he was killed a year ago. We have definite information, the UN has the information,” Shaaban said as cited by The Daily Mail.[…]
A sampling of the response to Foley’s death:
Senior Republicans on Sunday called for expanded air strikes against Islamic State (Isis) militants in Iraq and for the first time in Syria, in order to destroy their terrorist network in the wake of the killing of the American journalist James Foley and to protect against an attack on American soil. […]
The White House has been reported to be considering strikes in Syria, after Foley’s murder was classified as a terror attack. […]
Senator Lindsey Graham, from South Carolina, told CNN he did not believe the US needed to signal its intent to the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, before carrying out air strikes within Syria.
“The purpose of going into Syria is to deal with the threat to the homeland, the goal is to hit Isis and you cannot deal with the threat in Iraq without also hitting them in Syria,” he said.http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/24/republicans-isis-militants-us-air-strikes
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Numerous Senate Democrats oppose bringing military operations in Iraq and Syria to a vote before Congress because they think going on the record as for or against will be harmful to their bids for office during an election season, The Hill reported Wednesday. Critics slammed this reluctance to take a position as a sign that cowardice and self gain—not principle—rule the legislature.
Senator Tim Kaine (D-Va.) has been vocally pushing for President Obama to put the expanding U.S. military attacks on ISIS in Iraq and Syria to a vote before Congress, as required by the War Powers Resolution.[…]
Kaine’s position is not new. He had previously worked with Senator John McCain to “reform the War Powers Resolution in a way that lays out a clear consultative process between Congress and the President on whether and when to engage in military action,” according to a statement released from Kaine’s office. However, The Hill notes that McCain has held back on demanding congressional authorization of military strikes on ISIS because, according to a Democratic aide, this could get in the way of U.S. bombings.[…]
Since August 8, the U.S. has carried out nearly 100 air strikes across Iraq and currently has nearly 1,000 U.S. military service members deployed to the country. Public information about the attacks—including the military branches carrying them out, the civilians and combatants killed, and the role of private contractors—remains scarce. Furthermore, President Obama’s stated aims for the strikes have shifted throughout the month—from assisting refugees to protecting U.S. personnel to “eradicating” the “cancer” of ISIS. Meanwhile, U.S. drones are currently conducting surveillance flights over Syria, in what many warn is a sign of U.S. air strikes in that country as well.[…]
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(Reuters) – U.S. President Barack Obama expressed revulsion on Wednesday at the beheading of an American journalist by Islamist militants and vowed the United States would do what it must to protect its citizens as international condemnation of the insurgents grew.[…]
France said it wanted the permanent members of the U.N. Security Council and regional countries, including Arab states and Iran, to coordinate action against Islamic State. President Francois Hollande called for an international conference to discuss how to tackle the group.[…]
Germany and Italy said they were ready to send arms to bolster the military capabilities of Iraqi Kurds fighting Islamic State in northern Iraq.[…]
U.S. Senator John McCain, a Republican, said Foley’s death should serve as a turning point for Obama in his deliberations over how to deal with Islamic State. “First of all, you’ve got to dramatically increase the air strikes. And those air strikes have to be devoted to Syria as well,” McCain said in a telephone interview.[…]
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/08/20/us-iraq-security-idUSKBN0GH0JL20140820
How does Syria feel about all this?
The United States, one of the biggest supporters of the extremist-marked insurgency in Syria says it doesn’t need Syrian government’s permission to carry out military strikes in the Syrian soil.
The United States has started sending spy planes into Syria to track the so-called Islamic State in Iraq and Levant (ISIL) radicals, but said it would seek no permission to do so.
A US official confirmed the plans after Syria said on Monday it was willing to work with the international community, including Washington, to tackle extremist militants, whose advances have sparked international concern and American air strikes in neighboring Iraq.
American officials said they did not plan to ask Damascus for permission for the attacks, a move that openly undermines Syria’s sovereignty.[…]
On Monday, Damascus said for the first time that it was willing to work with the international community, including the United States and Britain, to tackle terrorists including ISIL and Al-Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate Al-Nusra Front.
But Foreign Minister Walid Muallem also made it clear that Syria would not accept unilateral military strikes by the United States or any other country.
“Any violation of Syria’s sovereignty would be an act of aggression,” he said. There would be “no justification” for strikes on Syrian territory “except in coordination with us to fight terrorism”.
Muallem said Syria was seeking cooperation within an international or regional coalition, or at the bilateral level within the framework of a recent UN Security Council resolution targeting ISIL and Al-Nusra.
Syria has been gripped with a deadly unrest since 2011. The insurgency that is marked with extremist acts of violence and has al-Qaeda at its core, has received broad political and military support from Washington and its allies since it started.
The US armed and supported the jihadist militias in Libya and in Syria. The US promoted the civil war in Syria and did not say a word as ISIS emerged from the various factions to rampage throughout Syria; at that time, they were doing us a favor by opposing Assad. Libya is in complete collapse, with rival groups (one led by a Libyan who spent 20 years living in the US near CIA headquarters before returning to Libya in 2011) fighting over ascendancy and forcing Libyans to flee the country. Now ISIS is in Iraq and has taken the credit for murdering an American journalist. Iraq, being ruined by the US invasion and occupation, is unable or unwilling to deal with them. (We might remember that Saddam Hussein and Ghaddafi were, and Assad is, all secular opponents of al Qaeda, and that ISIS is a spinoff of that group and the other fundamentalist Islamic militias.) Buried deep underneath the sweltering blankets of conflicting stories is one basic truth. If the US had not invaded Iraq and Afghanistan and Libya [and, and, and] under false pretenses, if the US had not decided to go all in and destroy entire nations in order to steal their resources, if the US had not claimed the self-declared right to take out leaders and governments in foreign countries rather than deal with these other sovereignties with dignity and diplomacy and honesty, James Foley would doubtless still be alive. At the least, he would not have died the way he did. The US is ultimately responsible for Foley’s death.
As a postscript to Foley’s story, Obama and just about everybody who is anybody calls Foley a hero, which perhaps he was. I have no doubt he is dead, and despite my disbelief and anger at the appalling, flagrant propaganda being whipped out over his death, I do feel sympathy for his family. I would also like to make it clear that I think Foley was probably as fine a person as all the stories about him indicate. Perhaps a little misguided in whom he placed his trust and rather naive about the lengths the US is willing to go to in an effort to mess with other countries and interfere with their sovereignty, but a decent man, nonetheless.
This shit (below), however, is too much, and it doesn’t even come from some media mouthpiece. This is just the mind-blowing, idiotic, weirdness of the American public responding to the MIC propaganda. Even the Pope, for God’s sake, has joined in, as a sign of solidarity with the US, I suppose. We spent the past 13 years mocking and condemning the fundamentalist jihadis for their “willingness to die as martyrs”; yet now, without any irony, we are swept by patriotic fervor and want some of our own martyrs. We have gone so far as to use that very word, and to furthermore compare Foley with Jesus Christ. Can we stop this crap? Just stop it. It is ridiculous, okay? It is for these simple-minded people that the media stories are written the way they are, and why they work. No disrespect to the Foley family, but they ought not to encourage this sort of over-the-top religious rhetoric.
[…] Many who entered Our Lady of the Holy Rosary, the church of Foley’s parents, said they didn’t know the reporter but felt compelled to be near his family.
“I feel my soul is united to them,” said Sandra Harrington, who made the hourlong drive from her home in Manchester. She had followed news reports for months, stories of how he ventured into some of the world’s most dangerous regions to cover conflicts and the suffering of those affected.
“James Foley was like Christ,” said Harrington said. “He wanted to bring truth, and he suffered greatly.” […]
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Many people – including Pope Francis – are now arguing that slain American journalist James Foley is a martyr, and some believe he should be considered for sainthood….
“[Jim] reminds us of Jesus. Jesus was goodness, love — and Jim was becoming more and more that,’ his grieving mother Diane Foley told reporters gathered outside her New Hampshire home, according to the National Catholic Reporter.
James Foley’s younger brother, Michael Foley, told Katie Couric in a recent interview that Pope Francis “referred to Jim’s act as, really, martyrdom” in an unprecedented phone call to the family.
Many cable news pundits and religious bloggers agree with the Pope.[…]
http://www.aol.com/article/2014/08/27/is-slain-us-journalist-james-foley-a-martyr/20953187/
At the beginning of this post, I promised you stories about two men, didn’t I? The second story I want to tell you is about a man named Shaker Aamer. He is being held without charges or trial in Guantanamo Bay by the US government and has been there for close to 13 years now. That would be the same prison that Obama pledged to shut down when he took office. You will not hear much about Shaker Aamer in the US press. As a matter of fact, unless you read a few of the really fringe-y “far left” media sites, you won’t ever read his name. He is one of the invisible men, one of our embarrassments. Or he would be, if we found such things embarrassing any longer. He has been cleared for release by both the Bush and the Obama administrations, as there is no evidence against him, but the US won’t actually set him free. It may simply be the case that we are afraid the guy might tell everyone what we have been doing to him, although he has agreed to keep silent as part of his release. The US insists that if he is released, he only be allowed to go to Saudi Arabia, where he would certainly be killed. His family lives in the UK, where he used to live. While Aamer is certainly not a terrorist or a member of al Qaeda, the very existence of Guantanamo Bay is an incentive that fuels the anger of groups like ISIS. ISIS seemed to be making a point of that when they dressed James Foley in an orange jumpsuit like that worn by the Guantanamo detainees.
Here is part of Shaker Aamer’s story:
July, 2014:
Shaker’s British wife and his four British children live in Battersea, where they lived with Shaker before he was seized after the 9/11 attacks in Afghanistan. He had travelled to Afghanistan with his family to provide humanitarian aid, but while his wife and children safely returned to the UK, he was caught by bounty hunters, and was eventually sold to US forces.
Shaker was first cleared for release from Guantánamo under the Bush administration, in 2007, and he was cleared for release again in January 2010 by the high-level, inter-agency Guantánamo Review Task Force that President Obama appointed to review the cases of all the prisoners after he took office in 2009. His release has also been requested by successive UK governments since 2007. And yet, although all the other British citizens and residents held in Guantánamo have been freed, he is still imprisoned, perhaps because he is a charismatic and eloquent man, who has always stood up for the prisoners’ rights, and both the US and the UK governments fear what he will say on his release.
Sadly, although Shaker would agree to a life of silence if it ensured that he could be reunited with his family, he remains held, and is suffering physically and mentally, as Dr. Emily A. Keram, an independent psychiatrist, explained in a submission to a US court after being allowed to meet with him for three days in December. That submission also included shocking details, in Shaker’s own words, of how he was treated in US custody in Afghanistan as well as his treatment in Guantánamo.
Unfortunately, on June 24, District Judge Rosemary Collyer rejected Shaker’s request for her to order his release on that grounds that, as the New York Times decribed it, “he is suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and other mental and physical ailments.”
Judge Collyer gave her rejection in what the Times described as “a terse one-page order.” An accompanying memorandum opinion, which explained her ruling, was sealed, as was the submission of the Justice Department. Judge Collyer ordered the DoJ “to file a public version of her order and its documents by July 9,” but that date has come and gone, with no sign of any release of documents. […]
http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/2014/07/22/photos-free-shaker-aamer-from-guantanamo-parliamentary-vigil-july-16-2014/********** ********** **********
August, 2014:
Shaker Aamer ‘Beaten’ in Latest Guantanamo Crackdown
LONDON – British resident Shaker Aamer has reportedly been beaten at Guantánamo Bay, in evidence of a new crackdown on prisoners protesting their detention without charge.
In new letters received by legal charity Reprieve, detainees reveal what one calls a new “standard procedure” of abuses at the prison. Emad Hassan, a Yemeni detained without charge since 2002, wrote that “an FCE [Forcible Cell Extraction] team has been brought in to beat the detainees […] On Sunday, Shaker ISN 239 was beaten when the medical people wanted to draw blood.” Mr Hassan adds that guards had beaten another detainee for nearly 2 hours.
‘Forcible Cell Extraction’ or ‘FCEing’ is the process by which a detainee is forced out of his cell by a group of armed guards, often before being taken to the force-feeding chair. Mr Aamer has previously described being beaten by the FCE team up to eight times a day.[…]
In June, former Foreign Secretary William Hague told Reprieve that UK officials were confident Mr Aamer had access to a “detainee welfare package” and that his health “remain[ed] stable.” In a letter sent this week, Reprieve director Clive Stafford Smith urged Foreign Secretary Phillip Hammond to raise urgent questions with the US Government about these latest reports of mistreatment.
Cori Crider, Strategic Director at Reprieve and a lawyer for Mr Aamer, said: “Just weeks ago, the UK Government dismissed our concerns about Shaker Aamer’s wellbeing, relying on US assurances about a so-called Guantanamo ‘welfare package.’ Now we hear that Shaker, already a seriously ill man, has been beaten. Phillip Hammond should seek answers from the US without delay about why, instead of simply releasing Shaker, it prefers to detain and abuse him.”
http://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2014/08/27/shaker-aamer-beaten-latest-guantanamo-crackdown
You may also read about him here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaker_Aamer
I will close with a poem Shaker Aamer wrote, published as part of a book of poems written by Guantanamo detainees in 2007.
THEY FIGHT FOR PEACE
by Shaker Abdurraheem Aamer, Guantanamo detainee.
Peace they say.
Peace of mind?
Peace of earth?
Peace of what kind?
I see them talking arguing, fighting –
What kind of peace are they looking for?
Why do they kill? What are they planning?
Is it just talk? Why do they argue?
Is it so simple to kill? Is this their plan?
Yes, of course!
They talk, they argue, they kill –
They fight for peace.
teri's random thoughts 