“Locking someone up for five years without charges is a disgrace and a betrayal of American and constitutional values.” Yes: Today's dinner-table discussions are generated from the following excerpts from the March 13, 2008, New York Times story “Pentagon Cites Tapes Showing Interrogations”:
Ali al-Marri is a citizen of Qatar who was arrested in December 2001 while in college in Illinois. He was moved five years ago to a “Navy detention site” in Charleston, S.C., after being designated an “enemy combatant.” Government officials say they believe he was an Al Qaeda operative plotting a terrorist attack.
Two government officials say a tape showed Mr. Marri being manhandled by his interrogators, but did not show waterboarding or any other treatment approaching what they believed could be classified as torture. According to one Defense Department official, the interrogators dispensing the rough treatment on the tape were FBI agents. An FBI spokesman declined comment, citing a continuing review of being carried out by the Department of Justice’s inspector general.
Mr. Black, the spokesman for the Defense Intelligence Agency, said its director, Lt. Gen. Michael D. Maples, had reviewed the tape and was satisfied that Mr. Marri’s treatment was acceptable.
He said that Mr. Marri was chanting loudly, disrupting his interrogation, and that interrogators used force to put duct tape on his mouth, while Mr. Marri resisted. Mr. Black said most of the videos showing Mr. Marri’s interrogations had been destroyed. The government has never charged Mr. Marri, but because of his designation as an enemy combatant, the Pentagon is allowed to hold him indefinitely.
Lawyers for Mr. Marri, who have challenged his imprisonment in court, sought access to any tapes or other records of his interrogations, but in 2006 a federal judge in South Carolina said the government did not have to produce any tapes. That decision is being appealed.
Jonathan Hafetz, one of the lawyers, said Mr. Marri had heard guards describe “a cabinet full of tapes” showing his interrogations, but had never had independent confirmation that such tapes existed. Mr. Marri has alleged that earlier in his imprisonment he was deprived of sleep, isolated and exposed to prolonged cold.
Mr. Hafetz said he planned to file papers in court describing the psychological harm done to Mr. Marri. “Locking someone up for five years without charges is a disgrace and a betrayal of American and constitutional values,” he said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/13/washington/13intel.html?ref=middleeast Let me know how the dinner-table discussions went. I can always provide more fodder. Thanks from Jeanie
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