19 June 2006

Is this torture?

I don't think that this is quite a story about torture. But it's definitely a story of the US being in the evil business. Hilzoy at Obsidian Wings outlines a story about five ethnic Uigurs swept up as suspected “terrorists” immediately after 9/11 and held at Guantanamo.
We keep innocent men in prison for over four years. They have children they've never seen; their family thinks they are dead; they have no idea when or if they'll be allowed to leave. We keep them locked up for over a year after they have been found innocent. Right before their case is to be heard on appeal, we ship them off to Albania, of all places, which then decides to expel them. Did we somehow fail to ask the Albanians whether they would actually allow the Uighurs to stay in Albania?
For a while there, it looked like they were going to get shipped off to China—where they would likely get killed by the Chinese government for being ethnic separatists. But the Albanians finally decided that they didn't have the heart to do that.

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