By GottaLaff
Fayiz al-Kandari, a Kuwaiti, still held in Guantanamo, who has maintained for nearly eight years that he is an innocent man.(Photo: International Committee of the Red Cross)
What would we do without people like Lt. Col. Barry Wingard, Jason Leopold, and Andy Worthington to tell this very important, ongoing story until somebody listens:However, although Fouad al-Rabiah regained his innocence (if not yet his freedom, as, astonishingly, the government is considering whether to appeal Judge Kollar-Kotelly's ruling), the dark charade of Guantánamo, conceived by Dick Cheney and his close advisers, whose arrogance and disdain for the law allowed them to construct a detention policy in which it was impossible to be innocent, has not come to an end for numerous other men held in Guantánamo, and has, in fact, continued under President Obama.Please, please go read the rest here. These snippets barely scratch the surface.
Obama's motives are different, to be sure. Spooked by the inflexible opposition with which his decision to close Guantánamo and "regain America's moral stature in the world" has been received by Republican lawmakers and by members of his own party, the president and his advisers have approached Guantánamo with extreme caution.
Instead of seizing the initiative, the administration has generally been content to behave as though Bush were still in power, opposing the prisoners' habeas corpus petitions in the district courts, and letting judges expose the tortured lies, false confessions and feeble intelligence that the Bush administration passed off as evidence. [...]
Time moves slowly in the world of the habeas petitions, even though the outcome for the prisoners has generally been worth the wait. Despite the fact that Justice Department lawyers have been doing all in their power to obstruct the prisoners' defense teams, judges have ruled on 38 petitions, and in all but eight have found that the government failed to establish that the men in question were either al-Qaeda terrorists or soldiers for the Taliban. However, 185 prisoners have not had their cases heard [...]
One of these men, who has maintained his innocence throughout nearly eight years in US custody, is Fayiz al-Kandari, a 30-year-old Kuwaiti, from a wealthy family, who has always maintained that he was a humanitarian aid worker who arrived in Afghanistan in August 2001, was caught up in the chaos following the 9/11 attacks and the US-led invasion of October 2001, and was seized by Afghan forces and sold to the US military in December 2001 as he tried to cross the mountains to Pakistan. [...]
For more information about Fayiz Al-Kandari please see this report at The Political Carnival.
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Lt. Col. Barry Wingard is a military attorney who represents Fayiz Al-Kandari in the Military Commission process and in no way represents the opinions of his home state. When not on active duty, Colonel Wingard is a public defender in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
All my previous posts on this subject matter can be found here; That link includes audio and video interviews with Lt. Col. Wingard, one by David Shuster, one by Ana Marie Cox, and more. My guest commentary at BuzzFlash is here.
If you are inclined to help rectify these injustices: Twitterers, use the hashtag #FreeFayiz. We have organized a team to get these stories out. If you are interested in helping Fayiz out, e-mail me at The Political Carnival, address in sidebar to the right; or tweet me at @GottaLaff.
If you'd like to see other ways you can take action, go here and scroll down to the end of the article.
Then read Jane Mayer's book The Dark Side. You'll have a much greater understanding of why I post endlessly about this, and why I'm all over the CIA deception issues, too.
More of Fayiz's story here, at Answers.com.
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