LIVE: updates and reaction to the Guantánamo files

The Guardian, with others, has received access to a cache of more than 700 leaked files on Guantánamo Bay detainees. The files reveal that innocent people were interrogated for years on slimmest pretexts, and that children, elderly and mentally ill among those wrongfully held. Follow live coverage here 8.32am: On Comment is free, the Guardian’s Julian Glover writes that “what is given new prominence by these latest Guantánamo files is the cold, incompetent stupidity of the system: a system that tangled up the old and the young, the sick and the innocent. A system in which to say you were not a terrorist might be taken as evidence of your cunning.” “If you could only know what we can know, you would understand that what we are doing is right,” our leaders used to assure us. Well now we really do know – we have the documents, we have the transcripts of interviews with former prisoners, we have everything it takes to understand the nasty story of Guantánamo, exposed today in 759 leaked documents containing the words of the people who ran the place. And it is obvious that we should have seen through the evasions from the start. The clinical idiocy of this dreadful place is the most chilling thing of all, since it strips away even the cynical but persuasive defence: it was harsh but it worked and it kept the world safe. It didn’t work, much of the time. These files show that some of the information collected was garbage and that many of those held knew nothing that could be of use to the people demanding answers from them. Far from securing the fight against terror, the people running the camp faced an absurdist battle to educate a 14-year-old peasant boy kidnapped by an Afghan tribe and treat the dementia, depression and osteoarthritis of an 89-year-old man caught up in a raid on his son’s house. Other cases are just as pathetic. Jamal al-Harith, born Ronald Fiddler in Manchester in 1966, was imprisoned by the Taliban as a possible spy, after being found wandering through Afghanistan as a Muslim convert. In a movement of Kafkaesque horror the Americans held him in Camp X-Ray simply because he had been a prisoner of its enemy. “He was expected to have knowledge of Taliban treatment of prisoners and interrogation tactics,” the files record. 8am: This morning the Guardian and others have published a cache of files on Guantánamo Bay detainees , which lift the lid on life inside the controversial prison camp in Cuba. The Guantánamo files reveal… • A number of British nationals and residents were held for years despite US authorities being aware they were not Taliban or al-Qaida members. One Briton, Jamal al-Harith was rendered to Guantánamo simply because he had been held in a Taliban prison and was thought to have knowledge of their interrogation techniques. • US authorities relied heavily on information obtained from a small number of detainees under torture. They continued to maintain this testimony was reliable even after admitting that the prisoners who provided it had been mistreated. • US authorities listed the main Pakistani intelligence service, the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI), as a terrorist organisation alongside groups like al-Qaida, Hamas, Hezbollah and Iranian intelligence. Some of the most shocking aspects of the leaked files relate to individuals’ stories. The 89-year-old Afghan villager who was detained at Guantanamo Bay despite suffering from dementia, depression and sickness. The 14-year-old boy , who had been an innocent kidnap victim, but was still imprisoned. Other files reveal that almost 100 of the inmates who passed through Guantanamo are listed by their captors as having had depressive or psychotic illness. The Guantánamo files are among hundreds of thousands of documents US soldier Bradley Manning is accused of having turned over to the Wikileaks website more than a year ago. They were obtained by the New York Times, who shared them with the Guardian, which is publishing extracts today, having redacted information which might identify informants. The New York Times says the files were made available to it not by Wikileaks, but “by another source on the condition of anonymity”. Separately a different collaboration of European and US newspapers received the cache from Wikileaks, and has also published on the Guantánamo files today. You can browse the files and visit the Guardian’s Today we’ll follow all the latest reaction to the revelations as it happens. The Guantánamo files Guantánamo Bay United States Afghanistan Adam Gabbatt guardian.co.uk

Posted by on April 25, 2011. Filed under News, Politics, World News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.