Gitmo (Updated) 0
Why is the concentration camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, still open.
Even the Current Federal Administrator has said that he wants it closed.
One answer is obvious.
If it were closed, the truth of what has been going on there will come out. We can pretty much expect to hear more stuff like this, as Bushies loose their grips on the handles of secrecy (emphasis added):
(snip)
Today Garzón ruled the pair were suffering severe mental and physical problems after their time in Guantánamo and were not fit to stand trial in Spain.
Garzón, Spain’s leading investigative judge who sits at the national court in Madrid, archived the case against the pair, basing his decision on medical reports on their condition provided by the British authorities.
According to the judge’s order, two British doctors, Jonathan Derek Fluxman and Helen Bamber, examined the pair at the Harrow Road health centre in February and diagnosed serious medical conditions caused by torture at the hands of their captors and the inhumane conditions in which they were kept for five years.
Banna is said to be severely depressed, suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and to have diabetes, hyper-tension, back pain and damage to the back of his left knee. Deghayes is also suffering from PTSD, depression, is blind in his right eye, and has fractures in his nasal bone and right index finger. Both men are said to present a high risk of suicide.
The doctors’ report on Deghayes, signed by Fluxman, concluded that “given all these factors, I don’t see how Mr Deghayes would be able to give instructions to his lawyers, listen to evidence and give his own accurate testimony”.
A similar conclusion was drawn in the case of Banna. The doctors said were he to be separated from his wife and children again, he risked a severe deterioration of his already fragile mental health.
Garzón’s order said these medical conditions had been confirmed by two forensic doctors in Spain, and said the “PTSD and depression mark a before and after in the lives and psychiatric” condition of the two men. It said their recovery was “uncertain”, meaning they were not capable of defending themselves in any potential trial.
The order blamed the medical condition of Banna on the “five years [he spent] in secret prisons in Gambia and Afghanistan and latterly in Guantánamo … in inhumane conditions”, during which time he was tortured, resulting in the “progressive deterioration of his mental condition”. In the case of Deghayes, it said he was tortured and badly treated in prisons in Islamabad, Bagram and finally Guantánamo before his release at the end of last year.
Balloon Juice has more.
Addendum, Later That Same Evening:
The Group News Blog.
