...wasn't one of the guys arrested when he was 11 years old?
Imagine that for a second... forget you're a conservative and actually think for a few moments.
US warplanes carpet bomb an Afghan mountain valley, killing an extended family of goat herders who never even heard the name Osama bin Laden. The surviving 11 year old grabs his dead father's AK 47 and attempts to round up some of the shell shocked goats.
American troops pour into the valley... the kids thinks they must be Russians re-invading so he fires his clip of bullets, hitting no one.
The American soldiers, none of whom speak Arabic, capture the kid... beat the shit out of him when he can't answer questions asked in English, then ship him off to Guantanamo.
There he spends seven years being regularly beaten, raped, tortured, waterboarded, and starved. The interrogators use truth drugs on him, deprive him of sleep and sexually molest him (yes, this is happening).
After a couple of years the kid attempts suicide (90% of Gitmo detainees have tried), but survives till 2009.
Now that a new administration learns there is absolutely no evidence; that no charges can pressed against the young man, his torture routine is suspended.
But you guys think THIS small act of Christian mercy is objectionable...?
Morons.
The Luke
If you're talking about this kid, he was 14 when he was arrested.
Judge orders release of young Gitmo detaineeHe was identified as al-Qaida at 11, arrested by Pakistan police at 14
U.S. District Judge Richard Leon ordered the release of Mohammed el Gharani, who was arrested by Pakistan police at 14.
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Art Lien/NBC News
updated 2:16 p.m. HT, Wed., Jan. 14, 2009
WASHINGTON - A federal judge on Wednesday ordered the military to release one of its first Guantanamo Bay detainees, a 21-year-old man who has been detained and accused of being a terrorist since he was 14.
Mohammed el Gharani, who is of Chadian nationality but had lived in Saudi Arabia, should be released from the U.S. prison in Cuba "forthwith," U.S. District Judge Richard Leon said in a ruling from the bench.
The military had accused el Gharani of being part of al-Qaida, working for the Taliban and fighting American forces in Afghanistan. However, Leon said those accusations were based on testimony from other Guantanamo Bay detainees, which he found unreliable.
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"Simply stated, a mosaic of tiles bearing images this murky reveals nothing about the petitioner with sufficient clarity, either individually or collectively, that can be relied upon by this court," Leon said.
El Gharani listened to the ruling live by telephone from Cuba but did not react.
He could be on his way home to his family in a few weeks, lawyer Zackary Katznelson said. "Judge Leon did justice today."
The government can appeal Leon's decision.
"We're disappointed by the ruling and will consider our options," Justice Department spokesman Dean Boyd said.
El Gharani was arrested in Pakistan in 2001 at a mosque by local police, and turned over to United States forces in 2002. He was one of the first Guantanamo Bay detainees and also one of the youngest.
Katznelson said el Gharani now has spent a third of his life in military prison in Cuba. "He never should have been in prison in the first place," Katznelson said.
He was accused of receiving military training from al-Qaida in Afghanistan and serving as a courier for several high-ranking members. He also is accused of fighting against U.S. and coalition forces at the battle of Tora Bora in Afghanistan in late 2001 and of being a member of an al-Qaida cell based in London in 1998.
El Gharani denied all of the accusations.
The government's only evidence is statements made by two other Guantanamo Bay detainees whose credibility and reliability has been called into question by "government personnel," Leon said.
For example, El Gharani's lawyers pointed out that he would have been 11 in 1998, when he is accused of being part of an al-Qaida cell in England.
And "putting aside the obvious and unanswered questions as to how a Saudi minor from a very poor family could have even become a member of a London-based cell, the government simply advances no corroborating evidence for these statements it believes to be reliable from a fellow detainee, the basis of whose knowledge is — at best — unknown," Leon said.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28660621/
