Tag Archives: inayatullah

Inayatullah died yesterday.  He had been in jail since January, 2007.  He hadn’t been convicted of anything.  He never had a trial.  He was never even charged with a crime.  Inayatullah killed

None of these men have been convicted of anything

himself.  He had no hope of  release except for permanent, eternal release.  His current reality was bad enough that he took it.  He was 37.  Authorities would not reveal details.  They don’t want anybody to know how he did it.  I guess they don’t want to give anybody ideas.

Of the 170 prisoners there, none of whom have been convicted of any crime, and all of whom have been horribly mistreated, he is the 8th one to die in the less than 10 years the prison camp has been open.  Six were ruled suicides.  Two were of natural causes.  How natural can it be, I wonder, when a 48 year old man collapses and dies from a little bit of exercise.

But he’d undoubtedly been tortured a bit, too.  Because they torture people in that prison.  It’s what they do.  It’s its raison d’existence.

Guantanamo: making Andersonville seem like a mild case of benign neglect.

I don’t know where to begin.  Torture is wrong, even if it is done to convicted prisoners, even if it is done to elicit information.  But these people haven’t been convicted of anything, and any information value they ever had ended years ago.  The world changes.  None of them have got any new information, that’s for sure.  So, it’s just vindictive.  And, I repeat, they haven’t been convicted of anything.  Most of them haven’t even been charged with anything.  And we’ve taken their lives.  In a slow, grinding, cruel beyond belief manner we have stolen their present and their future, their spirit, their hope and their will to live.

And we are responsible.  Even those of us who’ve objected to it publicly, voted for politicians who said they were against it, signed petitions and sent e-mails are guilty.  Because we haven’t objected to it loudly enough and petitions and e-mails are just pissing in the wind.

Guantanamo is an abomination to humanity and it is to our eternal shame that it continues to exist.