HELP OUR BROTHERS IN GUANTANAMO BAY!!!!!
laura hedman is raising money for Reprieve
“HELP OUR BROTHERS IN GUANTANAMO BAY!!!!!”
on 2 May 2006
Story
Please help the brothers at Guantanamo bay, please don't ignore what is happening to our brothers from Britian, who attended the mosques we go to, it could easily be you or someone from your family. Here are some of the names that are currently in Guantanamo bay
Shaker Aamer is a long-term British resident who, when he was abducted in Pakistan and sold to US forces for $5,000, had already applied for British nationality.
For eight years, he has been married to his British wife Zennira and they have four British children aged between three and seven. Even though his family lives in London, the British Government refuses to accept any legal or moral responsibility for him.
Shaker suffered particularly vicious torture in the Dark Prison in Kabul. When he arrived in Guantanamo Bay, he became a respected spokesman for the prisoners and was dubbed ‘The Professor’ by the US Military. In the recent hunger strike in July, he became a leader on the Prisoners’ Council and successfully negotiated a settlement with the military before any of prisoners died. At long last, the Military agreed to respect the Geneva Convention and treat prisoners who have been neither charged nor convicted of any crime in a humane manner.
Unfortunately, the Military reneged on the agreement and when the hunger strike began again on 11th August 2005, Shaker was locked up in solitary confinement.
To date, the British government has declined to intervene on Shaker’s behalf.
Shaker is represented by Reprieve's Legal Director Clive Stafford Smith.
Grabbed in the Gambia
Bisher Al Rawi is a British refugee from Iraq. His entire family has lived in Britain for years, after fleeing Saddam Hussein’s regime. The only reason Bisher did not take out British nationality was that, one day, he hoped to return to Iraq and reclaim his family’s properties. His passion as a young man was for motorbikes.
Contrary to US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s claim that all the Guantanamo Bay prisoners were seized on the battlefield of Afghanistan, Bisher was grabbed in the Gambia, some 500 miles further from Kabul than London. He’d gone there with Jamil El Banna to help his brother, Wahab, set up a mobile peanut processing plant. The family had invested £250,000 in the project, but the money was stolen by the Gambian authorities, who seized Bisher and turned him over to the Americans. They took him first to Afghanistan and then to Guantanamo Bay.
The US insists that Bisher took a ‘weapon of mass destruction’ device with him to Gambia. It turns out this was nothing more than a battery charger, as respected civil rights lawyer Gareth Peirce (who represents Bisher in the UK) has proved by going to Argos and buying one. In fact, there’s no evidence that Bisher has committed a crime of any kind.
The British Government intervened to secure Bisher’s brother Wahab’s release, but has declined to intervene on Bisher’s behalf, because he’s not a British national.
Bisher is represented by Reprieve's Legal Director Clive Stafford Smith and G Brent Mickum from Washington, DC.
| Grabbed in the Gambia Jamil El Banna is a British refugee from Jordan. His wife and children live in London. Along with his friend Bisher al Rawi, Jamil was seized in the Gambia where they’d gone to help set up the al Rawi mobile peanut processing plant. He was seized by the Gambia authorities, turned over to the Americans, who took him first to Afghanistan and then to Guantanamo Bay. The British Government has declined to intervene on Jamil’s behalf on the grounds that he is not a British national. Jamil is represented by Reprieve's Legal Director Clive Stafford Smith, along with G Brent Mickum from Washington, DC. In Britain, he is represented by Gareth Pierce. |
Sent to Guantanamo at fourteen years of age
Mohammed El Gharani was just 14 years old when he was seized by the Pakistanis and sold to the Americans for a bounty.
As a Chad national in Saudi Arabia, his opportunities for education and advancement were extremely limited, so Mohammed left his home shortly before 11th September, 2001, hoping to learn English and train to work with computers.
There is no evidence that Mohammed ever traveled to Afghanistan nor that he intended to do so. Nevertheless, he is now one of twenty juveniles that Reprieve has identified that are being held in Guantanamo Bay.
He states that he has been terribly abused there – including having a cigarette stubbed out on his arm by an interrogator and being constantly abused by guards. Most of his mistreatment stems from his vocal objection to being called a ‘nigger’ by US Military personnel.
The United States has explicitly misled the public about whether children are being held in Guantanamo Bay. On BBC Radio 4’s ‘PM’ programme on January 29, 2004 Jon Manel interviewed Lieutenant Commander Barbara Burfeind at the Department of Defense in Washington:
- BURFEIND: We don't plan on, er, detaining, em, juveniles at Guantanamo further. Er, I can't say in terms of the future of anywhere else.
JON MANEL: Why not at Guantanamo anymore?
BURFEIND: Em, they just, I've just been told that they are not planning on having juveniles at Guantanamo.
This was false when Lt. Cdr. Burfeind made the statement and it remains false today. There are at least nine juveniles in Guantanamo Bay and five other have been released. None is being held in Camp Iguana and some, including Mohammed, are being held in the infamous Camp V – the most onerous of all the Guantanamo camps.
Mohammed is represented by Reprieve's Legal Director Clive Stafford Smith.
A case of mistaken identity
Omar Deghayes is a British refugee from Libya who is being held in Guantanamo Bay on evidence that has been shown to be false. A person appearing on a Chechnyan training videotape seized by the Spanish Government was wrongly identified as Omar. Omar himself has never been to Chechnya and the person portrayed was actually a man called Abu Walid, who died in Chechnya in April 2004.
Based on this misidentification, Omar was placed on the list of the top 50 terrorists in the world and was seized in Pakistan. He was taken to Bagram Airforce Base, tortured, and then transferred to Guantanamo Bay, where he has been held for three years. In one beating by the ERF (Emergency Reaction Force) team, he was permanently blinded in his right eye.
He faces rendition to Libya, where the repressive government of Colonel Gaddafi has already made known its intention to kill him. Omar’s father, Amer Deghayes, was a lawyer and a prominent figure in Libyan public life. When Gaddafi came to power, Amer was assassinated. Three days after the funeral, around twenty family friends and relatives were rounded up and imprisoned by the secret police.
The family eventually managed to flee to Britain, where they already had close ties and a house. Omar was formally given refugee status around 1987. He got a UK driver’s license and a bank account with NatWest. He did his A levels at Davies College and did his legal training at Wolverhampton University. He became a member of the Law Society and took a legal practice course in Huddersfield, although he had not yet completed his qualifications. He still hopes to return to England to continue his legal career.
Curious about life under a strict Islamic regime, Omar decide to visit Afghanistan. While he was there, he met and married an Afghan and had a son, but intended to return to England, where his application for citizenship was still pending.
Then the US bombing began. Fearing for his family, Omar immediately left for Pakistan, hoping to bring his family back home to England. But while he was there, the Pakistani police stormed in, handcuffed him and took him, his wife and child to prison. He was later moved to Guantanamo Bay.
Even though Omar has been a long-term refugee in Britain from the oppressive Gaddafi regime in Libya, the British Government insists he must apply to Libya for ‘consular assistance’. Libyan delegates did indeed visit Omar in Guantanamo. They told him, ‘You have no problems with the US. Your problems are with us.’ The delegate added, ‘You will be brought to judgment in Libya. When we bring you to Libya, I will personally teach you the meaning of this… In here I cannot do anything, but if I meet you [later] I will kill you, if you don’t kill me.”
Reprieve is currently working to secure the help of the UK Government, in order to ensure that Omar is not returned to Libya, but rather to his home in the UK.
| Sold to the United States Jamal Kiyemba is originally from Uganda. His parents separated and his mother moved to London where she raised his siblings. When his father died in an accident in Uganda, Jamal joined his mother, completed school and went to the University of Leicester, where he studied to become a pharmacist. His family in Uganda was divided between strong Catholicism and a moderate strain of Islam. Jamal himself was brought up Catholic, but converted to Islam in University. He was travelling in Pakistan when he was seized and turned over to his American captors for a bounty of $5,000 (which was the amount the US Military were offering for foreign Muslim ‘terrorists’). Jamal had never been to Afghanistan until the Americans took him there and there’s no evidence that he ever committed a hostile act against the US or anyone else. He’s been held in Guantanamo Bay for more than three years. The British Government has declined to intervene on Jamal’s behalf on the grounds that he is not a British national. Jamal is represented by Reprieve's Legal Director Clive Stafford Smith and in Britain, by Louise Christian. |
| Tortured by proxy Binyam was born on 24th July, 1978, in Ethiopia and came to Britain on 9th March, 1994, where he sought political asylum and was given leave to remain while his case was resolved. He remained in Britain for 7 years during which time two sets of lawyers were dismissed from his case for failing to pursue his claims in a timely manner. While he waited, Binyam developed a drug habit, which he only managed to overcome when he rediscovered his religious faith. He became a volunteer cleaner at a heritage centre and then decided to leave Britain to escape London’s drug scene and to learn more about his religion in Afghanistan. When the war came, Binyam wanted to leave the region as soon as he could, but his travel documents had been stolen and he couldn’t get to the British Embassy, as it was surrounded by Pakistanis keen to abduct ‘foreigners’ for whom the Americans were offering bounty payments. A British friend agreed to lend him a passport so he could get back to Britain, but he never managed to leave the country. Binyam was arrested at the airport by a Pakistani immigration unit who turned him over to the Americans. When they refused to let him go, he asked what crime he had committed, and insisted on having a lawyer if he was going to be interrogated. The FBI told him, ‘The rules have changed. You don’t get a lawyer.’ Binyam refused to speak to them. British agents confirmed his identity to the Americans and he was warned that he’d be taken to a Middle Eastern country for harsh treatment. He didn’t believe them, but on 21st July 2002 Binyam was transferred to Morocco in a CIA plane. He was held there for 18 months in appalling conditions. When he refused to confess to being an Al-Qaida agent, his Moroccan captors tortured him, stripping him naked and cutting him with scalpel on his chest. Binyam described what happened next: ‘One of them took my penis in his hand and began to make cuts. He did it once, and they stood still for maybe a minute, watching my reaction. I was in agony, crying, trying desperately to suppress myself, but I was screaming… They must have done this 20 to 30 times, in maybe two hours. There was blood all over.’His ordeal in Morocco continued for about 18 months until January 2004, when he was transferred to the Dark Prison in Kabul, then to Bagram Airforce base, and finally onto Guantanamo Bay in September 2004, where he remains. Binyam is represented by Reprieve's Legal Director Clive Stafford Smith. |
Al-Jazeera journalist Sami Muhyideen is a cameraman for Al-Jazeera who has spent over three years in Guantanamo Bay. He was sent on assignment by the station to cover the war in Afghanistan in October 2001. The following month, after the fall of Kabul, Sami left Afghanistan for Pakistan with the rest of his crew. Still on assignment for Al-Jazeera, in early December the crew were given visas to return to Afghanistan. When he tried to re-enter Afghanistan with the crew Sami was arrested by the Pakistani authorities – at the request of the US. Sami’s crew never saw him again – he was imprisoned, handed over to the Americans in January 2002, taken to Bagram, then Kandahar, and finally to Guantanamo in June 2002. For months, the US did not even suggest charges against Sami, instead demanding that he should become a witness against Al-Jazeera and accuse the television station of links to terror. They wanted him to say that Al-Jazeera has a ‘business relationship’ with Al-Qaida, that Al-Qaida has infiltrated Al-Jazeera, and that some of his colleagues at the station were working for Al-Qaida. They offered him release and lifetime protection if he turned informant on his employers. Sami has refused to do so, insisting consistently that there are no such connections between Al-Jazeera and Al-Qaida. Sami is represented by Reprieve's Legal Director Clive Stafford Smith. |
These Brothers have done NOTHING but lead a normal life worshiping ALLAH swt. may Allah swt bless and help them and their family who are going though the most hardest time!
The tortuer they have suffered is inhumaine and evil!
not only are they torturing them but also the Quran too!
Pentagon admits prison guards abused Koran kicking the Muslim holy book around and splashing it with urine in Guantanamo Bay!!!
All i am asking for is to support them by donating a small amount to help reprieve do the following,
every little helps!
IF U CANT DONATE THEN HELP SUPPORT THESE BROTHERS IN ANY WAY U CAN
The Holy prophet Muhammad S.A.W said:
one who helps a fellow muslim in removing his difficulty in this world, Allah swt will reove the former's distress on the day of judgment. (Hazrat Abu Hurairah R.A.A)
May allah bless you all.
visit
http://web.amnesty.org/pages/guantanamobay-index-eng