Word: qahtani
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...report on the interrogation log of detainee Mohammed al-Qahtani was criticized by readers who think that U.S. forces treat suspected terrorists better than they ought to expect. Other readers were alarmed by the government's departure from the rule of law and respect for human rights...
Although I have always felt that President George W. Bush and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld are bad for the U.S. and the world, your article actually made me feel a bit of respect for some of their policies. The interrogation you described involved only disrespect to Mohammed al-Qahtani's personal dignity. That man is not an innocent Iraqi being dragged around Abu Ghraib on a leash. He is suspected of being the so-called 20th hijacker on Sept. 11, 2001. If he had had his way, United Airlines Flight 93 would have plummeted into the White House...
...Qahtani has never been charged with a crime, has no lawyer and remains in detention at Guantánamo. But his case is already the subject of several probes in Washington. A year ago, a senior FBI counterterrorism official wrote the Pentagon complaining of abuses that FBI agents said they witnessed at the naval base. The agents reported seeing or hearing of "highly aggressive interrogation techniques." The letter singles out the treatment of al-Qahtani in September and October of 2002--before the log obtained by TIME begins--saying a dog was used "in an aggressive manner to intimidate Detainee...
Interrogators eventually compelled al-Qahtani to focus on his fellow detainees at Guantánamo. In that process, he implicated more than 20 other Gitmo prisoners as members of al-Qaeda or associates of bin Laden's, according to the Los Angeles Times. A military board has since used al-Qahtani's identification as a factor in prolonging the detention of some of them. Whether he has won more favorable treatment in return for his cooperation is unknown. But at least one of those he named, a Yemeni, is now claiming in a U.S. federal court that al-Qahtani's statements...
President Bush has said the U.S. would apply principals consistent with the Geneva Conventions to "unlawful combatants," subject to military necessity, at Guantánamo and elsewhere. The Pentagon argues that al-Qahtani's treatment was always "humane." But the Geneva Conventions forbid any "outrage on personal dignity." Eric Freedman, a constitutional-law expert and consultant in some of the growing number of federal lawsuits challenging U.S. treatment of these detainees, says, "If the techniques described in this interrogation log are not outrages to personal dignity, then words have no meaning." Then again, in the war on terrorism, the personal dignity...