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By Ahmed Rabbani

I have no interest in revenge, but I would like people to know what happened to me and how it has been swept under the carpet.

4 Feb 2021 – President Biden is someone who has suffered his own personal tragedies: first losing his wife and daughter in 1972 to an accident, and then his son Beau from a brain tumor. He has felt so much pain; I hope that means he will understand mine. The last two decades of my life have been a nightmare without end — and the worst of it is that my family are also trapped inside it.

I sit here writing this in Guantánamo Bay, and I can only hope the president finds some empathy for my situation, and that of the other detainees who languish here in this terrible prison.

When I was kidnapped from Karachi in 2002 and sold to the CIA for a bounty with a false story that I was a terrorist called Hassan Ghul, my wife and I had just had the happy news that she was pregnant. She gave birth to my son Jawad a few months later. I have never been allowed to meet my own child. President Biden is a man who speaks of the importance of family. I wonder if he can imagine what it would be like to have never touched his own son. Mine will soon be 18 years old, and I have not been there to help him or to guide him.

I have been locked up for his entire childhood, without charges or a trial. In that time, the president has served a full term as a Senator, eight years as vice president of the US, and challenged Donald Trump for the presidency and won, fulfilling his life’s ambition. I doubt I would have done anything like that, but I can’t help but question what I might have done with those years, had they not been stolen.

When Biden took the oath of office to become vice president in January 2009, at Barack Obama’s side, he joined an administration that had sworn to close Guantánamo. An executive order, issued that week, promised to “restore the standards of due process and the core constitutional values that have made this country great even in the midst of war”. Obama promised on his second day in office to close “Gitmo” for good.

I am not here to judge him for the failure to carry out those plans in the face of obstruction in Congress or to suggest that it will be easy to close Guantánamo now. But it gives me heart that the US is again led by a president who believes in justice and the rule of law.

The Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA torture was completed “on his watch,” as they say, in 2014. It’s a report that I feature in. It says that I was tortured for 540 days in the ‘Dark Prison’ in Afghanistan “without authorization” — whether that makes it better or worse, I am still undecided. I can confirm that the torture did take place, although I couldn’t have counted the days myself: the days and nights blended into one while I was hung from a bar in a black pit, in agony as my shoulders dislocated.

I doubt that President Biden can understand what this torture is like; to hear a woman screaming in the next room and to be told it is your wife, and that if you do not do as they insist, they will rape her or kill her.

I have no interest in revenge, but I would like people to know what happened to me and how it has been swept under the carpet – so that we are protected from presidents like Biden’s predecessor who might make someone face it again. The stain of torture can be excised from American history. Biden and his administration can’t just put their heads in the sand and pretend it did not happen.

The US is currently paying $13.8 million a year just to keep me here, so he could save a lot of money by just letting me go home. I am just taxi driver from Karachi, a victim of mistaken identity. The CIA even captured the real Hassan Ghul, but after interrogating him they let him go and kept me imprisoned. Perhaps they are embarrassed by their mistake?

As Biden settles in the White House, he will be living in splendor. I don’t want to compare the Oval Office to my cell here in Guantánamo. However, it strikes agony into my heart to think about how my family — without a father or husband — live in such miserable conditions.

The new president will attend fancy banquets, while I am in year seven of a hunger strike, protesting the fact that I am held without trial. I am under half of the weight I was when I was first seized in Karachi, and the way it has been going, even while they force-feed me, I will die here in my cell.

President Biden has the power to do something. I would like justice, obviously, for all the abuse I have suffered, but most importantly, I do not want to go home in a coffin or a body bag. I just want to go home to my family, and to finally – for the first time — hold my son.

Ahmed Rabbani, Guantánamo ISN 1461, supplied this op-ed via the human rights organization Reprieve.

8 February 2021

Source: www.transcend.org

By Mazin Qumsiyeh

3 Feb 2021 – Last few nights, I slept very little and not just because I had a lot of work (95% of it volunteer work) but because of thinking, reading and trying to analyze where we as a people (Homo sapiens) are going. Questions that swirl in my mind are things like have we as a people:

• learned anything from the pandemic or are we going to continue down the unsustainable paths of greed, consumerism, and injury to our planet,
• the ability to switch to empathy, caring, honesty, and dignity.

The answers I was getting challenged soul and mind. Vaccine apartheid is being practiced and not just in Palestine (Israeli colonizers get it, Palestinians don’t) but around the world as rich (white ruled) countries who became rich because of a history of colonization and oppression get it while developing/poor countries impoverished by the attacks of the West (like Yemen and Syria) do not.

As my readers know, my wife and I have returned to Palestine in 2008 leaving an economically comfortable life in the USA. My main reason for returning was that I had thought that we could contribute to challenging the global system from here better than from the US (both are occupied). We thought we could help young people here more than in the US. We thought we could help build an environment where young people are empowered by building institutions here (like Palestine Institute for Biodiversity and Sustainability at Bethlehem University – PalestineNature.org) and teaching at universities (I taught and still teach at several universities). In retrospect I would say a) we underestimated the challenges, and b) we were right that the work here is far more important than in the USA. The two things are not incompatible. Let me explain:

1. More challenge than anticipated: The engineered mental colonization was much deeper than we thought. See published chapter about this with one young person http://www.palestinenature.org/research/B46-QumsiyehandAmr.pdf. This is so pervasive in all levels of society from governments to NGOs to academia. It is pervasive from leaders to common people on the street. It holds up progress. It is not an insurmountable challenge. As discussed in that chapter, we should start with small foci, emphasize those principled who act for the good of others, those who self sacrifice, and those who lose their lives in the struggle (martyrs). Those heroes light the way for so many; they are our role models; they keep the hope alive. For others, we merely have to remind them regularly and persistently that apathy or going along with the status quo is not god even for themselves from a selfish standpoint. We all eventually die. And as Jesus said: What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, and yet lose or forfeit their very self? Or as is known from Islam: the greater Jihad is the inner jihad to reform our own self (Hadith). Or the Golden Rule found in all religions do unto others what you like done to you (or don’t do to others what you don’t like being done to you).
2. Correct choice: The US still needs a lot of work and I hope my first trip abroad will be to the US continue trying to change its policies. But Palestine needs even more. The Palestinian factions are meeting in Cairo to try to iron out the details o the arrangements in terms of election. I disagreed with Oslo process of capitulation (the second Nakba for us – see Edward Said and my 1990s writings on this) including its delusion of a state under occupation/elections under occupation etc. Many independent voices are not happy with this. They may reluctantly vote. But if people are to run in elections, they should have a clear program which 98% of the Palestinian people would support. Below highlights key points agreed to by many people (various discussions over the past few weeks with key figures) that should/must be included in such electoral program to produce the needed societal change. But anyway, working on the ground on these things is a must for all of us.

Suggested Electoral Platform/Program for Palestine

1. Principles in politics: Support for te Universal Declaration of Human rights (UDHR) including rights of refugees, rejection of discrimination based on religion (e.g. we do not support a Jewish, an Islamic, or a Christian state but states of their people). Palestinian UN recognized human rights are not negotiable. These rights include:
   • the right of return for refugees to their homes and lands and to be compensated for their suffering,
   • the full equality to women (in all aspects of social, educational and economic rights,
   • the right to education to all,
   • the right to due process of law,
   • the right to clean and healthy environment,
   • right to food/sustenance and shelter among others per UDHR.
2. There shall be complete freedom of expression through all communication strategy. A legislative law that nullifies the so called “electronic crimes decree” and replaces it with a clear law that guarantees all people rights including freedom of speech and freedom of the press must be produced.
3. There must be mechanisms created to weed out corruption, nepotism and other unethical behaviors in all levels of society. Laws and systems must be instituted that allows return of any public money and REFORM (perhaps a truth and reconciliation committee) and this must go hand in hand with reform of the judiciary and making it completely independent of executive and legislative branches. (We must weed out political appointment of judges). This way legal system is used effectively in case of reconciliation and truth committees fail to address the needs of change.
4. Government service is service for the people. a) The president, legislative council members, and national council members should serve no more than five years renewable with election for a maximum of 10 years in each position. b) Legislators shall not get salary from government nor any special benefit. c) They are serving their country on a volunteer basis. No one should serve in the government who has engaged in any corrupt practices (carrying favor, bribes etc.).
5. Society must take care of its vulnerable communities. This includes taking care of the haircap (special need) and elderly population.
6. Our environment must be protected. The legislative council shall issue laws the give incentives for a green economy and disincentives for pollution, use of disposable items (e.g. plastic).
7. We recognize that Oslo accords were a disaster for the Palestinian people and in anycase has expired in 1999 (they were interim accords for five years). We enter these elections not because we agree to the corrupt system that allowed elections for prisoners but because it provides a platform to present principled positions articulated above. We thus commit not to engage in any process that strengthens the status quo under occupation. We commit to weaken this authority and re-strengthen an independent PLO working outside of the limited power of the Oslo legislative council.

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Mazin Qumsiyeh, associate professor of genetics and director of cytogenetic services at Yale University School of Medicine, is founder and president of the Holy Land Conservation Foundation and ex-president of the Middle East Genetics Association.

8 February 2021

Source: www.transcend.org

Moazzam Begg

it is your turn to decide.

” which will now allow nationals from the Muslim-majority countries previously targeted into the United States

there is another deeply flawed and unjust process that has continued through five US presidential administrations spanning two decades: Guantánamo Bay prison. Guantánamo Bay has existed for over nineteen years and was built to house an exclusively Muslim male population.

but timeless. That is why we are writing to you.

however

and sold for bounties to the US by nations that cared little for the rule of law. We were rendered to countries where we were physically and psychologically tortured in addition to suffering racial and religious discrimination in US custody—even before we arrived at Guantánamo.

and sold for bounties to the US by nations that cared little for the rule of law. We were rendered to countries where we were physically and psychologically tortured in addition to suffering racial and religious discrimination in US custody—even before we arrived at Guantánamo.