President George W. Bush has made it clear repeatedly that his war on international terrorism is not simply a campaign to revenge the horrors of Sept. 11. Almost every time he speaks of his anti-terrorism offensive, he includes the point that the World Trade Center outrage was an attack upon the American way of life and all that America holds dear. Chief among the values which the United States always claims that it treasures, is that it is “The Land of the Free”. This is a sacrosanct part of the mantra by which Americans seek to hold up their way of life as superior to any other. This indeed is the standard that they seek to impose upon other countries, in return for their economic or political support, though it should be remembered that when it suited Washington, it has also propped up vile dictatorships such as those of South America.
Nevertheless, if we take America’s assessment of itself at face value, we can with reason ask what the US authorities think they have been doing holding hundreds suspects incommunicado and in secret in US jails since the New York attacks? One such suspect has finally managed to speak out about his incarceration in a solitary confinement inside a US jail.
A 35-year-old Kuwaiti, Nabil Al-Marabh, has told reporters that for eight months he was kept in isolation, refused any access to a lawyer or any outsider at all and was twice beaten and tortured by his captives. He further claims that he went on five hunger strikes and each time was punished, by being forced to sleep in his own filth and was given inadequate water with which to keep himself clean. In the days following Sept. 11, Al-Marabh was extremely high on the wanted list of 1,200 terrorists produced by the US law and order authorities. He was allegedly a link man with a convicted Jordanian terrorist. When he was arrested, he was subject to intensive questioning in which he alleges torture was used, while massive resources were deployed to check into everything possible in his background. Eleven months later, it seems that the most that the US government can accuse him of is a minor border violation.
In the immediate aftermath of the WTC bombings, when it was suspected that further outrages were imminent, it is perhaps understandable that Washington chose to keep secret exactly whom they had scooped up in their nationwide dragnet. If these people really had been terrorists, knowledge of their arrest could have caused terrorists still at liberty to adjust their plans. Nevertheless, eleven months on, we still do not know who these individuals are, nor even precisely how many of them there are. The last time the US Justice Department gave an official figure was last November. The majority of detainees is being held for immigration law violations or if that is not possible, as material witnesses.
Normally under the rule of US law, on which Washington prides itself so much, these men would have to be charged with a crime or released, and their identities would be a matter of court record. But they have not been.
Is there one law for the Americans and another for everyone else? If there is, then all America’s protests about Iraq and North Korea and Iran, regimes which they claim traduce human rights, are so much baloney.
