Guantanamo: Conditions Improved Considerably

This just in:

Guantanamo Bay conditions have improved: Red Cross

Detainees are enjoying better treatment at the U.S. prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, and the Red Cross is satisfied with its access to them, the humanitarian agency's chief said on Tuesday.

Jakob Kellenberger, president of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), said detention conditions at Guantanamo had "improved considerably" over the past four years.

Of course, it's in the news almost everywhere all over the world.

This will make headlines in the Germany media!

Well, probably not.

Comments

[che.ge]

I'm jumping for joy. This is good news. Does that make that Guantanamo legal? No. Will the US (God's gift to the world) respect international law in the future? No. So, business as usual, folks. Why care?

[joe]

Do you have a reference on your international law? Where is it contained?

[George M]

Che

Grow up! Germany makes up its own rules and acts the way it wants to. It does not follow international law.

Case at hand #1: Germany captures within its borders a Palestinian terrorist, who hijacked an American airliner from Athens in 1986. During his murder spree, he tortures an American on board, and ceremoniously throws his body on the runway.

International law would demand that the crime, which took place on board an American vessel (air craft), and whose victim was an American, be handled in an American jurisdiction. But oh no! Germany does not like that this sad piece of shit could face the death penalty. Germany tries him and sentences him to life.

But a life sentence for murder is not a life sentence. Some stupid German woman, named Osthof, gets captured by Iraqi insurgents. The Merkel government frees this sack of shit back to his family in Hamas controlled Lebanon in order to get Osthof back from the insurgents.

Case at Hand #2: Thousands of Germans were imprisoned or murdered while escaping in the former DDR. There were 240 cases of Germans murdered by communist border patrols between 1963 and 1989. Murder or manslaughter are usually felonies that have life sentences tacked on to them. The commander of the border guards received a 7 year sentence. The rest of the 240 individuals accused received wrist slaps.

Such is justice in Germany. Kill and eat your neighbor or friend...8 year sentence....murder your sister in an honor killing....you get to go home to Turkey....murder and torture an American...16 years and you walk....kill 240 fellow Germans while working in a repressive political regime...wrist slap.....kill jews and make medical experiments on them.....you get to live in Argentina or Brazil.

[Punnes]

Come on,

this article is not about Guantanamo being a good thing or a bad thing. It is about our one-sided and biased press in Germany, reporting only on Americas evil deeds and not on improvements.

Good work again, David!

[Jake]

For those concerned about the US breaking "international law" in its efforts to reign in international terrorists, I ask what the "international community" has done in the last five years to update its "laws" to keep pace with the challenges of non-state actors in the era of international terrorism? For those not paying attention, I'll give you a hint. Not much.

The "international community's" complaints about the US facilities at Guantonomo sound much like Arab complaints about Palestinian "refugee camps" or Democrat blocking of immigration reform in the US. Those complaining have the power to solve the problem, but prefer to keep the issues burning, so they have something to demagogue.

So to our European "friends", I say, until you stop blocking serious dialogue of Geneva Conventions reform, anything you say about Guantanam will be received in America for what it is, empty demagoguery.

[grlzjustwant2havefun]

--So, business as usual, folks. Why care? --

By jove, I think he's got it!

[Toe-pi]

Quite seriously, folks, do Germany and the rest of Europe actually care about Guantanamo? Not in the least, as this editorial, which is a couple of days old, in the Wall Street Journal indisputably demonstrates:

Gitmo's Nomads
April 25, 2006; Page A18

As a measure of Europe's concern for the men held at Guantanamo, we offer the story of 15 Uighur inmates. Captured in Afghanistan where they were for reasons that remain unclear, the men are not considered "enemy combatants" by the U.S. military, which wants to release them.

Only these Uighurs can't go home to China, which brutally represses this Turkic-speaking Muslim minority of some eight million living in the country's northwestern corner. So Washington is looking for a third country willing to grant sanctuary. Sweden, France, Germany, Finland, Norway, Switzerland and Turkey are among those that have been approached, according to news reports. You'd think that Europe, so critical of U.S. detention policies, would jump at an opportunity to reduce the prisoner pool at Gitmo. Yet not a single country has offered to take them in.

Last week the U.S. Supreme Court deferred to a lower court an appeal by two of the Uighurs who want to be released in the U.S. If Washington's talks with Europe falter, U.S. asylum may be the only humane option. But the Uighurs are not America's problem alone. They were picked up during the "good war" -- good in the sense that Europe supported it -- in Afghanistan. The German daily Die Welt reports that Berlin rejected Washington's request because it didn't want to offend Beijing. When we called the German government, the reply was a curt "no comment."

Chancellor Angela Merkel has done much to repair the diplomatic damage done by her predecessor Gerhard Schröder. But even she found it necessary to open her first visit to Washington in January with a call to close Guantanamo. Ms. Merkel will be back in Washington next month, giving her an opportunity to show that she wasn't playing to the anti-American gallery. Reserving 15 seats for the Uighurs on her flight back might do the trick.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB114592525992034758-search.html?KEYWORDS=angela+merkel+guantanamo&COLLECTION=wsjie/6month

Note from David: Funny, just today I prepared a posting on this article. It will be posted tomorrow (Friday, April 28). Anyway, thanks for the comment.

[jane m]

Europe cares as much about Guantanomo prisoners as it does about the murdered victims in Dafur - nada, zilch. There only interest is condemnation of the hated US.

[jane m]

Sorry for misspellings "Guantanamo" "Their" only interest...

[neocon]

kinda offtopic, but actual.
http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/0,1518,412099,00.html
Im Gespräch für den Schleudersitz sind unter anderem Medienprofis wie Tony Snow vom Bush-freundlichen Kabelsender Fox News, Dan Senor, vormals Sprecher der US-Verwaltung im Irak, Ex-Pentagon-Sprecherin Victoria Clarke und McClellans Vize Dan Bartlett.

Why do they keep on calling Fox a Bush-friendly TV station?
Do they ever call New York Times a Bush-hater newspaper?
Or do they ever call Bill/Hillary Clinton "the CBS/ABC/NBC favourite"?

On the other hand, you can hear a lot of liberals at Fox. But I haven't seen any conservative at ABC/NBC/CBS...

[joe]

neocon,

Because FOX does not fit the M$M template, either American or euroland, of trashing the POTUS at every opportunity.

It is the M$M various of "you're with us or you're against us".

[che.ge]

Sandy,

so the US captures some guys in Afghanistan, and after beeing tired of playing with them they want to deport them to Germany? And we should be happy and grateful that we are allowed to take them? Flattering.

Jane,

do you sometimes watch FOX? Bill O'Reilly? I love this guy. Who is the liberal? Alan Colmes?

Joe,

thanks for the lovely remarks about the german people. I wonder what the world would say if we would evict inmates to the US which get then killed in gas chambers. Or is it the chair now? Or the syringe? Sweet.

[Mike H.]

che, "I'm jumping for joy. This is good news. Does that make that Guantanamo legal? No. Will the US (God's gift to the world) respect international law in the future? No. So, business as usual, folks. Why care?"

I don't believe that the US is screaming for the german prisoners to be released. Only for the extraditable detainees who have committed crimes against American citizens to be turned over to us.
Finally, che, as with your namesake, do you hope to be put in charge of the german prisons so you can kill traitors of the revolution? That was his position in Cuba before he went to central America.

"They assert that Che Guevara was responsible for the torture and execution of thousands of people in Cuban prisons, and the murder of many more peasants in the regions controlled or visited by his guerrilla forces.[61]" Wikipedia Che Guevara

[joe]

Che,

I normally do not reply to individuals who I do not know. In this case, you were so gracious with your comment toward me; I felt I should make an exception.

I must admit I have no idea why you are being so gracious, as I believe I asked for a reference to the international law you were quoting. I now realize you might have taken this to mean I had given you an opportunity to display your knowledge and this is why you are thanking me. If this is in fact the case then I am sure you will not disappoint us. So please do provide your references.

Then again it is possible you have me confused with someone else.

As I did not raise a question about german law in this thread you have me at a bit of a disadvantage. Equally it would appear you have limited knowledge about the US legal system.

I shall try to give you a very brief overview. The US is a nation of laws. The elected representatives of the people enact these laws. With each is a range of penalties for a person who violates these laws and is convicted. Those charged are considered innocent until they are proven guilty by the state in a court of law. Those charged have certain rights, which are protected by our constitution. (As an aside, this was one of the differences between the US Constitution and the EU document. The granting of rights to an individual and the limiting of government.)

One key element of the US justice system is the right of the accused to be judged by a jury of his peers. If convicted of a capital offense, this same jury will determine if he should get life in prison, life without parole, or death. Normally a very small percentage of convicted criminals are given the death penalty. Because a sentence of death is the ultimate penalty, these sentences are automatically reviewed by higher courts to insure the trial was conducted accounting to law and no errors were made. Being as I am sure you are familiar with your own system of justice, you can see some of the very fundamental differences. One other difference which seems to exist from an American perspective is the german legal system is much more concerned with the rights of the criminal than with justice and the rights of his victims.

As a personal aside, to be on a jury is considered to be one of the duties and privileges of citizenship. This summer I was called to be in a jury pool.

As for the form of execution, most states today use a form of lethal injection. Other methods of execution have been used at various times by the states. Some states at one time used gas. But since executions are carried out in the US on an individual bases then mass gassing is not practical nor would it have been condoned at any time in our history.

Now I realize the next part is not very political correct, but I for one think the form of execution should be by the same means the murderer used to kill his victims. You will probably remember the cause celeb Tokie Williams caused in the german M$M. I for one felt he should have been shot in the back with a double barrel shotgun at 2 meters cutting him half in two. This is what he did to one of his victims and felt it was fine. Therefore neither he nor anyone else should have objected to this form of execution being used.

Equally it is interesting to see how german law has a universal aspect to it that is different than US law. Many Americans have been surprised at how the german justice system can be prepared to not only arrest but try say the VPORT or the SECDEF for crimes in which no german was a victim and did not occur in Germany. This is why there was so much outrage in the US about the convicted terrorits your government traded for dear Susan. His crime was against an American serivice member aboard a US flag carrier outside of Germany. Of course, again at the time of his trial, Germany was trying to trade him for 2 German businessmen who had been kidnapped in the ME.

I think many Americans, just as I will, will follow what happens to the President of Iran when he attends the world cup this summer. We will of course expect him to be arrested and tried because to deny the Holocaust did not occur is a crime in Germany and one can be sentenced up to 5 years in prison.

As to what the world might think of Germany if they were to expedite a murderer to the US who might eventually be executed, I do not think it would have any impact what so ever given the judicial history of germany. It would be looked at, at worse as just one more victim.

[che.ge]

Joe, George M,

the Hamadi case: He was sentenced, served time in prison, that's it, he walks. This is how we deal with this sort of crime. His case was no different then any other case. We don't deport a murderer to the US because we consider capital punishment inhumane and cruel. Executions are reported from a small group of countries: China, Saudi-Arabia, US, Iran. Good company?

The Honor Killing in Berlin: The youngest of three brothers is going to jail. He is not free and can not leave the country.

[LC Mamapajamas]

Che... "We don't deport a murderer to the US because we consider capital punishment inhumane and cruel"

That's strange... I consider giving a murderer the opportunity to repeat his crimes to be inhumane and cruel... to the innocent. I think your "humane" viewpoint is barbaric... to the innocent. No wonder Europe is falling apart at the seams!