From the ACLU:
An American man detained in the United Arab Emirates at the behest of the U.S. government was released from State Security custody — where he was detained incommunicado in a secret location — and has been transferred to a prison in Abu Dhabi after suffering severe torture.
Naji Hamdan’s transfer came only one week after lawyers for the ACLU filed a lawsuit alleging that the U.S. government was responsible for his detention.
On December 2nd, Naji Hamdan, who lived in the Los Angeles area for more than two decades, was allowed a phone call to his brother, Hossam Hamdan, a resident of Los Angeles. Hamdan reported to his brother that officials transferred him to a regular prison on November 26 and that his captors routinely beat him and kept him in a freezing underground room during his months-long detention by State Security forces. The torturers kicked him with their military boots in the location of his liver, knowing that he has a liver condition. On some occasions, they beat him so badly that Mr. Hamdan passed out for extended periods of time and believed he would die. On at least one occasion, they strapped his arms and legs down to an electric chair, while threatening to use it.
Hamdan’s description of the torture and interrogation he endured makes clear that American agents have been involved. Although blindfolded by his torturers, Hamdan reported that some of the interrogators spoke native American English and were not fluent in Arabic. In addition, the agents interrogated Hamdan on topics about which only U.S. federal agents could have knowledge, such as a meeting he had with FBI agents.
The news of Hamdan’s transfer comes after the ACLU filed a habeas corpus petition in federal district court in Washington, D.C., alleging that the U.A.E. detained Hamdan at the behest of the U.S. government. Last week, U.S. District Judge James Robertson ordered the government to respond to the petition.
Hamdan, who was born in Lebanon, lived for more than two decades in the Los Angeles area, where he ran an auto-parts business and helped manage the Islamic Center of Hawthorne, a mosque and community center. In 2006, he decided to relocate his family and business to the U.A.E
Hamdan’s detention in the U.A.E. was the culmination of years of surveillance by the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI). This summer FBI agents traveled from Los Angeles to the U.A.E. to question Hamdan further. Approximately three weeks later he was detained by agents of the U.A.E. state security forces.
Hamdan’s brother and others who know him from his activities at the Islamic Center of Hawthorne have all said that he is a peaceful family man who would never support violence.
I have been exceedingly even-tempered of late. I relish it. I just don’t get angry about things, and certainly not the rage that I had for a while.
But my blood is boiling.
Fuck.
Did you read that blockquote? Read it. All of it. Twice. Rumor is that President Bush is considering preëmptive pardons for top administration officials for their complicity in torture and extraordinary rendition.
Even tempered, yes. But pardon is a little bit too lax for me, nonetheless. I’m thinking something more moderate, such as summary execution in the Rose Garden. Followed by cake.
Fuck. How did this happen to our country? The old quote is about good men doing nothing being the only thing necessary for evil to triumph. But we didn’t do nothing. We fought with every peaceful means we had available.
On 11th September 2001, four airliners were hijacked. On 12th September, the world’s largest power was hijacked, and flown by people who had no idea how to land, just how to steer into the National Archive building, where the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution are held.
OK, that preceding paragraph was unbelievably corny. I almost deleted it on preview. So, more concisely: Fuck.
Fuck.
that covered, in the chapter with the greatest depth, the Rom community. Not cool how they’ve been treated. Their common name, itself an inaccurate slur (inaccurate because they are not from Egypt; slur because it means, in Europe, “y’aint from ’round here, are ya?”), carries connotations of thievery and fraud, and can be used pejoratively in casual conversation, frequently by people who don’t know they are doing it. They survived persecution, marginalization, and, finally, murder in the gas chambers of the Third Reich, but (AFAIK) no one has built a museum for them yet.
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