(This Story of the Day was originally posted on August 28, 2006. Since our Torturer-in-Chief just signed the Military Commissions Act into law this week, it seemed apropos to revisit this unbelievable story.)
It's bad enough the Bush administration has yet to shut down the Guantanamo prison camp and continues to operate undisclosed gulags around the globe. Ongoing acts (along with prior atrocities at Abu Ghraib) that manage to outdo what a murky, totalitarian bureaucracy perpetrated on Joseph K. in Kafka's novel The Trial. In the story, K. is woken one morning and arrested for a crime without being informed of the charges; he then embarks on a futile journey that sends him from one false hope of exoneration to the next, until finally, summarily, even mercifully - as he's come to recognize his futile state - he is stabbed to death by executioners. He meets his end never knowing what he was charged with, his last words: "Like a dog!"
Now, there's this off the AP newswire:
The oldest detainee at Guantanamo Bay — an Afghan man who is at least 71 and hobbled around the U.S. prison in Cuba using a walker — has been sent home, his lawyer said Monday.
This isn't satire. I wish it were. His name is Haji Nasrat Khan.
Khan was not charged with a crime and Ryan [his lawyer] said the government never said why he was detained.
"We couldn't figure out why he was there," Ryan said. "He could barely walk and he could barely hear."
It only gets worse.
Khan told his lawyers he believes he's around 78, but doesn't know his exact age. He is at least 71, according to military records obtained by The Associated Press.
So, for close to five years, the military has been holding a man in Guantanamo who is now somewhere between the age of 71 and 78 years old, limited to creeping along on a walker and is nearly deaf.
U.S. forces captured the elderly detainee's son, Hiztullah Nasrat Yar, in a compound with some 700 weapons, including small arms and rockets, according to military records.
Khan and his son told the military panel that the younger man was guarding the weapons for the government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai. The father had said he was arrested while complaining about his son's capture several days later.
The military said both father and son had links to the Taliban — a notion Khan once ridiculed at a military hearing.
"How could I be an enemy combatant if I was not able to stand up?" he asked, according to transcripts released to the AP.
Who knows? Maybe Guantanamo commander Rear Adm. Harry Harris declared Khan's method of ambulation an act of asymmetrical warfare. Those walkers, when raised, could be quite effective in momentarily warding off one's torturers.
Now let's see if this story garners any attention in the mainstream media, or if this geriatric jihadist shuffles gently into the night.
71-Year-Old Gitmo Detainee Released, by Ben Fox
The Associated Press
Comments