After 14 long years languishing at Guantánamo without charge or trial, Mohamedou Slahi has finally been cleared for release.
Slahi was born in Mauritania in 1970 and won a scholarship to attend college in Germany. In the early 1990s, he fought with al-Qaeda when it was part of the Afghan anti-communist resistance supported by the U.S. The federal district court judge who reviewed all the evidence in Slahi's habeas corpus case noted that the group then was very different from the one that later came into existence.
Slahi worked in Germany for several years as an engineer and returned to Mauritania in 2000.
Slahi turned himself in to Mauritanian authorities for questioning about the Millennium Plot on November 20, 2001. He was detained for seven days and questioned by Mauritanian officers and by agents of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).[5] The CIA rendered him to a Jordanian prison, where he was held for eight months. Slahi states that he was tortured by the Jordanians. After being flown to Afghanistan and held for two weeks, he was transferred to military custody and the Guantánamo Bay detention camp in Cuba on August 4, 2002.[6]
Slahi was subjected to isolation, temperature extremes, beatings and sexual humiliation at Guantánamo. In one documented incident, he was blindfolded and taken out to sea in a boat for a mock execution.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohamedou_Ould_Slahi
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 24 2016, @07:57PM
Yes, the US supported the Majahideen - DURING THE SOVIET WAR - as part of a spectacularly successful strategy
Spectacularly? Check.
Successful? Hm.
When will we finally get over the enemy-of-my-enemy-logic?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by fritsd on Sunday July 24 2016, @09:29PM
But... but... I saw the documentary! Rambo III [wikipedia.org]!
PS: Youngsters: observe.
1984 Donald Rumsfeld, under Ronald Reagan's administration, sells weapons of mass destruction to Saddam Hussein [wikipedia.org]
1988 the film about the hero Rambo and his brave Afghani Mujahideen against the Evil Soviet Russians
You couldn't make this shit up.
It does immunize a bit against the post-2001 "Iraq = Al Qaida" propaganda to be, well, older.
(Score: 2, Informative) by fustakrakich on Sunday July 24 2016, @10:43PM
How did Iraq get mixed up in this, again?
Let's set the time machine back a little further, shall we? [counterpunch.org]. Soften the target up, and then Reagan gets credit for "defeating" the Soviet Union. Really, Ted Turner's bootleg satellite dishes in the mid 80s did more than Reagan.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by fritsd on Monday July 25 2016, @09:39AM
That was a fascinating article, thanks!
Zbigniew "Realpolitik" Brzezinski [wikipedia.org]:
Paraphrased by me: "Haha! With our CIA operation, we tricked the stupid Soviets into spending resources on bloodshed and oppression in Afghanistan! This will weaken our enemies the Soviets!"
Not a very nice man, is he? Didn't care much about the fate of the innocent Afghani pawns.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Sunday July 24 2016, @09:30PM
At about the time we collapse as a nation, I suspect. Seems like bad ideas reincarnate over and over in the minds of a certain kind of warmonger.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Monday July 25 2016, @04:26PM
It was successful. The problem was that congress cut the funding as soon as the USSR withdrew from Afghanistan. They'd provided all of the military aid in secret, so even though the USA was pouring $500m/year into the country by the end of the conflict, it looked to the Afghan people as if the USA was leaving them to the Russians. If they'd cut funding to a tenth of its previous rate and used that $50m/year to build roads and schools and improve agriculture, Afghanistan would have been a massively pro-USA country by the end of the '90s.
Though, given that the attempt to do this in Iraq mostly managed to funnel tax dollars into some very shady corporations' pockets, it's not completely clear that the USA had the ability to do it properly.
sudo mod me up