Why is my Daddie in Gitmo?

[Dardedar]

Why is my dad far away in that place called Guantanamo Bay?

Young boy's plea to Tony Blair
By Ben Russell, Political Correspondent
Published: 09 January 2007

Ten-year-old Anas el-Banna will walk to the door of Number 10 Downing Street this week to ask for an answer to the question he has been trying to have answered for four years: Why can't my Dad come home?

His father, Jamil, is one of eight British residents languishing among the almost 400 inmates at the American base at Guantanamo Bay, which opened five years ago to the day this Thursday - the day of Anas's protest.

Mr Banna, was taken to Guantanamo Bay four years ago after being seized in Gambia along with fellow detainee Bisher al-Rawi. He was accused of having a suspicious device in his luggage. It turned out to be a battery charger. No charges have been made.

He suffers from severe diabetes, but his lawyers say he has not been offered medication and has been denied the food he needs. His eyesight is now failing.

A year ago, his son wrote to Tony Blair for the second time to ask why the Government was not helping him return home. The then six-year-old did not even receive a reply. The second letter elicited a cursory note from the Foreign Office. It stated that because Mr Banna is not a British citizen, although his wife and children are, nothing could be done for him.

So on Thursday, carrying yet another letter, Anas and his mother Sabah will return with campaigners and MPs to demand the closure of the camp and action to free the British residents.

Their MP, the the Liberal Democrat frontbencher Sarah Teather, said the Banna children, who are of Jordanian origin but have grown up in North London, were devastated by their father's detention.

The Downing Street protest will come during a week of action to mark the fifth anniversary of Guantanamo Bay. Since its inception, the camp has drawn furious protests from across the globe. Last night, Ian McCartney, the Foreign Office minister, faced anger on the floor of the House of Commons as the MPs for Mr Banna and another detainee, Bisher al-Rawi, lambasted the Government.

Today Ms Teather will present a petition to Parliament demanding his release, while tomorrow, relatives and friends will hold a candlelit vigil outside Downing Street.

the rest...

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

You don't think W gives a rat's rear about any hot water Tony is in, do you? Loyalty only goes one way - from sycophant to W. That's it.

Those guys in Gitmo haven't done anything except be brown - they are in there because of flyers dropped all over Afghanistan giving bounties for turning in "terrorists" - much like the old bounties given for "Indian" scalps in the 1800s. More Mexicans lost their hair - and lives - to that particular little genocidal solution to the Indian problem than ever an Apache (not that it would have been right even if it HAD worked). The guys didn't have to even have enemies, just be strangers that the reward recipient didn't know or care about. Money, feed my kids for a year, feed my habit for a few months, for turning in strangers? In a New York minute.

If their was ANY evidence against these poor slobs, they would have been very publically tried (Saddam, anyone?) to prove how "right" W was in rounding them up. Since there isn't, he needed the MCA to allow him to "legally" (but still unconstitutionally) hold them until he runs them through a kangaroo court system that doesn't tell them what they are being charged with and doesn't allow them to present any evidence in their own behalf, with or without advice of counsel - and can torture "confessions" out of them. (See either of my last two letters in TMN as to what's wrong with the MCA, if you didn't know already.)