Wed May 17 2006 12:08 am
Bangladeshis Held At Guantanamo Bay
Posted by Mash under International , Foreign Policy , Bangladesh , Human RightsThe Pentagon has released the names of all detainees held at Guantanamo Bay since 2002. The list contains information on 759 Muslim detainees from Asia, Africa, Australia and Europe. The list also includes two Bangladeshi citizens. The two Bangladeshis are listed in the table below:
| Name | ISN | Citizenship | Place of Birth | Date of Birth |
|
AL-DEEN, JAMAL MUHAMMAD |
16 | Pakistan/Bangladesh | Feni, Bangladesh | 1/1/1967 |
|
HASHEM, MUBARAK HUSSAIN BIN ABUL |
151 | Bangladesh | Baria, BG | 1/1/1978 |
Looking at the information provided by the Pentagon, a number of things strike me as unusual or incorrect. First, the place of birth of the second Bangladeshi detainee is listed as "Baria, BG". I think this is likely incorrect. The location the Pentagon may be referring to is likely to be Brahmanbaria, Bangladesh. Both Feni and Brahmanbaria are located in the eastern part of Bangladesh and abut the district of Comilla. This area is known in Bangladesh as an area where there is a large Hindu minority. Brahmanbaria and Feni would not be considered in Bangladesh as places that are likely to be breeding grounds for terrorists.
An obvious omission is the birth dates. Apparently the Pentagon knows the detainees’ birth years and not their birth dates. This suggests that the detainees are likely to be poor and illiterate. The names of the detainees also are unusual names for Bengalis. Especially the name "Mubarak Hussain bin Abul Hashem" seems unusual since the "bin" construction (meaning "son of" ) is normally not taken by Bengali Muslims - this construction is traditionally used in the Arab world.
The information released by the Pentagon, on close examination, suggests that after 4 years of detention the United States Government does not have complete or accurate information on, at the very least, the Bangladeshi detainees. These two men may be terrorists or they may be hapless individuals caught up in a Superpower’s global anti-terrorism dragnet. The lack of accurate information found in just this document released by the Pentagon suggests that the United States military cannot be sure who they are holding and whether these people have any links to terrorism. It is just this kind of inadequate information that may lead to the false imprisonment of innocents in this global struggle. It is just these kinds of errors that can be prevented or reduced if the United States brings the prison in Guantanamo Bay out of the shadows and under the protections of the Geneva Conventions.
bangladesh
geneva conventions guantanamo bay pentagon 7 Responses to “Bangladeshis Held At Guantanamo Bay”
Leave a Reply
Preview
May 17th, 2006 at 12:33 am
Mash,
I don’t know if you listen to Randi Rhodes at all, but she’s been working this story for a while now. I totally agree with her take on the incomplete list.
What happened to those high-ranking Al Kider tarrists we’ve nabbed that didn’t show up on the list? Remember the Ron Jeremy (esque) guy who we caught along with his laptop? He supposedly sang like Beverly Sills. Problem is, he isn’t on the list. Why? Because we tortured the man to get information out of him and if he was allowed in court or held in a place that was accessable to the media the truth would come out. Why haven’t we prosecuted any high profile terror suspects? We’ve tortured them and that would kill the government’s case in court.
Great graphics, btw. A class act!
May 17th, 2006 at 12:45 am
MrEMan, Randi Rhodes rocks!
>-
Yeah, the MSNBC article I linked also mentioned that there were no notorious or high profile terrorists on this list. I suspect a lot of these people are poor folks sold by Afghans and Pakistanis for bounty to the Americans (that is what happened to the Uighurs I wrote about a while ago). Cheney said that these guys were “hard core”. :^o
Guantanamo has done so much damage to the image of the United States in the rest of the world that it will be difficult to undo it.
I am hoping now that this list has been released, reporters in their home countries (including Bangladesh) will track down the stories behind these names (if the names are in fact correct!).
May 17th, 2006 at 11:47 am
“bin Abul”! Geez, I thought they were well versed on the Arab culture and the religion of Islam by now…
Where on earth do they use the ’son of’/ ‘daughter of’ structure besides the Middle East? And the US says they have the best intelligence agencies in the world…
May 18th, 2006 at 12:54 am
i have seen all kinds of non.arabs strutting around wearing white alkhallas and checkered head pieces trying to be all arab all parts of the non.arab world. that some people think calling themselves arby names makes them more..um, muslimee, doesnt sound that off base.
there are people who think anythign in arby script is holy, so who the heck knows. hey, this is no different that peole calling themself john or mary or ronny…:d
May 19th, 2006 at 12:00 am
dude, I would give the Pentagon the benefit of the doubt except that they have put innocent people in Guantenamo and held them for years. To wit,
the Chinese Uighur who were sold to the Americans for bounty. They were determined to not be terrorists but could not be released to China because they would face persecution. So they languished in Gitmo, shackled to the floor of their cells when the lawyers saw them.
the Afghan man whose only crime was that he had a similar name as a Taliban provincial governer. At his detainee hearing, he asked the US to contact the real governer who was in Afghanistan. The military told him to contact the man himself. He said that he was unable to do so because the US was holding him prisoner. The “judge” told him that he would have one year to figure out how to contact the governer until his next detainee review.
So, could these Bengali men be terrorists? Perhaps. But given the errors even in the info the military provided, I would not be willing to put any money down on that possibility. More likely these men were sold for bounty and the Pentagon has not even bothered to properly identify them or follow up on their backgrounds. If these guys were terrorists, you would think that a logical step would be to track down people they know to see if they might be linked to a larger terrorist cell. Seems doubtful that happened as the Pentagon does not even seem to realize that they have the place of origin wrong.
May 19th, 2006 at 3:20 am
hey, you’ll have no arguments from me, cause believe you me, our thoughts on this topic are peas in a pod.:)>-
just for laughs, giggles, and to do something other than take pictures and write, i visited a few other forums to see what undocumented residents (aka people who think it’s their blog, even though they are simply commenters) are frothing at the lips about. mostly, nothing, as people seem to equate ‘opinion’/whimsy/what their derricks mmmom said to our darrens marie sort of thing.
i am reminded so often when i read these commenters who simply rely on the gov-mant said so arguments of a qoute.. and i dont have it correct, but somehting like, “they came for the jews, and i said nothing. then they came for the catholics and homosexuals, and i said nothing. then they came for the gypsies and pollacks, and i said nothing. then they came for me, and there was nobody left to say anything.”
if people ever find themselves at the other end of the news story, sans rights, sans help, powerless to other peoples delusions, then they might believe in the unfairness and injustice of being held without trial, or lawyers, or basic human rights, geneva convention or not.
on a diff. note, they need to open a place like this in jinjirra or someplace for the b’desh home grown weeds and thorns, who seem to be growing like mushrooms after hot august rain…
May 19th, 2006 at 8:22 am
Haven’t heard someone refer to jinjirra in ages :d
I like the sound of that: “Jinjirra Bay - where we make bad things and break bad people”! \:d/