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And this is supposed to be justice?

Whilst the Americans are the first to criticise other countries for the way they treat their prisoners, reading this piece from The Telegraph, more than some introspection - and a severe revision of its practices - by the US about its judicial system would be well warranted - and well overdue.

"This from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where I’m watching the war crimes tribunals going through pre-trial motions for Abd al Rahim al Nashiri, the man accused of the bombing of the USS Cole off the coast of Yemen in 2000.

His case is effectively a dry run for the "trial of the century" involving Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four others accused of plotting the September 11 attacks. In all the cases, the US government is seeking the death penalty. The question that hangs heavy over these war crimes tribunals – or Military Commissions as they are properly known – is whether they can ever really by construed as free and fair. Is it really credible that a man who was kept in black CIA prisons for nearly four years and repeatedly subjected to inhumane and degrading punishments – as the US government admits Al Nashiri was – can get a fair hearing from a trial jury comprised of hand-picked US army officers?"

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"To say with a straight face that Al Nashiri – terrorist or no – should be expected to trust to the “mindfulness” and “independent opinion” of the legal face of his torturers only points up the levels of double-think required to take these "fair" trials at face value. Just take a look at this redacted CIA inspector-general report from 2004 to get an idea of what was done to Al Nashiri as he was subjected to "enhanced interrogation techniques" in CIA detention in Afghanistan, Thailand and Poland after his arrest in 2002.

He was subjected to mock executions, simulated drowning by water-boarding, scrubbed with stiff brushes until his skin was raw, threatened with a revving power drill as he stood hooded and naked, kept in such filthy conditions his CIA interrogators smoked cigars to mask the stench, held in stress positions for days on end and hauled up by his arms to the point where his shoulders were about to dislocate.

The Obama administration rightly put a stop to this kind of treatment because it is vile, as well as utterly short-sighted and demeaning to everything that our Western democracies profess to stand for. If you want to live in a society where ends justify the means, where torture and inhumane treatment is inflicted in the name of the "greater" good, then go and live in China and see what kind of fearful, introverted society that breeds.

Watching the proceedings here in Guantanamo – motto “Safe, Humane, Legal, Transparent” – there are times when it feels like being back in China; a world of sometimes comic double-speak where the legal process is designed only as a long-winded device to legitimise a pre-determined outcome."

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