Jun 08 2009

ABC Telling the Truth (finally)…?

( – promoted by buhdydharma )

“I’m a normal man,” said Boumediene, who at the time of his arrest worked for the Red Crescent, providing help to orphans and others in need. “I’m not a terrorist.”

Ah ha! Greenwald links to a 3 minute youtube of the interview:

In an ABC News EXCLUSIVE today, Jake Tapper has an interview with Lakhdar Boumediene. It has aired in part on Good Morning America and will hopefully be seen far and wide.

Glenn Greenwald has more with good info and lots more links.

Lakhdar Boumediene is an Algerian who, while living in Bosnia working for the International Red Crescent, was arrested by the Bosnian government (at the behest of the Bush administration) shortly after 9/11 on charges of plotting to blow up a U.S. and British embassy, but was then quickly cleared by Bosnian courts of any wrongdoing and ordered released.  But as he was about to be released — in January, 2002 — he was abducted by the U.S. military inside Bosnia and shipped to Guantanamo, where he remained without charges for the next almost 8 years, and was clearly tortured.

Will we finally get some sanity from an “informed citizenry” now?

I suggest you call or email any of your “moderate” friends and family and urge them to watch it.

Also jimstaro has posted about this at l’orange, go give him some love over there (if you dare make the trip!).

The 43-year-old Algerian is now back with his wife and two daughters, a free man in France after a Republican judge found the evidence against Boumediene lacking. He is best known from the landmark Supreme Court case last year, Boumediene v. Bush, which said detainees have the right to challenge their detention in court.

29 comments

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  1. for a change.

    Photobucket

    • Edger on June 8, 2009 at 18:18
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    a trendsetter for their industry. First on the block to start with truth in TV reporting?

    They could bury the other networks being that subversive.

    • Inky99 on June 8, 2009 at 19:09
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    and they own ABC.

    This one must have slipped through the cracks.

  4. No way to embed it that I can find, so here is the link

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…

    WaPo has an article too…

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/…

    Thank you Lakhdar, for having the strength and courage to speak out!

  5. I’m sure the Pentagon will count his appearance in an ABC report as “returning to the field”.

  6. Grateful to be settling in France with government help, his first goal is to draw close to his family again, Boumediene said. But down the road, he added, he wants to sue the U.S. government or its senior officials to hold them accountable.

    “I don’t know whether it will be possible,” he said. “But even if it takes 100 years, I am determined to bring suit.”

    • sharon on June 8, 2009 at 21:01
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    thanks for the greenwald links.  i hadn’t read that yet.

  8. Just makes one sick — just multiply Lakhdar’s story by how many hundreds more that were tortured over and over again over a period of 5, 6, 7 plus years, who also were innocent.  I think this is why there is a push going on to have some of those in Guantanamo plead guilty.  (How does one plead guilty if one has never been charged with anything?)  Of course, the government doesn’t want people to know, in general, that all but about two dozen of the detainees held, were all innocent and WE TORTURED INNOCENT PEOPLE, JUST LIKE LAKHDAR.  And even the ones having some high-value had minimal involvement of any kind or nature.

  9. has anything to do with that strange dream I had last night. In my dream, Buhdy hired me in some sort of Cyber Assistant capacity. or something. LOLOL.

    • TomP on June 8, 2009 at 23:50
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    When ABC is doing better reporting than the NY Times, we really are not in Kansas anymore.  ðŸ™‚

    • Inky99 on June 9, 2009 at 19:47
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    Most of the people at Gitmo, in fact.

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