It's hard to picture Haji Nasrat Khan as an international terrorist. For a start, the grey-bearded Afghan can barely walk, shuffling along on a three-wheeled walking frame. His sight is terrible -- he squints through milky eyes that sometimes roll towards the heavens -- while his helpers have to shout to make themselves heard. And as for his age -- nobody knows for sure, not even Nasrat himself. "I think I am 78, or maybe 79," he ventures uncertainly, pausing over a cup of green tea.

Yet for three and a half years the US government deemed this elderly, infirm man an "enemy combatant", so dangerous to America's security that he was imprisoned at Guantánamo Bay.

The Guardian
Three years on, Guantánamo detainee, 78, goes home
September 22, 2006

August 25, 2006. A German native who was imprisoned by the U.S. military at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, was released Thursday, more than 18 months after a federal judge in Washington ruled there was insufficient evidence to detain him.

August 21, 2006. On Jan. 18, 2002, six men suspected of plotting to attack the U.S. Embassy were seized here by U.S. troops and flown to Cuba, where they became some of the first arrivals at the Pentagon's new prison at Guantanamo Bay.

The seizure was ordered by senior U.S. officials in defiance of rulings by top courts in Bosnia that the men were entitled to their freedom and could not be deported. Today, more than four years later, the six remain locked up at Guantanamo, even though the original allegations about the embassy attack have been discredited and dropped, records show.

In 2004, Bosnian prosecutors and police formally exonerated the six men after a lengthy criminal investigation. Last year, the Bosnian prime minister asked the Bush administration to release them, calling the case a miscarriage of justice.

February 13, 2006 Five Muslim detainees from China's western Xinjiang province are stranded in a legal no man's land at the US terrorism prison camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

They shouldn't be there. Even the US military has found that the men, members of the besieged Uighur ethnic group, are not enemy combatants. But their ordeal in custody isn't over. Because they could face harsh treatment back in China - and the US doesn't want to set a precedent by granting them asylum here - they sit in a barracks-like detention center waiting for a country to give them a home.

12 June 2006: One of the three men who committed suicide at the US prison camp at Guantanamo Bay was due to be released - but did not know it, says a US lawyer.

[...]

At the weekend, one top state department official called them a "good PR move to draw attention", while the camp commander said it was an "act of asymmetric warfare waged against us".

3/10/2004 vAll four men who were arrested on their return to Britain from U.S. military detention at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, were released Wednesday without charge, police said.

A fifth man had not been arrested when the group arrived at Northolt Royal Air Force Base Tuesday, and he was freed within hours.

There are now about 490 prisoners at Gitmo, and "55 percent of the detainees are not determined to have committed any hostile acts against the United States or coalition allies.

"Only 8 percent of the detainees were characterized as Al Qaeda fighters. Of the remaining detainees, 40 percent have no definitive connection with Al Qaeda at all and 18 percent have no definitive affiliation with either Al Qaeda or the Taliban.

"Only 5 percent of the detainees were captured by United States forces. [A total of] 86 percent of the detainees were arrested by either Pakistan or the Northern Alliance and turned over to United States custody. This 86 percent of the detainees captured by Pakistan or the Northern Alliance were turned over to the United States at a time at which the United States offered large bounties for capture of suspected enemies."

MORAN: Are you holding any innocent men here?

HARRIS: I believe truly that I am holding no innocent men in Guantanamo.

[...]

MORAN: So no man who ever came to Guantanamo Bay came there by mistake [or] was innocent?

HARRIS: I believe that to be true.

The information from the various sources frequently matched, providing corroboration of the use of specific procedures, which included prolonged sleep deprivation and shackling prisoners in uncomfortable positions for many hours. One F.B.I. agent wrote his superiors that he saw such restraining techniques several times. In the most gruesome of the bureau memorandums, he recounted observing a detainee who had been shackled overnight in a hot cell, soiled himself and pulled out tufts of hair in misery.

Military officials who participated in the practices said in October that prisoners had been tormented by being chained to a low chair for hours with bright flashing lights in their eyes and audio tapes played loudly next to their ears, including songs by Lil' Kim and Rage Against the Machine and rap performances by Eminem.

[...]

Mr. Kahtani was, for example, forcibly given an enema, officials said, which was used because it was uncomfortable and degrading.

Pentagon spokesmen said the procedure was medically necessary because Mr. Kahtani was dehydrated after an especially difficult interrogation session. Another official, told of the use of the enema, said, however, "I bet they said he was dehydrated," adding that that was the justification whenever an enema was used as a coercive technique, as it had been on several detainees.

[...]

The interrogators also discussed another factor in the Red Cross report, the use of a Behavioral Science Consultation Team, known as Biscuit, comprising a psychologist or psychiatrist and psychiatric workers. The team was used to suggest ways to make prisoners more cooperative in interrogations.

"They were supposed to help us break them down," one said.

The same former interrogator said the Red Cross report was correct in asserting that some female interrogators used sexual taunts to harass the detainees.

Another huge problem remains section 6 (in both of the underlying draft bills), which presumably will "overrule" Rasul, by purporting to strip aliens detained overseas of the right to petition for habeas review, and to drastically limit any further rights of such aliens to seek judicial review of (i) the legality of their detention; (ii) the terms and conditions of their detention and interrogation; and (iii) the proceudres and results of any military commission trial. Jack and others have thoroughly explained why this section is so troubling.

I was thinking of the habeas-stripping provisions from the point of view of a detainee, who might wonder: what legal recourse do I have if this bill goes through? How can I protest my detention if, for instance, I have been found innocent but not released, or if I have been tortured? The answer to that question is, as far as I can tell, 'you have no recourse'; and that horrified me.

But then it occurred to me to think of it from a different angle: from the perspective of the system of extraterritorial prisons that we seem to be setting up. From that point of view, the main question raised by the "compromise" bill (pdf) is a different one, namely: who has the right to question, in a court of law, any aspect of our treatment of alien combatants held outside the US? As far as I can tell, with very limited exceptions, the answer to this question is: no one but the very same government that set the system up in the first place.

This means, basically, that this bill will remove the entire system of detention, with the exception of its military commissions and combatant status review tribunals, from any judicial oversight at all...Literally anything could be going on during interrogation and detention, and the courts would have no way to pronounce on its legality, or to require anything to change.