Reading Satirical Articles Can Get You Tortured, Sent To Gitmo

By Cernig

Luckily, the British press isn't covered by US secrecy invocations unless America threatens the British government. Here's the kind of thing the US government has previously invoked state secrets to prevent you finding out and which can get you tortured then detained for years at Gitmo:

A British ‘resident’ held at Guantanamo Bay was identified as a terrorist after confessing he had visited a ‘joke’ website on how to build a nuclear weapon, it was revealed last night. Binyam Mohamed, a former UK asylum seeker, admitted to having read the ‘instructions’ after allegedly being beaten, hung up by his wrists for a week and having a gun held to his head in a Pakistani jail. It was this confession that apparently convinced the CIA that they were holding a top
Al Qaeda terrorist.

...But The Mail on Sunday can reveal that the offending article – called How To Build An H-Bomb – was first published in a US satirical magazine and later placed on a series of websites. Written by Barbara Ehrenreich, the publication’s food editor, Rolling Stone journalist Peter Biskind and scientist Michio Kaku, it claims that a nuclear weapon can be made ‘using a bicycle pump’ and with liquid uranium ‘poured into a bucket and swung round’. Despite its clear satirical bent, the story led the CIA to accuse 30-year-old Mohamed, a caretaker, of plotting a dirty bomb attack, before subjecting him to its ‘extraordinary rendition programme’.

During his eight-year imprisonment, Mohamed has allegedly been flown to secret torture centres in Pakistan, Morocco, an American-run jail known as the Dark Prison near Kabul in Afghanistan and, finally, to Guantanamo Bay.

...Last night, Mohamed’s lawyer, Clive Stafford Smith, confirmed that the article was central to claims that his client was planning a dirty bomb attack.

‘Unclassified evidence corroborates Binyam’s claims that he was threatened – at the time the White House was obsessed by the idea terrorists had access to nuclear materials,’ he added. ‘Binyam said that he told them about a website he had once seen on the internet called How To Build An H-Bomb. He said that this was a joke but they thought it might be serious.

‘I am speculating but I think this news was sent up the line to the White House, which is when the paranoia kicked in. They authorised the “enhanced interrogation techniques” against Binyam, including the rendition. This is how they made their huge mistake, thinking he was a major terrorist as opposed to a London janitor.

‘It explains why they took a nobody and subjected him to the worst torture of any US prisoner in the past seven years.’

On Monday, we find out whether the Obama administration will continue Bush's practise of invoking state secrets early and often in an attempt to stop you, the people, from finding out what has been done in your names.

* I changed the post title - although co-authored by a Rolling Stone writer, the article originally appeared in "Seven Days" magazine.

Comments

[wok3]

Is this serious? Didn't it mean anything at all that the suspect in question had no real connections to any known terrorist, or is that type of information not even considered? This is sick.

[Batocchio]

Hmm, I thought this was known already, unless it hadn't been released that it was Binyam Mohamed, or hadn't been confirmed, etc. Regardless, it's important to cover how flimsy most of the "evidence" has always been against many prisoners, some of whom have been held for over six years now.