Despite U.S. Efforts At Concealment, More Torture Stories Leaking Out

"A guard held a shotgun to my head. 'You are a terrorist!'' he screamed. 'What kind of dumb stuff did you write about your treatment here?'' My hands and feet were bound, and someone kicked me from behind."

That's just a sliver of the testimony of Murat Kurnaz, a 19-year-old Muslim from Bremen, Germany, abducted while traveling in Pakistan in the company of missionaries a few months after 9/11. Kurnaz was sold as a terror suspect to the U.S. military for $3,000, imprisoned and tortured over a five-year period.

While jailed in Kandahar, Afghanistan, a Red Cross official wrote a letter home for Kurnaz and it was the "dumb stuff" in the letter that infuriated the Americans, according to the cover story in the Spring issue of "Amnesty International" (AI)magazine. The guards' response illustrates the pains the Bush regime is taking to conceal from the world its horrific crimes against Muslim prisoners in dungeons around the world. There have been numerous other cases now where the Red Cross has not been informed of the existence of "ghost prisoners", such as in the CIA prison in Kabul, or even told of the existence of a prison itself. Not surprisingly, the Red Cross has found U.S. methods are, at the least, "tantamount to torture."

In another example, on March 14th, attorney Gitanjali Gutierrez of the non-profit Center for Constitutional Rights(CCR), an advocacy organization of New York City, testified before a Congressional committee that she could not reveal what her client, CIA prisoner Majid Khan, told her about his treatment because "the government has declared prisoners' statements to be classified," The New York Times reported. As in the Kurnaz case, there is no such thing as free speech for prisoners of the Pentagon. Prisoners who talk to the Red Cross get roughed up. And the CCR is being muzzled as effectively as if they were dealing with Stalinist or Nazi jailers.