Once again the always unique The Talking Dog has an original Q&A interview, his latest in a series of interviews related to detainees in the war against terrorism.
Here’s his intro:
Shafiq Rasul is a British national who was detained for two years at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Mr. Rasul was the lead plaintiff in the Supreme Court case of Rasul v. Bush, which, contrary to the position then asserted by the United States government, held that detainees at Guantanamo had legal standing to challenge their detentions in federal court.
Mr. Rasul is also one of the “Tipton Three” whose experiences are the subject of the soon to be released film, The Road to Guantanamo. After the recent suicides of three Guantanamo detainees, I interviewed Mr. Rasul, by e-mail exchange, on June 13, 2006.
As usual, we urge you to read the entire provocative-as-usual interview in full. We don’t like quoting it because TD’s interviews need to be read in their complete context. Here’s one small taste 4 U:
The Talking Dog: Are you personally familiar with either of the two named Saudi detainees (Manei al-Otaibi and Yasser al-Zahrani) or the Yemeni (Ahmad Abdullah) who apparently committed suicide?
Shafiq Rasul: Yes I am familiar with the 2 Saudi detainees, I came across them a few times while I was in Guantanamo. The time that I met them they were just like myself, they did not know what was going on, were being
interrogated regularly, but that in all was relatively the same for all of us. From what I can remember I did not come across the Yemeni detainee, maybe if I was to see his picture that would jog my memory.The Talking Dog: When were you released, and by that time, were you aware of suicide attempts by detainees as of that time?
Shafiq Rasul: I was released on March 7 2004 and yes we were aware of numerous suicide attempts at the camp. I witnessed a number of them happening right in front of me. People were just losing the will to live because of the despair and fear of being in Guantanamo.
There’s a lot more — including parts that could spark lots of debate on weblogs and elsewhere. Read it in its entirety.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.