The U.S. secret prisons have been a source of concern for many rights groups and international institutions. Even the biased mainstream U.S. media started recently urging the American President George W. Bush to close all such secret prisons.
Thanks to the Bush administration's policies, America, the country that used to stand for "democracy", "liberty" and "human rights", is now seen as the world's foremost violator of these principles and rights. Those noble ideals had been ridiculed from Abu Ghraib to the Guantanamo Bay to CIA's secret gulags all over the world.
A few months following his release from Guantanamo jail, Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef, the former ambassador of the ousted Taliban regime to Pakistan has written a book titled 'Picture of Guantanamo', in which he detailed the suffering and "humiliation" he faced during his detention, in an effort to pressure the U.S. government close the prison, stated an article published today on The Australian.
Zaeef spent nearly four years in Guantanamo prison before he was released and handed over to Afghan authorities last September.
Speaking from his home in west Kabul, Zaeef said:
"I have been humiliated and tortured. By depicting the oppression that is going on in Guantanamo, I have tried to get the world's attention and hope to put pressure on America to close it down,"
"My detention was totally illegal."
There are about 450 detainees still held at Guantanamo jail, most of them without charges.
"So harsh was the torture and treatment that sometimes prisoners even prayed to die rather than be in detention," Zaeef, 39, wrote in his book.
"Their oppression against prisoners can never be forgiven."
Zaeef was arrested by Pakistani authorities in January 2002 and deported to Afghanistan where he was kept by the U.S. occupation forces at Bagram airbase, near Kabul.
Later on he was taken to the southern city of Kandahar and then flown to the Gulf before reaching his final destination, Guantanamo Bay.
"I condemn whatever Americans and Pakistan have done to me ... I had done no crime, had harmed nobody," Zaeef said.
"When Americans invaded Afghanistan, the entire world knows where I was. I was dealing with the media in Pakistan. I have never been involved in fighting."
Zaeef was one of only three Taliban ambassadors until Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates severe diplomatic ties with the regime due to intense pressure from Washington in 2001.
The American President's assertions of extraordinary power have become so numerous and audacious, raising concerns about the rule of law in America.
The U.S. Supreme Court recently ruled that the military commission set up by the Bush administration to try Guantanamo detainees violates both U.S. law and the Geneva Conventions.
Human rights groups hailed the Supreme Court ruling on U.S. military tribunals.
Amnesty International described the decision as a victory for the rule of law and human rights, calling on the American President to bring all of his "war on terror" policies into full compliance with U.S. and international law.
Also Human Rights Watch said that the ruling upholds the U.S. tradition of fair trials and advances the important fight against terror.
U.S. continuous violations of international law and human rights have become so outrageous that even mainstream organizations, including the Red Cross, and Physicians for Human Rights issued repetitive statements, condemning the Bush Administration's lawlessness.
But all those statements fell on deaf ears.
The U.S. government's scandals involving human rights violence, especially treatment of detainees held in Guantanamo, Afghanistan or Iraq, continue as the United Nations refuses to take action.
Source: AlJazeera
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