Andy Worthington: A Truly Shocking Guantanamo Story: Judge Confirms That an Innocent Man Was Tortured to Make False Confessions

Andy Worthington: A Truly Shocking Guantanamo Story: Judge Confirms That an Innocent Man Was Tortured to Make False Confessions: "She then moved on to al-Rabiah's own explanations of how he came to make false confessions, noting that he had stated that, shortly after his arrival at Guant�namo, 'a senior [redacted] interrogator came to me and said, 'There is nothing against you. But there is no innocent person here. So, you should confess to something so you can be charged and sentenced and serve your sentence and then go back to your family and country, because you will not leave this place innocent.'

This is deeply disturbing, of course, as it indicates that at least one senior interrogator recognized that the Bush administration's refusal to recognize that there were innocent men at Guant�namo -- and it has been clear for many years that hundreds of innocent men were held, who had no connection whatsoever to any form of militancy, let alone terrorism -- had set in motion a system in which, whether voluntarily or not, all the innocent men at Guant�namo were expected to make false confessions, either so that they could continue to be labeled as 'enemy combatants' on release, to maintain the illusion that Guant�namo was full of 'the worst of the worst,' or, as in al-Rabiah's case, so that they could be tricked and transformed into terrorist sympathizers and facilitators."