Guantanamo prisoners tell their Kafka-esque stories at secretive tribunals

Guantanamo prisoners tell their Kafka-esque stories at secretive tribunals
08:12 PM EDT May 22
PAISLEY DODDS



LONDON (AP) - Some boast they were Taliban fighters. Others - an invalid, a chicken farmer, a nomad, a nervous name-dropper - say they were in the wrong place at the wrong time when they were plucked from their homes and flown to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Their stories are tucked inside nearly 2,000 pages of documents the U.S. government released to The Associated Press under a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.

Representing a fraction of some 558 tribunals held since July, the testimonies capture frustration on both sides - judges wrestling with mistaken identity and scattered information from remote corners of the world, and prisoners complaining there's no evidence against them.

"I've been here for three years and the past three years, whatever I say, nobody believes me. They listen but they don't believe me," says a chicken farmer accused of torturing jailed Afghans as a high-ranking member of the Taliban.






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http://www.cbc.ca/cp/world/050522/w052266.html

:grr: :puke:

It was just a bit before my time and I never could figure the meaning from its context.

I am looking for engagement, ok?

Franz Kafka, the great author of bureaucratic dread. The Trial. The Castle. Metamorphosis and other stories. Amerika!

nervous characters locked in worlds of sinister tribunals... good old fashioned Czech fun!

So original that they had to coin a word to describe stuff similar to it.

go read some today... completely essential for life in Bush's America.

(oh yeah, and the Orson Welles film of "The Trial" is one my fav underappreciated flix. Glorious!)

about a man who wakes up to find that he's suddenly turned into a giant cockroach.

Franz Kafka was a pre-WWWII Czech author who is famous for writing about powerless innocents caught up in endless and inescapable bureaucracy. See his novels "The Trial" and "The Castle".

I went to bed before the other posters responded. Theirs and your description describe a compelling author.