AP: Records Reveal Guantanamo Stories
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: May 23, 2005
Filed at 7:28 a.m. ET

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 Afghanistan, Pakistan or other countries 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, 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.

The farmer's name is blacked out in the documents released by the government, which also redacted most other identifying information such as the names of cities, villages and countries.

There are scant references to allegations of abuse at the prison camp in the proceedings to determine solely if detainees are enemy combatants. One prisoner even calls the camp ''paradise'' compared to a Taliban jail where he was given little food and had medical problems.>>>>continued

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Guantanamo-Inside-the-Tribunals.html?