AP: Records Reveal Guantanamo Stories

Paisley Dodds — 2005-05-24T13:46:18Z

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. (...)

- / Guardian

Survivors mourn the dead of a vanished village

Paisley Dodds — 2004-06-01T09:35:53Z

in Mapou, Haiti

Dominoes used to dominate lazy Sunday afternoons in Mapou as players sat in the shade and villagers gathered at the marketplace to grumble over a glass of rum about stunted crops or cheating wives.

Now, the market is under water and voices that once rang out have been silenced. Some of their corpses float nearby, one week after deadly floods cascaded from denuded mountains. (...)