I see the Swiss justice system, in its infinite wisdom, has decided not to hand over fugitive convicted child rapist Roman Polanski. While it's a shame when any child molester doesn't get locked up (especially those who so brazenly flout the law as Polanski has done), Roman Polanski isn't the only confessed violent criminal to flout the law and escape justice.
Numerous officials in the Cheney-Bush Junta have admitted freely and publicly that they approved of the use of kidnapping ("extraordinary rendition") and torture ("enhanced interrogation techniques"). I'd like to focus on the number of children since 2001 who were kidnapped, raped, drugged, tortured and murdered by the United States Government in the last nine years.
General Taguba's report on Abu Ghraib details the rape of one child by an interrogator. From Rolling Stone:
In the files, prisoner after prisoner at Abu Ghraib describes acts of torture that Taguba found "credible based on the clarity of their statements and supporting evidence provided by other witnesses." The abuses took place at the Hard Site, a two-story cinder-block unit at the sprawling prison that housed Iraqi criminals and insurgents, not members of Al Qaeda or other terrorist organizations. In one sworn statement, Kasim Mehaddi Hilas, detainee number 151108, said he witnessed a translator referred to only as Abu Hamid raping a teenage boy. "I saw Abu Hamid, who was wearing the military uniform, putting his dick in the little kid's ass," Hilas testified. "The kid was hurting very bad." A female soldier took pictures of the rape, Hilas said.
Children were held at Guantanamo, some of whom were only a year or two older than Polanski's victim was when she was held against her will, drugged and raped. Some have been locked up so long they are now adults, and the Obama Administration, like its predecessor, wants to try them in front of kangaroo military commissions and execute them.
Even more disturbing is the teenager who was locked up for five years and found hanged in his cell, which the Pentagon claims was a suicide. How Yasser Talal Al-Zahrani managed this feat with his hands being bound they have yet to explain.
Most ghoulish of all, we have the kidnapping and torture of the sons of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, ages 7 and 9 (PDF from Human Rights Watch and the Center for Constitutional Rights).
Detention of family members of detainees, including children
In some cases family members—including children—of detainees who have been held in the U.S. Secret Detention Program, have been apprehended, detained and/or subjected to coercive treatment. Family members may be apprehended separately or at the same time as the individual sought. One apparent object of such treatment has been to obtain information about the detainee. Some of these family members have been subsequently released, but in other cases their fate and whereabouts remain unknown.
In September 2002, Yusuf al-Khalid (then nine years old) and Abed al-Khalid (then seven years old) were reportedly apprehended by Pakistani security forces during an attempted capture of their father, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was successfully apprehended several months later, and the U.S. government has acknowledged that he was in the U.S. Secret Detention Program. He
is presently held at Guantánamo Bay.
In an April 16, 2007 statement, Ali Khan (father of Majid Khan, a detainee who the U.S. government has acknowledged was in the U.S. Secret Detention Program and is presently held at Guantánamo Bay) indicated that Yusef and Abed al-Khalid had been held in the same location in which Majid Khan and Majid’s brother Mohammed were detained in March/April 2003. Mohammed was detained by Pakistani officials for approximately one month after his apprehension on March 5, 2003 (see below). Ali
Khan’s statement indicates that:
Also according to Mohammed, he and Majid were detained in the
same place where two of Khalid Sheik Mohammed’s young children,
ages about 6 and 8, were held. The Pakistani guards told my son that
the boys were kept in a separate area upstairs, and were denied food
and water by other guards. They were also mentally tortured by having
ants or other creatures put on their legs to scare them and get them to
say where their father was hiding.
After Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s arrest in March 2003, Yusuf and Abed Al Khalid were reportedly transferred out of Pakistan in U.S. custody. The children were allegedly being sent for questioning about their father’s activities and to be used by the United States as leverage to force their father to co-operate with the United States. A press report on March 10, 2003 confirmed that CIA interrogators had detained the children
and that one official explained that:
"We are handling them with kid gloves. After all, they are only little
children...but we need to know as much about their father's recent
activities as possible. We have child psychologists on hand at all
times and they are given the best of care."
In the transcript of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s Combatant Status Review Tribunal, he indicates knowledge that his children were apprehended and abused:
"They arrested my kids intentionally. They are kids. They been arrested for four months they had been abused."
On March 5, 2003, Majid Khan, was apprehended in Karachi, Pakistan, along with his brother Mohammed, his brother’s wife and their one month-old daughter. They were all taken to an unknown location. Majid Khan’s sister-in-law and her daughter were detained for one week, and as mentioned above, Mohammed Khan was detained by Pakistani officials for approximately one month.
Given that psychologists working for the CIA are neck deep in torture, and given that the official position of both the Bush and Obama administrations, both of which have shown their approval of kidnapping and torture, is that water torture isn't really torture (just as Whoopi Goldberg's position is that drugging and forcible sodomizing a child isn't really rape), one can't help but wonder just how many times these two little boys were subjected to water torture.
So before any Americans climb up on their high horses about the Swiss, keep in mind that they at least jailed Polanski long enough to decide what they were going to do with him. Compare that to the blanket immunity given to kidnappers and torturers who forcibly inflicted their perverted desires on adolescents in Guantanamo, Bagram and the various "black sites", and have never spent a minute behind bars or in the dock, and the Swiss look like an Old West posse complete with hanging judge.