WAR ON TERROR Guantanamo prisoners tell stories in tribunals

New documents show that some remain imprisoned despite no proof of a crime.
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.
Prisoner mistreatment
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.
Another prisoner, however, claims U.S. forces in Afghanistan held him underground for two weeks. "They starved me. They handcuffed me, there was no food," he says.
"I was surprised that the Americans would [do] such a thing," adds the Briton, who worked in Yemen at a cooking oil company shut down after authorities said it was a front for Al-Qaida.
Mystery crimes
Many of the prisoners portray their circumstances as Kafka-esque, similar to Franz Kafka's "The Trial" where a man is arrested and forced to defend himself against a secret crime.
"This is not lawful," complains one detainee who identified himself as a journalist. "If she [the tribunal recorder] has any secret documents against me, she should give them to you now."
Because the U.S. government considers some information against the men to be of interest to national security, detainees were not allowed to hear all of the evidence.
Case in point: a 29-year-old accused of having knowledge of a terrorist act.
The prisoner admits that when he went to Indonesia after his father died in 2001, he dropped a name and flashed a snapshot to a man he met at a breakfast arranged by his mother's friend. He's posing with scientists, who allegedly worked for Pakistan's nuclear weapons program, but he says it was taken at a conference where he recited the Quran.
The prisoner says the man -- who thought the picture was proof of political prestige -- later admitted to attacking the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta. The conversation became fodder for one of the allegations against the Guantanamo captive.
"When I found out ... that these were very bad people, I tried to get away from them," the prisoner claims, adding, "I must be stupid."
Another prisoner accused of being a member of "al-Irata," asks what the group is -- a question that stumps the tribunal president.
"As a court, how can you present it against a person and not know what it was?" asks the prisoner, who says he's a Saudi fruit and vegetable merchant who came to Pakistan the month after the Sept. 11 terror attacks to fulfill his obligation to help Muslims.
Common complaints
The men complain of not having attorneys because only military-appointed representatives are allowed in the hearings. "It is unfair that the government is going to be talking about me and I don't have an attorney," says one whose calm testimony is punctuated by protest.
The proceedings began after the Supreme Court ruled in June that Guantanamo prisoners could challenge their detentions as enemy combatants, a classification that has afforded the men fewer legal protections than prisoner of war status under the Geneva Conventions.