Reuters: A young Guantanamo prisoner from Chad was given permission to telephone a relative but instead called the al Jazeera television network and said he was being beaten and abused at the U.S. detention camp. Transcripts of the recorded interview with Guantanamo captive Mohammad el Gharani were posted on the Qatar-based television network’s English-language website on Tuesday. It was the first known interview with a captive held behind the razor-wire encampments at Guantanamo, which journalists are allowed to visit only if they sign an agreement not speak to any prisoners. It was not immediately clear when the call was made. Read on here.
Arash speaking “English” in a recent post of his… here is an excerpt:
“I would get back to it soon. It’s been a while that I have visited Israel.”
Wow, with those language skills Nasrallah must be quivering in his boots Arash!
“At the same time, other European ships have been looting Somalia’s seas of their greatest resource: seafood. We have destroyed our own fish stocks by overexploitation – and now we have moved on to theirs. More than $300m-worth of tuna, shrimp, and lobster are being stolen every year by illegal trawlers. The local fishermen are now starving. Mohammed Hussein, a fisherman in the town of Marka 100km south of Mogadishu, told Reuters: “If nothing is done, there soon won’t be much fish left in our coastal waters.”
This is the context in which the “pirates” have emerged. Somalian fishermen took speedboats to try to dissuade the dumpers and trawlers, or at least levy a “tax” on them. They call themselves the Volunteer Coastguard of Somalia – and ordinary Somalis agree. The independent Somalian news site WardheerNews found 70 per cent “strongly supported the piracy as a form of national defence”.
No, this doesn’t make hostage-taking justifiable, and yes, some are clearly just gangsters – especially those who have held up World Food Programme supplies. But in a telephone interview, one of the pirate leaders, Sugule Ali: “We don’t consider ourselves sea bandits. We consider sea bandits [to be] those who illegally fish and dump in our seas.” William Scott would understand.”