[IP] This American Life Special Extra
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Subject: [Fwd: This American Life Special Extra]
Date: Thu, 09 Mar 2006 08:58:10 -0600 (CST)
From: Bob Zimbinski <bobz@xxxxxx>
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Subject: This American Life Special Extra
From: "Elizabeth Meister" <web@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Thu, March 9, 2006 7:52 am
To: web@xxxxxxxxxxxx
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This American Life Special Extra
March 9, 2006
On This Weekend's Show ...
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We just issued this press release on this coming weekend's show, Habeas
Schmabeas, and thought y'all might be interested too.
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RARE AND SURPRISING INTERVIEWS WITH FORMER GUANTANAMO DETAINEES ON THIS
AMERICAN LIFE
Although over two hundred prisoners from the U.S. facility at
Guantanamo Bay have been released, few of them have ever been
interviewed on radio or television in America.
This week, This American Life devotes its whole program to these men,
including two rare and revealing interviews with former detainees.
"If anybody actually met these guys," a lawyer for some Guantanamo
detainees, Sabin Willett, declares, "you know, had them on tv shows and
the radio, they'd be shocked. Because they've been told for four years
that the people at Guantanamo are terrorists, that they're the worst of
the worst. You're going to suddenly realize you've been lied to for a
long time."
Reporter Jack Hitt speaks with the two former detainees, Abdullah Al
Noaimi and Badr Zaman Badr, neither of whom have ever spoken before for
broadcast.
Weaving together interviews with administration officials, lawyers
representing the detainees, as well as former detainees themselves, This
American Life presents one of the most comprehensive pictures to date of
the situation at Guantanamo: how it represents a break with U.S. legal
traditions, both military and civilian; and who, exactly, are the people
being detained there.
As Hitt puts it in his story, "Is Guantanamo a camp full of
terrorists, or a camp full of mistakes?"
This question is especially relevant in the wake of the Pentagon's
release last week of five thousand pages of documents about the
detainees, after a Freedom of Information request by the Associated Press.
Former detainee Abdullah Al Noaimi attended Old Dominion University in
Virginia, speaks fluent English, and has fond memories of Spring Break
in Daytona Beach. He was held in Guantanamo for four years, before
finally being released last year.
He tells Hitt about the physical abuse he suffered at the hands of his
captors, but also of the moments of connection they sometimes shared,
like a contest between bored guards and detainees, to see who could turn
a Styrofoam cup inside out without breaking it.
Like many detainees at Guantanamo, he was not picked up off a
battlefield, but was turned over to Americans by Pakistanis.
Americans paid five and ten thousand dollar bounties for captives, and
Al Noaimi believes he was turned over for a bounty.
The other interviewee on the program, Badr Zaman Badr, was held in
Guantanamo for over two years for two jokes he published, he
believes. He and his brother ran a satirical magazine in Pashtu. One
of the jokes targeted a political figure who Badr believes turned them
over to the Americans. The other joke - about President Clinton - came
up repeatedly in interrogations at Guantanamo.
According to a recent Seton Hall Law School study of Pentagon
documents, only five percent of the detainees at Guantanamo were
actually apprehended by the U.S. Military. Only eight percent have been
accused of being Al Qaeda fighters.
This episode of This American Life airs the weekend of March 11th and
12th in most places. Check local listings or
www.thisamericanlife.org for exact times.
This American Life is heard each week by 1.6 million people on over 500
public radio stations. The show is produced by Chicago Public Radio and
distributed by Public Radio International.
_________
SUPPORT FOR THIS AMERICAN LIFE is provided by Volkswagen of America and
the New Beetle - it's right up there with writing letters to Mom, giving
flowers for no reason, big, goofy smiles and other Forces of Good. The
New Beetle. Learn more at http://forceofgood.com .
DON'T FORGET: You can listen to any of our shows for free at http://
www.thisamericanlife.org ... or download audio for a small fee at
http://www.Audible.com/thisamericanlife.
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