There are so many stories of people who get caught up In the nightly operations by American and Afghan forces. In the search for 'kill & capture' targets the net is cast wide: once a door is kicked in all males in a household are usually taken for interrogation. And it is then anyone's guess when they will be released again. One story - out of many - of how an unlucky sleep-over resulted in years of detention, and what those years were like.

دمشق ـ دعا تقرير صادر عن الرابطة السورية للدفاع عن حقوق الانسان حول اوضاع السجون في سوريا لعام 2010 الحكومة السورية الى اتخاذ "خطوات فعلية" لتحسين واقع حقوق الانسان فيها، لافتا الى استمرار اللجوء الى التعذيب من اجل الحصول على الاعترافات

أفاد مراسل الجزيرة نت بأن تمردا وقع في سجن أبو زعبل، وأن قوات الأمن تطلق الرصاص الحي على المعتقلين. كما وردت أنباء عن وقوع عشرات القتلى في اقتحام قوات الأمن لسجن القطا في دلتا النيل

تونس ـ رويترز: تزاحم حشد يحمل صورا ولافتات عليها أسماء أقاربهم على درج وزارة العدل للمطالبة بأن يشمل عفو تونسي الافراج عن 1500 شخص سجنوا بموجب قوانين مكافحة الارهاب

Here's a new twist in the U.S. military's Islamic sensitivity effort in the prison camps for suspected terrorists at the Guantánamo Bay Navy base:

Military medical staff are force-feeding a secret number of prisoners on hunger strike between dusk and dawn during the Muslim fasting holiday of Ramadan.

Guantanamo Bay may be off the radar screens, with some people actually believing the place has been closed down simply because Obama had promised to do so within a year of his presidency but, how can the men held there for so many years simply be erased from our memories? The campaign against the US prison may not have achieved the ultimate goal of acquiring justice for all the prisoners but, it has ensured that the men of Guantanamo are not forgotten. At least that's what it should have done. 

بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم

الحمد لله وحده والصلاة والسلام على من لا نبي بعده

I first read the Dickens’ classic, Bleak House, in solitary confinement, Camp Echo. The concentric part of this story is based on the fictitious – though accurately representative – and never-ending case of Jarndyce vs Jarndyce which ultimately consumes and destroys the lives of its central characters, rather like the Supreme court decisions relating to the Guantánamo detainees. But it was the first sentence of another Dicken’s classic, A Tale of Two Cities, which reads, ‘It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,’ that captured my imagination back then. For that is precisely how I would have described the noble months of Ramadhan spent in US custody.

بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم

الحمد لله وحده والصلاة والسلام على من لا نبي بعده

I first read the Dickens’ classic, Bleak House, in solitary confinement, Camp Echo. The concentric part of this story is based on the fictitious – though accurately representative – and never-ending case of Jarndyce vs Jarndyce which ultimately consumes and destroys the lives of its central characters, rather like the Supreme court decisions relating to the Guantánamo detainees. But it was the first sentence of another Dicken’s classic, A Tale of Two Cities, which reads, ‘It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,’ that captured my imagination back then. For that is precisely how I would have described the noble months of Ramadhan spent in US custody.