Is there anyone guilty in Gitmo? by Richard Littlejohn
A
london chef being held as a terror suspect at Guantanamo Bay claims, through his
lawyer, he is innocent. He also says he is being tortured. Don't they all?
Ahmed Errachidi swears he was cooking eggs at the Westbury Hotel in Mayfair when
the Americans allege he was training to be an assassin at a camp near Kandahar.
I have no idea whether or not he is telling the truth. Neither does anyone else.
But his version of events is swallowed whole by credulous reporters.
Nowhere in any of the stories I have read is it explained how he came to end up
first at Bagram air base and then at Camp Gitmo.
We are always asked to believe that absolutely no one at Guantanamo Bay is
guilty of anything — except, of course, the Americans.
But there must be some grounds for detaining them. Ahmed Errachidi must have
given his captors some reason for suspicion.
The Americans can be a little over-enthusiastic and have made a few mistakes.
But to the best of my knowledge they haven't yet resorted to sending teams of
CIA agents storming into hotel kitchens and arresting innocent chefs at random.
Otherwise there wouldn't be a curry house left open in Tipton.