On Wednesday, America's detention camp at Guantánamo Bay will have been open for 10 years. For seven of them, I was held there without explanation or charge. During that time my daughters grew up without me. They were toddlers when I was imprisoned, and were never allowed to visit or speak to me by phone. Most of their letters were returned as "undeliverable," and the few that I received were so thoroughly and thoughtlessly censored that their messages of love and support were lost.

Some American politicians say that people at Guantánamo are terrorists, but I have never been a terrorist. Had I been brought before a court when I was seized, my children's lives would not have been torn apart, and my family would not have been thrown into poverty. It was only after the United States Supreme Court ordered the government to defend its actions before a federal judge that I was finally able to clear my name and be with them again.

I left Algeria in 1990 to work abroad. In 1997 my family and I moved to Bosnia and Herzegovina at the request of my employer, the Red Crescent Society of the United Arab Emirates. I served in the Sarajevo office as director of humanitarian aid for children who had lost relatives to violence during the Balkan conflicts. In 1998, I became a Bosnian citizen. We had a good life, but all of that changed after 9/11.

When I arrived at work on the morning of Oct. 19, 2001, an intelligence officer was waiting for me. He asked me to accompany him to answer questions. I did so, voluntarily - but afterward I was told that I could not go home. The United States had demanded that local authorities arrest me and five other men. News reports at the time said the United States believed that I was plotting to blow up its embassy in Sarajevo. I had never - for a second - considered this.

The fact that the United States had made a mistake was clear from the beginning. Bosnia's highest court investigated the American claim, found that there was no evidence against me and ordered my release. But instead, the moment I was released American agents seized me and the five others. We were tied up like animals and flown to Guantánamo, the American naval base in Cuba. I arrived on Jan. 20, 2002.

I still had faith in American justice. I believed my captors would quickly realize their mistake and let me go. But when I would not give the interrogators the answers they wanted - how could I, when I had done nothing wrong? - they became more and more brutal. I was kept awake for many days straight. I was forced to remain in painful positions for hours at a time. These are things I do not want to write about; I want only to forget.

I went on a hunger strike for two years because no one would tell me why I was being imprisoned. Twice each day my captors would shove a tube up my nose, down my throat and into my stomach so they could pour food into me. It was excruciating, but I was innocent and so I kept up my protest.

In 2008, my demand for a fair legal process went all the way to America's highest court. In a decision that bears my name, the Supreme Court declared that "the laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times." It ruled that prisoners like me, no matter how serious the accusations, have a right to a day in court. The Supreme Court recognized a basic truth: the government makes mistakes. And the court said that because "the consequence of error may be detention of persons for the duration of hostilities that may last a generation or more, this is a risk too significant to ignore."

Five months later, Judge Richard J. Leon, of the Federal District Court in Washington, reviewed all of the reasons offered to justify my imprisonment, including secret information I never saw or heard. The government abandoned its claim of an embassy bomb plot just before the judge could hear it. After the hearing, he ordered the government to free me and four other men who had been arrested in Bosnia.

I will never forget sitting with the four other men in a squalid room at Guantánamo, listening over a fuzzy speaker as Judge Leon read his decision in a Washington courtroom. He implored the government not to appeal his ruling, because "seven years of waiting for our legal system to give them an answer to a question so important is, in my judgment, more than plenty." I was freed, at last, on May 15, 2009.

Today, I live in Provence with my wife and children. France has given us a home, and a new start. I have experienced the pleasure of reacquainting myself with my daughters and, in August 2010, the joy of welcoming a new son, Yousef. I am learning to drive, attending vocational training and rebuilding my life. I hope to work again serving others, but so far the fact that I spent seven and a half years as a Guantánamo prisoner has meant that only a few human rights organizations have seriously considered hiring me. I do not like to think of Guantánamo. The memories are filled with pain. But I share my story because 171 men remain there. Among them is Belkacem Bensayah, who was seized in Bosnia and sent to Guantánamo with me.

About 90 prisoners have been cleared for transfer out of Guantánamo. Some of them are from countries like Syria or China - where they would face torture if sent home - or Yemen, which the United States considers unstable. And so they sit as captives, with no end in sight - not because they are dangerous, not because they attacked America, but because the stigma of Guantánamo means they have no place to go, and America will not give a home to even one of them.

I'm told that my Supreme Court case is now read in law schools. Perhaps one day that will give me satisfaction, but so long as Guantánamo stays open and innocent men remain there, my thoughts will be with those left behind in that place of suffering and injustice.

Lakhdar Boumediene was the lead plaintiff in Boumediene v. Bush. He was in military custody at Guantánamo Bay from 2002 to 2009. This essay was translated by Felice Bezri from the Arabic.

My Guantánamo Nightmare

why wouldn't they hate us ......

I left Guantánamo Bay much as I had arrived almost five years earlier - shackled hand-to-waist, waist-to-ankles, and ankles to a bolt on the airplane floor. My ears and eyes were goggled, my head hooded, and even though I was the only detainee on the flight this time, I was drugged and guarded by at least 10 soldiers. This time though, my jumpsuit was American denim rather than Guantánamo orange. I later learned that my C-17 military flight from Guantánamo to Ramstein Air Base in my home country, Germany, cost more than $1 million.

When we landed, the American officers unshackled me before they handed me over to a delegation of German officials. The American officer offered to re-shackle my wrists with a fresh, plastic pair. But the commanding German officer strongly refused: "He has committed no crime; here, he is a free man."

I was not a strong secondary school student in Bremen, but I remember learning that after World War II, the Americans insisted on a trial for war criminals at Nuremberg, and that event helped turn Germany into a democratic country. Strange, I thought, as I stood on the tarmac watching the Germans teach the Americans a basic lesson about the rule of law.

How did I arrive at this point? This Wednesday is the 10th anniversary of the opening of the detention camp at the American naval base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. I am not a terrorist. I have never been a member of Al Qaeda or supported them. I don't even understand their ideas. I am the son of Turkish immigrants who came to Germany in search of work. My father has worked for years in a Mercedes factory. In 2001, when I was 18, I married a devout Turkish woman and wanted to learn more about Islam and to lead a better life. I did not have much money. Some of the elders in my town suggested I travel to Pakistan to learn to study the Koran with a religious group there.

I made my plans just before 9/11. I was 19 then and was naïve and did not think war in Afghanistan would have anything to do with Pakistan or my trip there. So I went ahead with my trip.

I was in Pakistan, on a public bus on my way to the airport to return to Germany when the police stopped the bus I was riding in. I was the only non-Pakistani on the bus - some people joke that my reddish hair makes me look Irish - so the police asked me to step off to look at my papers and ask some questions. German journalists told me the same thing happened to them. I was not a journalist, but a tourist, I explained. The police detained me but promised they would soon let me go to the airport. After a few days, the Pakistanis turned me over to American officials. At this point, I was relieved to be in American hands; Americans, I thought, would treat me fairly.

I later learned the United States paid a $3,000 bounty for me. I didn't know it at the time, but apparently the United States distributed thousands of fliers all over Afghanistan, promising that people who turned over Taliban or Qaeda suspects would, in the words of one flier, get "enough money to take care of your family, your village, your tribe for the rest of your life." A great number of men wound up in Guantánamo as a result.

I was taken to Kandahar, in Afghanistan, where American interrogators asked me the same questions for several weeks: Where is Osama bin Laden? Was I with Al Qaeda? No, I told them, I was not with Al Qaeda. No, I had no idea where bin Laden was. I begged the interrogators to please call Germany and find out who I was. During their interrogations, they dunked my head under water and punched me in the stomach; they don't call this waterboarding but it amounts to the same thing. I was sure I would drown.

At one point, I was chained to the ceiling of a building and hung by my hands for days. A doctor sometimes checked if I was O.K.; then I would be strung up again. The pain was unbearable.

After about two months in Kandahar, I was transferred to Guantánamo. There were more beatings, endless solitary confinement, freezing temperatures and extreme heat, days of forced sleeplessness. The interrogations continued always with the same questions. I told my story over and over - my name, my family, why I was in Pakistan. Nothing I said satisfied them. I realized my interrogators were not interested in the truth.

Despite all this, I looked for ways to feel human. I have always loved animals. I started hiding a piece of bread from my meals and feeding the iguanas that came to the fence. When officials discovered this, I was punished with 30 days in isolation and darkness.

I remained confused on basic questions: why was I here? With all its money and intelligence, the United States could not honestly believe I was Al Qaeda, could they?

After two and a half years at Guantánamo, in 2004, I was brought before what officials called a Combatant Status Review Tribunal, at which a military officer said I was an "enemy combatant" because a German friend had engaged in a suicide bombing in 2003 - after I was already at Guantánamo. I couldn't believe my friend had done anything so crazy but, if he had, I didn't know anything about it.

A couple of weeks later, I was told I had a visit from a lawyer. They took me to a special cell and in walked an American law professor, Baher Azmy. I didn't believe he was a real lawyer at first; interrogators often lied to us and tried to trick us. But Mr Azmy had a note written in Turkish which he had gotten from my mother, and that made me trust him. (My mother found a lawyer in my hometown in Germany who heard that lawyers at the Center for Constitutional Rights represented Guantánamo detainees; the center assigned Mr Azmy my case.) He did not believe the evidence against me and quickly discovered that my "suicide bomber" friend was, in fact, alive and well in Germany.

Mr Azmy, my mother and my German lawyer helped pressure the German government to secure my release. Recently, Mr Azmy made public a number of American and German intelligence documents from 2002 to 2004 that showed both countries suspected I was innocent. One of the documents said American military guards thought I was dangerous because I had prayed during the American national anthem.

Now, five years after my release, I am trying to put my terrible memories behind me. I have remarried and have a beautiful baby daughter. Still, it is hard not to think about my time at Guantánamo and to wonder how it is possible that a democratic government can detain people in intolerable conditions and without a fair trial.

Murat Kurnaz, the author of "Five Years of My Life: An Innocent Man in Guantánamo," was detained from 2001 to 2006.

Notes From a Guantánamo Survivor

& let's not forget our legacy .....

The cameras were rolling and the reporters were ready inside the auditorium, so the Iraqi police officer gave the signal: Bring in the prisoners. In they shuffled, 21 men accused of terrorism and murder, hands shackled, eyes tracing the floor. This was no day in court. Today, they were lined up to meet the press.

"Lift up your faces," a police officer ordered, as photographers swarmed.

Over the objections of Western diplomats and human rights workers, Iraq's security forces are increasingly taking to the airwaves with dramatic demonstrations of how they are cracking down on terrorism, using detainees - mostly Sunni men - as backdrops for speeches and broadcasting confessions on state-run television.

To Iraqi officials, the prisoner displays are a kind of victory lap, providing a sharp rebuttal to accusations that the police and the army are failing to stifle a still-deadly insurgency.

But to many Westerners, the rituals are inflammatory and even illegal, symptoms of a politically tainted justice system that still relies on confessions, many coerced, as much as physical evidence despite millions in American aid and legal training programs.

The prisoner displays are also sharpening the political and sectarian tensions that plunged Iraq's government into disarray immediately after the American military withdrawal in December. When officials from the country's Shiite-led government announced an arrest warrant against the Sunni vice president, Tariq al-Hashimi, they played videotaped confessions from three bodyguards who accused Mr. Hashimi of personally running a death squad against police officers and political rivals.

Iraqi authorities said the confessions were proof of Mr. Hashimi's guilt. But Sunni politicians saw them as an attack using the state-run media to discredit and oust a leading Sunni politician. American officials and Western diplomats in Baghdad cringed as they watched the confessions play on national television.

"Parading persons accused of crimes on television or broadcasting confessions is a violation of due process," said a Western expert in international law who has raised these concerns with Iraqi officials. "It also undermines basic human dignity and respect for the process of justice."

Legal experts said the government's media strategies could violate international treaties Iraq had signed, which lay out basic rights for criminal suspects.

"It puts them in breach of their international obligations and in violation of rights protected by the Constitution," said the Western expert, who asked for anonymity to avoid antagonizing the Iraqi government.

Even some supporters of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki criticized the decision to play the videotaped confessions of Mr. Hashimi's bodyguards.

Iraqi judicial officials pulled out of a news conference the security forces called to announce the arrest warrant because the officials wanted to keep the confessions off the air. Ibrahim al-Sumaidaie, a political analyst close to Mr. Maliki, said broadcasting the confessions shredded due-process rules in Iraq's Constitution and was reminiscent of how Saddam Hussein manipulated the news media to cow his enemies and expose endless plots against his government.

"It is a crime to put this on television," Mr. Sumaidaie said. "It is a shame, and it is a legacy of the former dictator. The one who plays these confessions succeeds to divide the people between Shia and Sunni again. What is the benefit?"

But Iraqi officials have largely brushed off the criticism. In a country where conspiracy theories are the currency of daily life, the confessions and images of shackled prisoners offer convincing evidence that Iraqi officials are hunting down criminals.

"If we say we caught the leader of Al Qaeda, who will believe it?" said Maj. Gen. Adel Daham, an Interior Ministry official. "This is to show credibility. We are sure we are doing the right thing."

Iraq is hardly the only country to make public spectacles of suspects accused of criminal activity. Mexican officials call regular news conferences in which uniformed federal police officers stand guard over apprehended members of drug cartels and death squads.

In the United States, the "perp walk" is common enough to merit its own Wikipedia page. The practice came under fresh scrutiny in June after Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former managing director of the International Monetary Fund, was arrested in New York on sexual assault charges that were later dropped. Many of his compatriots in France were outraged by images of Mr. Strauss-Kahn, unshaven and frowning, being led in handcuffs before a gantlet of photographers. Some called it a lynching in the press.

By Iraqi standards, that was light treatment. Last summer, Iraqi security officials took two criminal defendants to the scene of a massacre in the marshes north of Baghdad and told the men to recount how, several years earlier, they had lined up Shiites along a river and shot them. Their accounts of the killings were broadcast on the state-run Iraqiya television channel.

In September 2010, the Interior Ministry, which runs Iraq's 600,000-member police force, called a news conference to announce that its agents had broken up a robbery ring that was using its profits to finance terrorism. On a tablecloth of white lace, officials laid guns, silencers and stolen gold jewelry.

Shackled detainees were lined up against a wall, gazing downward as officials outlined their crimes. At one point in a video of the news conference, a police officer poked a suspect in the chest to get him to face the cameras.

And in one memorable news conference this November, Iraqi authorities marched two dozen terrorism suspects into an auditorium with dozens of weeping widows and orphans. Adnan al-Asadi, the acting interior minister, detailed the killings attributed to the men, but the scene quickly devolved into screams.

As cameras rolled, black-clad women, holding photographs of slain husbands, brothers and sons, called for the suspects to be executed. Children screamed and cried. Some people threw shoes and shouted aspersions. The defendants sat silent.

Iraqi officials later admitted that things had gotten away from them that day, but Mr. Asadi said it was important for the public to see the faces and hear the confessions of the militants and criminals who had attacked Iraqis.

Human rights groups have chronicled manifold problems with Iraq's murky legal system. Suspects are held for weeks and months, sometimes in secret, often without formal charges. Verdicts are announced before relatives learn that a trial took place. Ultimately, the televised confessions and lineups may be the only time Iraqis see or hear from these defendants.

"We want to show the Iraqi people how they've committed these crimes, how dangerous they are and how they affect the political process," Mr. Asadi said. "So the world will see."

Iraq Turns Justice Into a Show & Terror Confessions a Script

Held for a decade without charge, Shaker Aamer may die without ever seeing the evidence against him, claim his lawyers.

The last Briton held in Guantanamo is "falling apart at the seams" and could die without ever being charged with an offence or meeting his youngest son, his lawyer has said.

Clive Stafford Smith made the claims after visiting Shaker Aamer, a British resident who despite being cleared for release in 2007 has languished in the prison in Cuba for a decade without ever being charged.

On the 10-year anniversary of the first prisoners arriving at the naval base, The Independent can also reveal:

* The UK Government has spent £274,345 fighting Mr Aamer in court, including preventing his lawyers viewing evidence that may prove his innocence

* The UK "misjudged" the US government's stance on Mr Aamer and gave false hope to his family

* Mr Aamer has several serious medical complaints and has been held for years in "inhumane" conditions away from other prisoners.

"This is a guy who has spent 10 years in US custody and been abused as horribly as anyone in Guantanamo. It would take an enormous toll on anyone. He is a human being who is gradually falling apart at the seams," said Mr Stafford Smith, who represents Mr Aamer in the US.

The lawyer, who saw his client in November, added: "He could die there... not many people would get 10 years in prison for a murder they did commit, let alone 10 years in jail without charge."

David Remes, another of Mr Aamer's US lawyers, said his client and a small number of detainees had been kept separately at a special part of Guantanamo named Camp Echo.

"The men were being held in cruel, inhumane, and degrading conditions... in violation of Geneva Conventions. Life was miserable for these men on every level, and completely different from how other detainees were being treated in the main camp," he said.

The British government has fought in the High Court since 2009 to prevent Mr Aamer's lawyers gaining access to evidence which may have proved his innocence. A Freedom of Information request revealed that £274,345 was spent on paying Treasury solicitors and counsel's fees and costs for managing the civil case. Eventually his legal team were allowed access.

Attempts were made to transfer him to Saudi Arabia, which would have enforced his separation from his wife and children and likely resulted in another spell in prison, but his refusal to go only led to him remaining in Guantanamo. "I am not willing to spend any time in Saudi Arabia for I have not been doing anything wrong to be in this evil place," he wrote to his wife in 2008.

Gareth Peirce, Mr Aamer's UK lawyer, said 10 years in prison without charge represented a "truly terrible milestone". "We remain completely sure that had the British government, past or present, exerted themselves in any energetic or convincing way insisting he be returned, he would be back. We put responsibility on successive UK governments," she said.

"The Coalition Government suggested they would be different and vigorous and they would succeed. They were assuring his family they were expecting to be successful. The promises of the last year have proved to be misjudged," Ms Peirce added.

An FCO spokesman said Mr Aamer's release had been raised again with US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, in December. He added: "We remain committed to securing the release of Mr Aamer, but ultimately it is a decision for the US authorities."

Defending the money spent on the High Court action, he said: "The Foreign Secretary has made it very clear how important it is for the UK's national security that the UK and US are able to share information in confidence."

Guantanamo Is 10 Years Old & The Last British Prisoner Is 'Falling Apart'

A terror suspect, who has been detained without trial for seven years pending deportation to the US, can give a filmed interview to the BBC, the high court has ruled.

The case of Babar Ahmed, 37, is so "exceptional" that the Ministry of Justice's ban on the interview was a "disproportionate interference with freedom of expression" and must be quashed, Mr Justice Singh and Lord Justice Hooper said.

But the corporation's victory should not set "any precedent for other cases" in terms of allowing journalists access to prisoners, the court added.

The case was brought by the BBC and one of its home affairs correspondents, Dominic Casciani. who had been seeking to broadcast an interview with Ahmed who has been held without trial for longer than anyone else in recent history.

The high court judgment declared: "It is because of the unusual combination of facts that the present case, in our view, justifies departure from the normal policy.

"More than that, in our view, the claimants' rights under article 10 require that departure in the exceptional circumstances of this case, and the [justice] secretary has not been able to justify denying those rights on the facts of this case.

"However, [he] is entitled to maintain the policy [controlling access to prisoners for journalists] which he does: no challenge has been made to his entitlement to have such a policy in principle and to apply it to the great majority of cases."

Ahmad, a British Muslim, is detained under extradition laws as he fights removal to the US, where he is wanted for allegedly raising funds for Chechen and Afghan insurgents over the internet. He strongly denies involvement with terrorism.

He is in a special unit at Long Lartin prison, Worcestershire, waiting for the European court of human rights to rule on whether he should be extradited. The court was told that an ECHR ruling was being prepared "as a matter of urgency".

There is a long history of journalists facing obstacles when attempting to talk to prison inmates, including men and women who allege they are victims of miscarriages of justice or abuses of power by the authorities.

Before the last election, the prison service attempted to prevent the Guardian from interviewing two convicted terrorists who alleged that UK intelligence agents had been complicit in the torture that they suffered in Pakistan before being deported to the UK to stand trial.

Delays in one case lasted nine months, and in the second for 15 months. A visit was granted only after the Guardian threatened to go to court to seek a judicial review of the Ministry of Justice's refusal.

BBC Can Show Interview With Terror Suspect Held Without Trial, Court Rules

It's unlikely too many birthday candles were lit to mark the 10th anniversary on Wednesday of Guantanamo Bay as a US military prison.

In fact, some prisoners were on a hunger strike, others hung protest signs inside their cell blocks, while more were holding a sit-in at a recreation area.

Guantanamo, or Gitmo, has become a lasting symbol of the suspension of America's once noble values, a reminder that in fighting a war a nation can lose its soul.

Human rights and the rule of law have been replaced by indefinite detention without charge or trial, suspension of international treaties and obligations, offences unknown to the law of war, in fact novel offences that do not require a war at all, and torture.

Due process has been replaced by a system of military trial commissions, where the accused have no right to see the ''evidence'' against them and where guilty pleas are extracted on pain of going more dreadful years.

Guantanamo Bay was the place for George W. Bush's ''worst of the worst''. Now that about 600 of the total of 779 Guantanamo prisoners have been released without charge, the remainder must be the ''worst of the worst of the worst''. Eighty-nine of the prisoners still held there have been cleared for transfers to their home countries or elsewhere, but remain incarcerated because no one will take them. Being held in Guantanamo is a permanent stain, rendering detainees unfit for anywhere. Only one person at the internment camp faces a formal charge and of all those detailed only six were convicted in the military commissions after trial or plea bargain.

The conception was a ''black hole'' prison, beyond the reach of American law, much in the way that Australia crudely designed the migration exclusion zone as a lawless sink hole for asylum seekers.

Just as our High Court has to some extent brought the protection of asylum seekers within Australian law, even if they are held on Christmas Island, the US Supreme Court found that foreign nationals held by the US military in Cuba have a right to habeas corpus and a day in court.

That landmark case was brought by Lakhdar Boumediene, who had been held for seven years without charge and with no access to the information against him. He had been an employee of the Red Crescent Society of the United Arab Emirates and was seized by the US in the wake of the September 11, 2001, attacks while working for the charity at its Sarajevo office. He was falsely suspected of wanting to blow up the US embassy in Bosnia. He now lives in France and writing in The New York Times last week he said the importance of the decision in his Supreme Court case was the recognition of ''a basic truth: the government makes mistakes''.

The US President, Barack Obama, promised to close the prison in Cuba but faced sustained Congressional opposition, including from many Democrats, who did not want these detainees in their backyard.

Far from winding back Guantanamo Bay to hold the rump who pose an established threat to the US, new and exciting possibilities await Gitmo. The Congress has just passed, and Obama has signed into law, the National Defence Authorisation Act. Great swathes of the Bill of Rights, and habeas, have effectively been suspended by this law, which allows US citizens to be held indefinitely without charge in military detention at Guantanamo Bay. It allows the armed forces to be engaged in domestic policing, and to arrest anyone suspected of being engaged in terrorist activity.

Other legislation defines who might be a terrorist very widely. The conservative, libertarian senator Rand Paul pointed to a few: people with missing fingers, someone with guns, or with ammunition that is waterproof, citizens with more than seven days food in their house - all can be considered potential terrorists.

Relevantly, the average time between arrest and conviction in a US federal court for terrorism-related cases was 1.4 years. In the Guantanamo military commissions, the average time for the all six detainees prosecuted between capture and conviction was 7.6 years.

The militarisation of US domestic law needs a willing accomplice, and that is where Guantanamo comes in so handy.

Two Australians have had more than a passing brush with Guantanamo, David Hicks and Mamdouh Habib. After six years detention, Hicks pleaded guilty to a charge of providing material support for terrorism. It was a charge that did not exist at the time he was alleged to have committed it, only retrospectively springing into life when Congress passed new military commission legislation in the wake of the US Supreme Court decision in Hamdan v Rumsfeld; Hamdan being Osama bin Laden's former driver. It is an offence that still causes angst and even the administration's lawyers at one point conceded that no such war crime existed.

Still, Hicks suited the Howard government's requirement for a global terrorism pin-up boy.

Just before Habib was to be charged before a military commission, The Washington Post ran a story detailing his allegations of rendition and torture. The charges were never laid and he was flown back to Australia in a specially chartered plane. For some time his passport was suspended, but ultimately the government settled his claim that Australian officials knew about and did nothing to prevent his torture at the hands of outsourced US agents in Pakistan and Egypt.

US governments live in fear there may be an horrendous slip-up in the struggle against terrorism. They would then stand accused of failing to defend America, or worse. It is the fear that leads to the interminable ratcheting-up of the rhetoric and the suspension of the very elements of life that were worth fighting to protect. As the war on terror is a war without end, the internment prison at Guantanamo will still be open for business in another 10 years time.

10 Years And Guantanamo Still Open

On the day he marks 10 years locked inside the world's most notorious prison without having been charged with an offence, the last UK resident in Guantanamo Bay has pleaded with his captors: "Please torture me in the old way ... Here they destroy people mentally and physically without leaving marks."

Speaking from his cell through letters and comments published exclusively in The Independent, Shaker Aamer, who has never seen a courtroom, reveals the torment of being kept permanently away from his family.

His plight was again raised with the US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton last week, with a senior British source close to the talks admitting that Mr Aamer's continued detention was "unconscionable". Fears are growing for the welfare of Mr Aamer, from south London, who is now 45 and has a wife and four children. He has never met his youngest son, Faris. He has lost 40 per cent of his body weight in captivity and is suffering from health problems, aggravated by long periods in solitary confinement.

The Independent has seen dozens of handwritten letters from Mr Aamer to his wife and family and today publishes a selection of extracts. Heavily censored and containing scrawled drawings to entertain his children, they paint a portrait of his time in Guantanamo.

On 19 August 2002, he writes: "You won't believe me, my hand is killing me from writing and also my back. I am getting old. I just became 41 ... but physically I'm 50. I got arthritis, kidney problems, hearing problems, eye problems, my hair has fallen, my heart is aching." On 9 March 2005, he tells his wife: "You are the soul of my life. You are the best of my heart. You are the light of my eyes. You are the oxygen in my lungs, you are the sun on my back ... you are everything I need to live, to love, to be."

On 9 August 2008, he says: "My sweetheart, yes I lost a lot of weight, yes I have a lot of sickness, yes I got short sight, yes my bones are aching, yes I got white hair, yes I got old, but ... my heart is still young, my mind still strong, stronger than ever."

One of his lawyers, Cori Crider, who visited Mr Aamer in Guantanamo last week, said: "Shaker has dropped to perhaps 150lb [68kg]; his face bears the marks of suffering; and, while he has a nigh-irrepressible spirit, the authorities seem determined to grind him down to nothing." Clive Stafford Smith, another of his lawyers, said his client had been reading 1984 by George Orwell.

"You must read this book because you need to understand what is happening here in Guantanamo," Mr Aamer told him during a visit late last year, the notes of which were declassified only two days ago.

Captured in Afghanistan in December 2001 and held in Kandahar and Bagram before being transferred to Guantanamo Bay on 13 February 2002, Mr Aamer claims he has been tortured over a number of years. He also alleges he was tortured in the presence of a British MI6 officer in Afghanistan. Mr Stafford Smith said Mr Aamer began his latest spell in isolation on 15 July last year.

A British resident who was born in Saudi Arabia, Mr Aamer had indefinite leave to remain in the UK when he was reportedly sold to the US in 2001 by Afghan villagers for $5,000. He claims he was in the country helping to build a school. The US claims he was fighting with the Taliban.

Mr Aamer is the only one of the Guantanamo detainees to allege he was tortured while a British Secret Intelligence Service agent looked on. He claims "John" was present in Afghanistan when his head was smashed against a wall. He also claims he was visited by agents three times in Guantanamo between 2002 and 2005 - by which time the use of torture was widespread knowledge.

It has been reported that Scotland Yard detectives are to fly to Guantanamo to interview Mr Aamer about his allegations, but the UK Government has always denied complicity in torture. Mr Aamer's imprisonment was raised by the Foreign Secretary William Hague during talks with Hillary Clinton in December last year.

A British source close to the negotiations said the backdrop of the US election made the prospect of a quick release unlikely, but maintained the UK was committed to his release, adding: "The UK takes the view his detention is unconscionable. We are conscious of the US political process, but 10 years is a very long time without charge."

Another source familiar with the case reported a conversation with a senior US diplomat who expressed their desire to see Guantanamo shut and Mr Aamer returned "because it was a source of embarrassment" and "a running sore that compromised the diplomatic mission".

An FCO spokesperson said: "The Foreign Secretary raised Mr Aamer's case with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton during his visit to Washington on 12 December 2011. The Government remains committed to securing Mr Aamer's release and return to the UK.

Letters Raise Fears For Last Briton In Guantanamo

meanwhile .....

Ten years is a long time. That a former British resident has spent every single one of the intervening days between February 2002 and today in a cell in Guantánamo, without answering a single charge or having had one day in court, is an affront to the concept of justice.

Shaker Aamer has lived the last decade of his life in limbo. He has gone from a young father in his mid-30s to a grey-haired man in his mid-40s in a cell in the detention camp in Cuba. During that time, he has been involved in protests against conditions at the camp, including hunger strikes, and has been subjected to periods of solitary confinement. He alleges that he has been subject to torture, both before his arrival and while there. He talks of days of sleep deprivation and beatings.

He is not alone in that limbo. His wife and children in London have been subjected to the same torturous wait. Without contact, without explanation, without recourse and seemingly without end. Shaker has never met his youngest child.

It is staggering to contemplate that the US government has perpetuated this injustice, and that successive administrations have flouted the law and the ancient principle of the right to a fair trial.

That this is the example set by the foremost power in the Western world is a matter of shame for America. It is responsible for a degradation of the collective moral authority of the US government and those who are its partners.

It is utterly unacceptable that this has been allowed to go on for so long. If Mr Aamer or any of the men remaining in Guantánamo have committed serious criminal offences, they should and must stand trial under a fair process which will ensure justice for victims of any criminal act. They must not languish there indefinitely.

The UK Government has repeatedly asked for Mr Aamer to be returned to the UK. William Hague must continue to exert all possible pressure to comply with that request, without yet more delay. It has already been too long, let us not mark yet another anniversary of this shameful scandal.

Kate Allen: It's Time For America To Put An End To This Shameful Scandal

WikiLeaks's latest release of confidential emails obtained from the US private intelligence firm Stratfor indicate the US Department of Justice has issued a secret, sealed indictment against Julian Assange. While the Department of Justice has refused to confirm the existence of the Assange indictment - it refuses to comment upon any alleged sealed indictment - the Stratfor email is the best confirmation we have of the long-stated concerns about the risk of Assange's extradition to the US to face criminal prosecution for his publishing activities with WikiLeaks.

The email was from Fred Burton, Stratfor's vice-president for counterterrorism and corporate security, and former deputy chief of the Department of State's counterterrorism division for the Diplomatic Security Service. On Australia Day last year, Burton revealed in internal Stratfor correspondence: ''Not for Pub - We have a sealed indictment on Assange. Pls protect.''

Following the announcement by the US Attorney-General, Eric Holder, of criminal investigation into Assange in December 2010, the US government has refused to give further comment on its plans to prosecute him. The grand jury is secret. Our appeals to military courts for access to the Bradley Manning proceedings were denied. The Australian government has consistently claimed to have no information from the US as to whether they will prosecute Assange and seek his extradition.

The question we must now ask: if a Texas private intelligence firm knew of the sealed indictment for more than a year - why doesn't our government? Did the government know? Was its denial of knowledge dishonest?

It is rather ironic, and an embarrassing indictment of the US-Australia alliance, if the Australian government learnt this information, as we have, through a WikiLeaks release. Indicting Assange represents a dramatic assault on the First Amendment, journalists and the public right to know. Assange, recently awarded the Walkley Award for most outstanding contribution to journalism, faces criminal prosecution - marking the first time a journalist has been prosecuted for allegedly receiving and publishing ''classified'' documents.

The Australian government must rectify the damage to its international reputation by our failure so far to acknowledge - and protect - our most celebrated journalist and be mindful of the impact it will have on free speech in Australia and around the world. The Prime Minster, Julia Gillard, has bent to US pressure on WikiLeaks and wrongfully accused an Australian citizen of illegal conduct, and the former attorney-general Robert McClelland pondered cancelling Assange's passport but Kevin Rudd, as foreign minister, told the pair to back off. He may be on the backbench now, but Rudd was right.

The correct legal analysis, provided by other lawyers in Parliament, Malcolm Turnbull and the shadow attorney-general George Brandis, SC, is that publication of classified material of foreign powers - even friendly ones - is not a crime in Australia; nor is it a crime in the US. That is also the legal advice of the Australian Federal Police, who concluded Assange had committed no crime here. Prominent academics in the US agree Assange is entitled to the protections of the First Amendment.

But any constitutional challenge for Assange will come years down the track. The Stratfor emails disclose a strategy: ''move him from country to country to face various charges for the next 25 years'' and ''[bankrupt] the asshole first … ruin his life. Give him 7-12 years for conspiracy''.

What happens to Assange in the US in the meantime? We need only look to the treatment of WikiLeaks's alleged source, Manning, who has been kept in degrading conditions, including solitary confinement, for more than 18 months pending trial. According to Burton, in another Stratfor email disclosed yesterday: ''Assange is going to make a nice bride in prison. Screw the terrorist. He'll be eating cat food forever.''

The Australian government must learn from its mistakes in the David Hicks case and act now. Assange is an Australian citizen and we must protect him, and protect our country from international condemnation for our failure to act, knowing the treatment Assange will receive in the US.

National sovereignty and the protection of Australians abroad have so far been sacrificed to US interests in this case. A real friend of the US will, at times, criticise, as all friends must. Australia must ask serious questions of the US about its plans to prosecute Assange. Australia should exercise diplomatic protection and seek undertakings regarding his treatment. Assange deserves the protection any of us as Australian citizens deserve. What if it were your son or brother or friend? Would you feel satisfied with our government's response?

In the case of Schapelle Corby, the former attorney-general Philip Ruddock sent senior lawyers to Indonesia on our government's behalf to arrange her defence. They said, ''the fact is, she is an Australian national in trouble overseas, and the consequences are extremely severe, so there just wasn't any hesitation''. Assange is surely as worthy of our protection as the ''Bali boy'' who, having admitted drug possession, received a phone call from Ms Gillard and the highest level of consular assistance. Assange has not received anywhere near that support. Quite the opposite.

Whether or not the government knew before, it certainly knows now. The Prime Minister, the Attorney-General and the new foreign minister must take action. Nicola Roxon, the Attorney-General, campaigned hard in opposition to bring Hicks home, urging the Howard government ''to take urgent action to protect this Australian citizen they have so far neglected for such a long period of time''. She has so far remained silent. But if she can go into bat for Hicks, she can go into bat for Assange. The government must protect Assange, not just because of who he is, but because he is Australian. And, as the Stratfor emails confirm, an Australian is at risk.

Jennifer Robinson is a London-based Australian human rights lawyer who represents Julian Assange and WikiLeaks.

Time For Government To Stand Ground & Protect Assange

War by media, says current military doctrine, is as important as the battlefield. This is because the real enemy is the public at home, whose manipulation and deception is essential for starting an unpopular colonial war. Like the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, attacks on Iran and Syria require a steady drip-effect on readers' and viewers' consciousness. This is the essence of a propaganda that rarely speaks its name.

To the chagrin of many in authority and the media, WikiLeaks has torn down the facade behind which rapacious western power and journalism collude. This was an enduring taboo; the BBC could claim impartiality and expect people to believe it. Today, war by media is increasingly understood by the public, as is the trial by media of WikiLeaks' founder and editor Julian Assange.

Assange will soon know if the supreme court in London is to allow his appeal against extradition to Sweden, where he faces allegations of sexual misconduct, most of which were dismissed by a senior prosecutor in Stockholm. On bail for 16 months, tagged and effectively under house arrest, he has been charged with nothing. His "crime" has been an epic form of investigative journalism: revealing to millions of people the lies and machinations of their politicians and officials and the barbarism of criminal war conducted in their name.

For this, as the American historian William Blum points out, "dozens of members of the American media and public officials have called for [his] execution or assassination". If he is passed from Sweden to the US, an orange jumpsuit, shackles and a fabricated indictment await him. And there go all who dare challenge rogue America.

In Britain, Assange's trial by media has been a campaign of character assassination, often cowardly and inhuman, reeking of jealousy of the courageous outsider, while books of perfidious hearsay have been published, movie deals struck and media careers launched or resuscitated on the assumption that he is too poor to sue. In Sweden this trial by media has become, according to one observer there, "a full-on mobbing campaign with the victim denied a voice". For more than 18 months, the salacious Expressen, Sweden's equivalent of the Sun, has been fed the ingredients of a smear by Stockholm police.

Expressen is the megaphone of the Swedish right, including the Conservative party, which dominates the governing coalition. Its latest "scoop" is an unsubstantiated story about "the great WikiLeaks war against Sweden". On 6 March Expressen claimed, with no evidence, that WikiLeaks was running a conspiracy against Sweden and its foreign minister Carl Bildt. The political pique is understandable. In a 2009 US embassy cable obtained by WikiLeaks, the Swedish elite's vaunted reputation for neutrality is exposed as sham. (Cable title: "Sweden puts neutrality in the Dustbin of History.") Another US diplomatic cable reveals that "the extent of [Sweden's military and intelligence] co-operation [with Nato] is not widely known", and unless kept secret "would open up the government to domestic criticism".

Swedish foreign policy is largely controlled by Bildt, whose obeisance to the US goes back to his defence of the Vietnam war and includes his leading role in George W Bush's Committee for the Liberation of Iraq. He retains close ties to Republican party extreme rightwing figures such as the disgraced Bush spin doctor, Karl Rove. It is known that his government has "informally" discussed Assange's future with Washington, which has made its position clear. A secret Pentagon document describes US intelligence plans to destroy WikiLeaks' "centre of gravity" with "threats of exposure [and] criminal prosecution".

In much of the Swedish media, proper journalistic scepticism about the allegations against Assange is overwhelmed by a defensive jingoism, as if the nation's honour is defiled by revelations about dodgy coppers and politicians, a universal breed. On Swedish public TV "experts" debate not the country's deepening militarist state and its service to Nato and Washington, but the state of Assange's mind and his "paranoia". A headline in Tuesday's Aftonbladet declared: "Assange's moral collapse". The article suggests Bradley Manning, WikiLeaks' alleged source, may not be sane, and attacks Assange for not protecting Manning from himself. What was not mentioned was that the source was anonymous, that no connection has been demonstrated between Assange and Manning, and that Aftonbladet, WikiLeaks' Swedish partner, had published the same leaks undeterred.

Ironically, this circus has performed under cover of some of the world's most enlightened laws protecting journalists, which attracted Assange to Sweden in 2010 to establish a base for WikiLeaks. Should his extradition be allowed, and with Damocles swords of malice and a vengeful Washington hanging over his head, who will protect him and provide the justice to which we all have a right?

The Dirty War On WikiLeaks

The former head of Australia's spy agency ASIO, Dennis Richardson, was told numerous times by foreign government officials that a plan had been hatched to take the former Guantanamo Bay detainee Mamdouh Habib to Egypt for interviewing, before the father of four suddenly disappeared from a Pakistani jail.

But Mr Richardson did not ''take sufficient action'' to advise Australian government ministers that there was an urgent need to escalate Australia's objections to his rendition, a report has found.

Mr Richardson, who is now the secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs, is also criticised by the intelligence agency watchdog for a lack of appropriate record keeping during what was an unprecedented incident involving an Australian citizen being detained overseas on suspected terrorism charges.

The criticisms are contained in a report by the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security Services, Vivienne Thom, into the actions of Australian government agencies in relation to the arrest and detention overseas of Mr Habib.

The wide-ranging report was commissioned by the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, in December 2010 after Mr Habib made allegations that Australian officials had been present during his interrogation and torture in an Egyptian jail.

Mr Habib was arrested in Pakistan after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, in the United States.

Despite being visited by ASIO and Australian Federal Police agents while in custody in Islamabad, he was secretly taken by the CIA to Egypt, where he was tortured for seven months before he was imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay.

He was detained there until January 2005, when he was released without charge.

On his return, he launched legal action against the government, claiming it was complicit in his rendition and torture. After a six-year battle, the government agreed to pay him an undisclosed sum, subject to strict confidentiality, to drop his lawsuit.

The unclassified version of the report by Dr Thom, which was released yesterday by Ms Gillard, makes six recommendations including that the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, ASIO, and the federal police amend their policies regarding the treatment of Australian citizens detained overseas.

Ms Gillard has agreed to adopt five of the six recommendations but has refused to agree to apologise to Mr Habib's wife, Maha, for failing to keep her properly informed about his welfare and circumstances.

The Greens leader Bob Brown said yesterday the government should apologise.

''This would be a small gesture given the suffering Mr Habib and his family have gone through,'' Senator Brown said. ''This is an Australian citizen who was tortured because of Australia's ally. He was held illegally in the hell hole of Guantanamo Bay." In the report, which took a year to complete, Dr Thom said the Department of Foreign Affairs had failed in its duties to offer consular assistance as was possible after Mr Habib was arrested.

She also backed Mr Habib's claims that information seized during an ASIO raid in Sydney was passed to Egyptian authorities to be used during his interrogation.

Mr Habib said yesterday he intended to reopen his case against the government and ''take it to an international court''.

But Ms Gillard said the report showed no Australian official was found to be involved or complicit in any alleged mistreatment or relocation of Mr Habib while he was detained overseas.

''However, the report also makes clear that some whole-of-government mechanisms and processes could have worked better,'' she said.

She said new policies would improve communication between authorities and individuals overseas, provide guidelines to mitigate the risk of inhumane or cruel treatment, and formalise reporting processes where officials became aware or suspected an Australian detained overseas was being mistreated.

ASIO head failed to warn of Habib removal

another outstanding example of Labor’s commitment to truth, justice & the american way ….

"Know that if I make a deal, it will be against my will. I just couldn't hold out any longer."
Letter from David Hicks to his father in Guantanamo Bay 2004

For those of you who are new to the campaign, the Australian government has started an action to sue David for the proceeds of his book, Guantanamo: My Journey. The trial starts on 30 July in Sydney. It will be a time to watch out for the kinds of evidence that the government submits. For example, if material obtained in Guantanamo is accepted in an Australian court, it could have serious ramifications for our legal system - it would be legitimising a Military Commissions system that President Obama himself called 'fatally flawed' and our own Attorney General, Nicola Roxon, called 'rigged'.

Former Guantanamo Bay guard Brandon Neely is set to give evidence, and I am sure that he will provide a unique insight into the running of Guantanamo. So, if you are able to come to the Supreme Court to show your support for Brandon and David, please come and listen to the proceedings.

‘We approached Australia's Attorney-General, Nicola Roxon, to pose a number of questions related to the Assange case, but she was unavailable on holidays.’

Kerry O’Brien’s closing remark on tonight’s Four Corners program Sex, Lies & Julian Assange, which was immediately followed by Q&A live, featuring, amongst others …. wait for it …. Attorney-General, Nicola Roxon.

Another ‘own goal’ from America’s best friend: the Australian Labor Party!!

Australian Government Refuses Assange's Urgent Request for Representations ….. 2 months later

All 16 requests for assistance are refused in full

On 28 May 2012, Julian Assange’s UK solicitor, human rights lawyer Gareth Peirce (Birnberg Peirce and Partners) sent a letter addressed to the Australian government stating what type of assistance Julian Assange required from his government.

On 19 July 2012, almost two months later, the government made its position clear: Australia refuses to make representations on Mr Assange's behalf in any manner whatsoever.

The Australian government took almost two months to respond to Ms Peirce’s letter, despite her insistence that the matter was urgent & her making it clear that Mr Assange’s due process rights were being violated & are being violated, in the absence of the Australian government's representations.

Not only does Australia fail to make representations that are perfectly appropriate & customary - they explicitly refuse to do so.

Here is a table detailing Assange's specific requests, side-by-side with the government's answer to each point raised - Declaration of Abandonment

Long-held claims by the former detainee David Hicks that he was drugged against his will have been backed by evidence from a prominent attorney, independent investigations and previously secret reports.

Details of the mistreatment of the former Guantanamo Bay inmate were set to emerge publicly for the first time in the Australian government's proceeds of crime action against him - until the government abandoned its case. It would have been Mr Hicks's first day in a properly constituted court. But Commonwealth prosecutors decided that their case to seize revenue from his book about his Guantanamo experience would not stand up.

Mr Hicks's lawyers would have used new evidence from US authorities that would then have become public. By dropping the case, the shutters have been brought down on what happened, and some documents are to be kept secret.

The Sun-Herald understands that these documents were expected to shed light on the appalling treatment of detainees. The Sun-Herald has also been given affidavits that were to be presented in court confirming that Mr Hicks had been drugged against his will.

Other investigations show that Guantanamo Bay detainees, including David Hicks, were forced to take high dosages of the controversial anti-malaria drug mefloquine despite showing no signs of the disease, an unprecedented practice that has been likened to ''pharmacologic waterboarding'' by a US military doctor.

Questions have been raised about whether the mass administration of the drug to detainees was a secret, illegal experiment after a medical journal article last month by an army doctor, Major Remington Nevin, highlighted the ''inappropriate use'' of the drug, asking if its use had been motivated by its psychotic side effects. The US Centre for Disease Control has issued a warning against the use of mefloquine on anyone suffering psychiatric disturbances or having a history of depression. Dr Nevin has also warned that high doses of the drug can cause brain injuries.

Evidence including previously secret reports and witnesses including a Guantanamo guard, and New York lawyer, Josh Dratel, support Mr Hicks's claims that he was drugged. Mr Dratel, who has top secret security clearance from the US Department of Justice and has acted for a number of detainees including Mr Hicks, was to give direct evidence of the ''non-therapeutic'' drugging. In an affidavit prepared for the trial, Mr Dratel revealed that US prosecutors had admitted that Mr Hicks's claims that ''guards had forced him to eat a meal which contained a sedative before they read him the charges'' were true. He was told it had been done to protect the officers from his reactions.

Former Guantanamo guard Brandon Neely also supplied an affidavit for the trial saying that detainees were regularly beaten for refusing to take the medications.

Mr Neely has also said that the doctors never told the detainees what drugs they were being given.

Just what drugs were being administered in some cases may never be known. Medical records are apparently incomplete, with names and dosages of some drugs removed.

Stephen Kenny, one of the first lawyers allowed into Guantanamo Bay and who acted initially for Mr Hicks, has called for a full inquiry.

''If they were genuine medications then why does the name of the drug need to be removed?'' asked Mr Kenny, who is also a spokesman for The Justice Campaign.

Further evidence of forced druggings by injection at Guantanamo has been revealed in a previously secret US Department of Defence intelligence report into allegations of the use of mind-altering drugs to facilitate interrogation. The report obtained under freedom of information laws by the independent US news outlet, Truthout, uncovered evidence that ''pyschoactive medication was administered to detainees for mental health purposes and that these injections were sometimes forced with unco-operative detainees''. It also found that ''chemical restraints were used on detainees that posed a threat to themselves'' and detainees being treated with psychoactive drugs that impaired their mental functions were interrogated while under the effects of the medication.

Such forced druggings and abuse handed out to Mr Hicks and other detainees was to be at the heart of his defence against the Australian government's legal action to stop him receiving proceeds of crime by collecting royalties from his book Guantanamo: My Journey.

After 6½ years in detention, Mr Hicks made an Alford plea - which is not recognised in Australia - meaning that he acknowledged the evidence but did not make any admissions. It meant he was convicted in the US of providing material support for terrorism but he was allowed to go home and serve a seven-month prison sentence.

The 37-year-old lives in Sydney and is working as a panel beater, but claims that the pain he suffers as a result of the druggings means that he now relies on painkillers.

On July 24, a week before his case was due to go to trial in the NSW Supreme Court, the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions dropped the case, saying it would have been unable to satisfy the court that any admissions made by Mr Hicks at Guantanamo should be relied upon and that Mr Hicks had served evidence not previously available.

A statement released by the CDPP said Mr Hicks had challenged the admissibility of the evidence against him, including the certificate of conviction from the Guantanamo military court and the transcripts of the court's hearings.

''If, at any stage in the conduct of legal proceedings by the office, there is a concern as to the sufficiency of available evidence, then the office will review the matter regardless of what stage the proceedings have reached in the court process,'' the statement said. A spokesman for the Attorney-General, Nicola Roxon, declined to comment, saying it was a matter for the CDPP.

When Mr Hicks returned to Australia and was serving the seven-month term in Adelaide's Yatala prison, he requested blood tests be taken to determine what drugs he had been given. He was refused, and by the time he was released it was too late to detect traces in his system.

Mr Hicks's lawyer, Steven Glass from Gilbert and Tobin, said: ''The only thing David has wanted since he was first detained in 2001 was to have the allegations against him determined by a properly constituted court applying the rule of law. The trial in the NSW Supreme Court would have been the first time he had that opportunity.''

Mr Hicks said he had mixed feelings about the case being dismissed.

''Preparing for the case brought back memories of my ordeal in Guantanamo and interfered with my life terribly. But I am disappointed that the case was dropped because it was the first time I could have my day in court and the Australian people could have heard what actually went on,'' he said.

The opportunity to see previously classified documents has been lost.

''During the period leading up to the trial, proposed evidence was exchanged between the parties, including evidence that had been provided to the Australian authorities by the US authorities at Guantanamo,'' Mr Glass said. ''We were planning to rely on that evidence at trial.''

Known drugs administered to Hicks

MEFLOQUINE

Questions have been raised about the use of this anti-malarial drug for illegal and secret experiments.

High dosages were given to all detainees, including David Hicks, to stop the spread of malaria. But it was not given to staff brought into the centre from malaria-endemic countries.

Army doctor Remington Nevin said mass administration of the drug in such high doses to people who are asymptomatic or uninfected was akin to ''pharmacologic waterboarding''.

Anti-malaria drugs were used for experimental research by the CIA in the 1950s under its MK-ULTRA mind control program, according to research by independent news outlet Truthout. The US Food and Drug Administration product guide says it can cause mental health problems, including anxiety, hallucinations, depression and unusual behaviour. It has been linked to brain injuries, suicidal and homicidal thoughts, depression and anxiety.

Concerns about the medication's side effects resurfaced in March when a former Army psychiatrist listed it among the medications possibly taken by Army Staff Sergeant Robert Bales, charged in the shooting deaths of 16 Afghan civilians.

GI COCKTAIL

A gastro-intestinal mix of drugs that is supposed to contain liquid antacid, similar to Mylanta, and a mild anaesthetic such as lidocaine. But Mr Hicks said that after taking it, he became so drowsy he couldn't stay awake.

Witnesses Back Hicks On Chemical Torture

I don't believe I've peed in earshot of a London bobby before. When after my chat with Julian Assange last week I asked for the loo, a sign on the toilet door warned of surveillance. Being watched is now so standard in London that it registered as no more sinister than having strayed onto the set of Spooks, until a pale glow outside the window brought it home.

A copper was there, glued-in 24/7, and he was on his iPad in the cold London night. I, centimetres away, was in Ecuador. This of course is the point. Inside the Ecuador embassy, a few steps from Harrods' high-lumen temple to consumerism, Assange pads safely around in socks. He has food, an exercise machine and optical broadband. But should he step through the mirror, even into the building's joyless foyer, he's toast.

It's any old evening in Knightsbridge, yet from the street I count five police, plus the toilet sentry, who must be wedged like a whelk into one of the building's terracotta crannies.

There's also a van the size of a Hollywood trailer and for a moment I expect Benedict Cumberbatch to emerge, a white-haired pseudo-Australian. But no. It, too, is police.

When the foyer constable asks my name I give it without thinking. Later, leaving, I ask why. He explains that they have to keep tabs, just in case ''he'' escapes.

But escape is the last thing on the prisoner's mind. Speaking to Assange makes it immediately clear that he's fine with the situation; unbothered by when, how and whether he might resume a normal, en plein air kind of life. Indeed, he seems to think it an odd question.

There are many possible explanations for this unconcern, including the commonly held view that Assange is a narcissist, in it for the limelight. Narcissism is not a crime, or most celebs and half our pollies would be in jail. But still, after some 90 minutes' conversation, this is not the explanation that recommends itself.

Assange seems wholly cause-driven. And that's where optimism reigns. Asked about his personal future, Assange says: ''It's going great. Everything is developing. We made a promise and we were completely victorious. We're winning.'' Not a first-person singular in sight.

Asked about his personal present, he notes that he's safe, warm, fed, connected and able to work, in ascending order of importance.

Last Sunday, Assange was awarded the Yoko Ono Courage Award (usually given to artists). Credit sanctions have folded, so WikiLeaks's kitty is once again building, and he expects the Swedish case against him will ''drop''. The day we speak, the day of the federal election announcement, Assange quietly confirms that, yes, he will run for the Senate. From outside, to the world, Assange looks stuck. Abandoned by his own government, imprisoned in a small outpost of a regime known for its press intolerance, actively threatened by America and Britain and routinely vilified in Sweden, Assange seems to have dwindling public support, as vilification campaigns start to bite.

Even around London, it's amazing how many people come out with one or all of the following. Count one, didn't publishing all those names get a whole lot of people killed? Two, why doesn't he just go to Sweden and face the music? And three, ''oh well, he seems like a bit of a wanker anyway'' - as though that justified imprisonment without trial or even a grand jury.

I put these to the man at the centre of the storm.

On count one, Assange notes that ''not even the most rabid or hawkish general in the Pentagon has produced evidence or even claimed that we have led to the death or harming of any person - and if we had, they most certainly would''.

As to ''facing the music'', everything hinges on the genuineness of the case and the probability of a fair trial.

Here, it's critical how far the two simultaneous cases - of ''rape'' in Sweden and of illegal publishing in the US - are in fact separate. If the ''rape'' case is genuine, the Swedish government should have no problem (a) sending the prosecutor to interview Assange in London, as repeatedly invited, (b) if necessary, charging him here and (c) guaranteeing against his extradition to the United States.

The Australian government should be strenuously advocating to this end. In fact, both governments have not only refused such guarantees but have actively maligned Assange in a way that diminishes his chance of fair trial in either country. The Swedish prosecutor has said Assange will be seized and imprisoned - potentially in solitary, incommunicado and indefinitely - the minute he sets foot there.

The Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, has never retracted her public (mis)statement that Assange had committed ''an illegal act''. The Swedish Prime Minister, Frederik Reinfeldt, has never retracted his public mis-statement that Assange had been charged with rape. Why not?

Assange points out that Sweden's is a culture of profound conformism; a population half the size of Australia's with a language spoken (and a culture therefore scrutinised) by no one else on earth. A country that, unlike say Germany, ''never denazified'' after World War II. Never pushed the reset button.

So when the Social Minister, Goran Hagglund, publicly describes Assange as ''sick … a coward … a lowlife … a pitiful wretch'', and the Ministry for Foreign Affairs tweets ''you do not dictate the terms if you are a suspect. Get it?'', the press follow suit.

Sweden's largest-circulation daily, Dagens Nyheter, calls Assange ''paranoid'' and a ''querulant''.

A prominent journalist for the Swedish tabloid Aftonbladet, Martin Aagard, calls him an ''Australian pig'', linking Assange with Rupert Murdoch. ''There are many good reasons to criticise Assange. One … is that he's a repugnant swine.''

Is this the temperate response of a modern democracy to untested allegations of sex-without-a-condom? Can we seriously trust that the two cases are discrete?

The Foreign Affairs Minister, Bob Carr, for years a grand jury denier, admitted recently that ''it appears … a grand jury has been established'' in Richmond, Virginia, to try Assange in secret.

What sort of government would not strenuously resist this for a citizen innocent under Australian law?

As to the third conception, of Assange-as-wanker, I say only this. I expected to find him self-absorbed, humourless and rather vain. Instead he was warm, engaging, unpretentious, intelligent and frank. It's not relevant, but I liked him.

Held In A Gilded Cage, Optimism Still Reigns Supreme For Assange

British heiress Jemima Khan has become the latest defector from the WikiLeaks camp, declaring that Julian Assange risks becoming Australia's version of Scientology founder L Ron Hubbard.

The former wife of cricket superstar turned Pakistani politician Imran Khan, Ms Khan has been a high-profile supporter of Mr Assange and was one of the people who put up $30,000 to ensure his bail.

She has lost that money now that he has jumped bail and is holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy in order to avoid extradition to Sweden, where he is wanted for questioning on sexual assault allegations.

Writing in The New Statesman, Ms Khan characterises her journey with Mr Assange as having gone from admiration to demoralisation.

She writes that she wanted to stand up for free speech, but she says Mr Assange has let his rock star status go to his head.

"I don't regret putting up bail money for Assange but I did it so that he would be released while awaiting trial, not so that he could avoid answering to the allegations," she says.

"I have seen flashes of Assange's charm, brilliance and insightfulness – but I have also seen how instantaneous rock-star status has the power to make even the most clear-headed idealist feel that they are above the law and exempt from criticism."

She says WikiLeaks has been guilty of the same obfuscation and misinformation as those it sought to expose.

But she says should the US try Mr Assange for espionage, even his most disenchanted former supporters will take to the barricades in his defence.

"We all want a hero," she concludes.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-02-07/jemima-khan-turns-back-on-julian-assange/4505522?WT.svl=news3

Yes, Jemina. But had Julian not done a runner, we would have a dead hero on our hands by now... I think Julia values his life and future contribution to this world more than he values a hero status when deaded... or whisked away in a secret prison for life which is the same bloody thing... And as far as Mr Rhubarb is concerned, I think Assange does not have the perverse sense of humour to turn his life into the Jesus Christ for little green men.