The Gitmo Blowback
[cnn-photo-caption image=http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2009/POLITICS/01/21/guantanamo.hearings/art.gitmo.tower.gi.jpg caption="A guard keeps watch from a tower at the military facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba."]
Paula Newton
CNN London Correspondent
The orange jumpsuits, the barbed wire, the ‘redacted' files. President Obama may be able to make it all history by closing Guantanamo Bay, but their affect on American justice will be profound.
Moazzam Begg, a former British inmate who was released in 2005, has always stressed to me that during torture and detention he would have confessed to anything. And that is the heart of the legal problem now facing the new administration.
"Guantanamo Bay is the most notorious prison on earth," says Begg, who believes Guantanamo is a radicalizing force for militants around the world.
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Filed under: 360° Radar • Paula Newton • President Barack Obama |
Update: Firebombs and free speech
Paula Newton | BIO
International Security Correspondent
Anjem Choudary practises and preaches Islamic Sharia law. When we discussed the book, ‘The Jewel of Medina’, and the insult that he believes it brings upon the Prophet Mohammed, he could not have been more categorical: The punishment is death.
So I asked him about the personal security of the book’s American author, Sherry Jones.
“You think her life would be in danger?” I asked Choudary.
“I think certainly, you know there will be consequences for her”
We reached Sherry Jones in her hometown of Spokane, Washington. She told us despite firebombs and threats, she is not afraid.
“This is beyond me, this is a bigger responsibility than me. This is not about whether I live or die. This is about the future of the free world, the future of democracy and the future of freedom of speech. So I’m not going to abdicate that responsibility as others have and walk away because someone might try to harm me.”
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Filed under: Paula Newton |
Behind the Scenes: “We Look Healthy, But Inside We’re Rotting”
The calm and tightly controlled streets of the capital city here, Harare, are hard to fathom. Why aren’t we seeing protests in the streets, panic at the banks and brawls in the food lines? When I asked one young Zimbabwean about it he explained, ‘It’s like a person, on the outside we look healthy, but inside we’re rotting,” he said.
On a rare, undercover journey into the Zimbabwean countryside, we tried to find ‘the rot’ and we didn’t have to look long. We passed several police checkpoints, dodging police all the way along our route before we joined a journey made by millions here each day, an all-consuming hunt for work and food.
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Filed under: Paula Newton • Zimbabwe |
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