Asim Qureshi [Senior Researcher, Cageprisoners]: "Two weeks after the 11th September 2001 attacks, Nihad Karsic and Almin Hardaus were kidnapped off the streets of Bosnia and flown in helicopters to a US base where they were held in a shipping container in conditions which would later perfectly resonate with those detained in Afghanistan and sent to Guantanamo Bay. Those early detentions served as a practice ground for what would later be policies of detention and sensory deprivation in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantanamo Bay.

The latest revelations by Murat Kurnaz in his book "Five Year Detention at Guantanamo Bay" only add to the plethora of corroborated evidence that unlawful detention and torture policies have been systematically used by the US military since the start of the "War on Terror." Although there is no way of corroborating the story of Mr Kurnaz without soldiers based at Guantanamo Bay breaking their imposed silence, the wealth of information that is seeping out through the statements of former detainees is quickly building a case against the military. Once abuse and torture is proven to be systematic, then there is nowhere in the world that those criminals who misuse their positions can hide, the universal jurisdiction of international criminal law relating to torture makes sure of that.

Mr Kurnaz, an innocent man detained in Guantanamo Bay for five years, known to be innocent by his captors for four of those years; is the unfortunate victim of US neo-military justice. This justice, through the Combatant Status Review Tribunals and now Military Commissions, is a system which does not allow for defendants to appoint their own counsel, to view the evidence against them, for their counsel to view the evidence against, or to call for any witnesses in their defence. This system recognises that men under its extra-judicial jurisdiction may be innocent, but lacks adequate legal mechanisms to have them released."