Talk:Mehdi Ghezali

Radical
Is use of the word radical - as in "radical Islam" pov? Ackie00 23:49, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

Comment
Mehdi Ghezali was the subject of an hour long documentary. The documentary film-makers were Swedish, IIRC, but it was filmed in English It included interviews with Janice Karpinski, among others.

Ghezali's interview came late in the film, and was brief. I am not a mental health professional. He seemed to still be in shock from his treatment in US captivity, and deeply depressed. He appeared after one of the British former captives talked him into it.

Anyhow, mention of this film belongs in the article.

Cheers! Geo Swan (talk) 01:31, 12 September 2009 (UTC)

cn
The early life section seemed to have a lot of unreferenced statements.

I found some of them backed up by a reference from late in the section. I moved that reference to the top. But some statements seem to remain unreferenced.

I had to work from google translation of. If this is just a swedish blogger, then it is not a WP:RS.

Maybe I will go ask at the swedish equivalent of the village pump as to whether they consider it a WP:RS.

Cheers! Geo Swan (talk) 15:41, 14 September 2009 (UTC)


 * It´s not a blog, some sort of magazine. Never heard of it. Don´t seem like an RS, though. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk • contribs) 07:57, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

Sunni Islam
In spite of crazy allegations from Netanyahu, this guy is a Sunni Muslim, not a Shia, most likely affiliated with al-Qaeda, hence his travels in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, and capture in Guantanamo. This needs to be noted, if sources bring it up, of course. FunkMonk (talk) 16:53, 19 July 2012 (UTC)
 * If this guy didn't die in Bulgaria, where the heck is he? FunkMonk (talk) 20:12, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

You're a fucking idiot, "if this guy didn't die in Bulgaria where the heck is he?", what kind of a question is that? If he isn't a proven culprit, what difference does it make where the hell he is? And how is it any of your business? He was locked up at Gitmo for over two years, without knowing what his charge was and his confinement went without a trial. His dad had campaigned for his release for more than a year. And now you have the audacity to ask about this man's whereabouts if he wasn't involved? Are you mentally handicapped? How about disproving Russell's Teapot while you are at it, you clusterfuck. What happened to innocent until proven guilty, you gullible tool. Do you know the meaning of character assassination and defamation?

People like you are a fucking disgrace to this world. The smoke hasn't blown off the victims' bodies and you're pointing fingers because media regurgitated a foreign-sounding name you can barely pronounce. You're a donkey, plain and simple. You're accusing Netanyahu for spouting crazy allegations, which is true, but you're doing the same thing. What proof do you even bring for accusing this guy to belong to Al-Qaeda? You're the breed that needs a scapegoat whenever shit hits the fan. --217.209.85.159 (talk) 17:02, 24 July 2012 (UTC)

explanation
In this edit I corrected what I regarded as serious misconception.

"Unlawful combatant" is NOT how the US referred to the captives apprehended in its "global war on terror". "Unlawful combatant" is a term associated with the Geneva Conventions. It was the policy of Bush Presidency that the Geneva Conventions did not apply to these captives. The Bush Presidency called them "Enemy Combatants" -- a newly made up and controversial term. Saying that the USA called him an "unlawful combatant" is highly misleading, as it is tantamount to saying the USA was complying with the Geneva Conventions, and that Ghezali was granted all the protections of POW status. Geo Swan (talk) 18:05, 20 July 2012 (UTC)


 * I beg to disagree on some of that.
 * As I remember it, the term "unlawful combatant" is the one initially used.
 * The Supreme Court asked (though didn't mandate at that time) that there be a more strict process for detainees. The Bush administration then formed the CSRTs.  It did not wait for the Court to compel them.
 * The sequence of events is important. As I recall, it was during the initial work on one of the military commissions that defense lawyers argued that a case be thrown out because the CSRT had only ruled on their combatant status, and not on whether or not they were specifically unlawful combatants.  (The case eventually moved on after an appeals court decided that their lawful/unlawful status could be determined later by the commission.)  I think they were called "enemy combatants" only after that point.  This mattered at the time because the 2006 MCA has different criteria for both lawful and unlawful combatants.  But they could be legally held regardless.
 * But Mehdi Ghezali left Guantanamo before most of that. He wasn't there for the CSRTs.  His case was never sent to a military commission, and he was never called merely an "enemy combatant."  Moreover, you make the switch in terminology sound like there was disregard for the GCs when the truth is exactly the opposite.
 * I think it's become fairly clear by now that the U.S. and its allies always cared about the Geneva Conventions. Very, very few of its critics support the GCs when it counts, and none of its enemies do.  The Bush administration found legal arguments for what they did.  On those occasions when the Supreme Court went against those arguments, they often did so only narrowly.  In the end, Guantanamo is still legal, and holding them indefinitely is likewise legal in accordance with international law.
 * -- Randy2063 (talk) 20:01, 20 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Since I was working from shaky memory on the above, I went back to look at the documents.
 * I was wrong about the term "enemy combatant" coming into general use after the defense lawyers argued that a military commission case be thrown out because the CSRT had only ruled on their combatant status. (You probably remember the case.)
 * Sort-of wrong, anyway. I looked back at the Order Establishing CSRTs, and I see that it clearly calls them "enemy combatants."  (That must have been the basis for those defense lawyers trying to get the case thrown out.)  Whether that's really "general use" of the term, or not, doesn't really matter.  They clearly did use the term in DoD documents.
 * I still disagree that it's a controversial term, for the reasons above. It's not unlike the way they use the initials EPW for enemy POWs.
 * The 2006 MCA does use the terms "lawful enemy combatant" and "unlawful enemy combatant." It also uses "enemy combatant" by itself, presumably (although I'm not a lawyer, and perhaps not even an astute enough reader) to mean either type of combatant.
 * There are obviously going to be legal situations when their lawful/unlawful status wouldn't be pertinent. I don't see anything nefarious about using the term in that way.  The Supreme Court hasn't seen anything wrong with that.
 * -- Randy2063 (talk) 04:10, 21 July 2012 (UTC)


 * Another mea culpa, but I'm still basically right about "enemy combatant" status being uncontroversial.
 * Most of the primary docs we have, like CSRTs, are from after Ghezali left. As I remember it, most of the critics were then talking about unlawful combatants.  But I did find this from an HRW report in 2003.
 * Yes, the U.S. government was calling them "enemy combatants" even then. But no, that's not the part that was controversial about this term.
 * At that time, HRW was complaining about using "enemy combatants" for detainees captured away from the active fighting areas. As this article says, Ghezali was captured while fleeing Tora Bora.  There was nothing controversial about his being considered an enemy combatant.
 * As the 2003 HRW paper says, they were still complaining about POW status in general, but not about the term. And they must have re-tuned that complaint after Hamdan.
 * -- Randy2063 (talk) 20:13, 21 July 2012 (UTC)


 * Randy, I started a reply on Friday. Following your updates most of it is no longer relevant, so I'll drop most of it.


 * Regarding whether the DoD explicitly called Ghezali an enemy combatant -- Page 4 of Ghezali's JTF-GTMO assessment says "EC Status: Detainee's enemy combatant status was reassessed on 24 February 2004, and he remains an enemy combatant." -- So years before the MCA was passed.


 * I think we are agreed that whoever claimed the US referred to Ghezali as an "unlawful combatant" was mistaken, correct? No US official has used this term for any individual.  And the term "unlawful enemy combatant" came in to use following the passage of the MCA, in 2006.  It seems to me that "unlawful combatant" and "unlawful enem combatant" are not synonyms.  So I think the edit I made to the article was justified.


 * Randy, I really appreciate your questions -- but I will address most of them on your talk page, as I think they are not about the edit to the article, but rather are in response to my explanation. It might take me a few days.


 * Cheers! Geo Swan (talk) 15:11, 22 July 2012 (UTC)


 * I do think the terms "unlawful combatant" and "unlawful enemy combatant" are the functionally same. The only thing it adds is a clarification that they are enemies.  At worst, it's redundant, but I can think of times when they'll want to be clear.
 * As for the rest, sounds good. No hurry.  I'm in slow-mode this week.
 * -- Randy2063 (talk) 05:50, 24 July 2012 (UTC)

recklessness
Someone was very reckless with the cite reference templates in this article.

Some people like to put cite templates with each field on a separate line. Other people like to put the entire template on single line.

I think it is important to keep our hands off references created in the style we don't like -- unless they are actually broke -- as it makes the revision history misleading. It makes it look like the article had extensive changes to the article's content -- when they didn't change the content at all.

I added half or more of the references to this article, and some bright spark decided to change them all to the all on one line style. Normally, I would just be grumpy about this. But somewhere along the line that individual, or someone else, screwed up all the webcitation archive URLs. Webcitation.org offers a short URL and a long URL to the archived version of a web page.

The last 16 characters of those archive URLs are always date=yyyy-mm-dd -- where yyyy-mm-dd are always the date the page was archived. Someone decided to change all date fields in all the templates in the article, and to put them in English. They recklessly changed these fields as well, changing the date into English -- which, of course broke all those URLs.

Those archive URLs were a lot of work, and it is extremely aggravating to see them being recklessly broken.

So I moved all the article's references. Geo Swan (talk) 11:57, 21 July 2012 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 1 one external link on Mehdi Ghezali. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive http://web.archive.org/web/20070930184034/http://www.dod.mil/news/May2006/d20060515%20List.pdf to http://www.dod.mil/news/May2006/d20060515%20List.pdf

When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true or failed to let others know (documentation at ).

Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot  (Report bug) 15:41, 21 July 2016 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 6 one external links on Mehdi Ghezali. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20120204234059/http://www.thelocal.se/article.php?ID=273&date=20040723 to http://www.thelocal.se/article.php?ID=273&date=20040723
 * Corrected formatting/usage for http://www.wikileaks.org/gitmo/pdf/sw/us9sw-000166dp.pdf
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20120204234110/http://www.thelocal.se/article.php?ID=254&date=20040709 to http://www.thelocal.se/article.php?ID=254&date=20040709
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20120204060054/http://www.dn.se/DNet/jsp/polopoly.jsp?d=147&a=288303 to http://www.dn.se/DNet/jsp/polopoly.jsp?d=147&a=288303
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20070927000637/http://www.muslimnews.co.uk/news/news.php?sub=1872 to http://www.muslimnews.co.uk/news/news.php?sub=1872
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20090912082712/http://svt.se:80/2.22620/1.1685823/svensk_guantanamofange_gripen_i_pakistan to http://svt.se/2.22620/1.1685823/svensk_guantanamofange_gripen_i_pakistan

When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true or failed to let others know (documentation at ).

Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot  (Report bug) 07:30, 9 November 2016 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 5 external links on Mehdi Ghezali. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Corrected formatting/usage for https://wikileaks.org/gitmo/pdf/sw/us9sw-000166dp.pdf
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20081220004442/http://www.dod.mil/pubs/foi/detainees/09-F-0031_doc1.pdf to http://www.dod.mil/pubs/foi/detainees/09-F-0031_doc1.pdf
 * Corrected formatting/usage for http://svt.se/2.22620/1.1685823/svensk_guantanamofange_gripen_i_pakistan
 * Added archive http://www.webcitation.org/query?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.thelocal.se%2F22118%2F20090916%2F&date=2009-09-16 to http://www.thelocal.se/22118/20090916/
 * Added archive http://www.webcitation.org/query?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.thelocal.se%2F22576%2F20091010%2F&date=2009-10-10 to http://www.thelocal.se/22576/20091010/

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot  (Report bug) 19:55, 7 June 2017 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified one external link on Mehdi Ghezali. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20070927203646/http://www.gp.se/gp/jsp/Crosslink.jsp?d=119&a=173700 to http://www.gp.se/gp/jsp/Crosslink.jsp?d=119&a=173700

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot  (Report bug) 19:52, 3 September 2017 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 3 external links on Mehdi Ghezali. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20130801064639/http://www.stockholmnews.com/more.aspx?nid=4379 to http://www.stockholmnews.com/more.aspx?nid=4379
 * Added archive https://www.webcitation.org/query?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.stockholmnews.com%2Fmore.aspx%3FNID%3D3945&date=2009-09-11 to http://www.stockholmnews.com/more.aspx?NID=3945
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20120204234240/http://www.contra.nu/kommentar0429.html to http://www.contra.nu/kommentar0429.html

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot  (Report bug) 04:22, 29 November 2017 (UTC)