Rolling Stone Satire Led to Gitmo Torture

clipped from rawstory.com Binyam Mohamed, an Ethiopan janitor who was seeking asylum in Britain, allegedly admitted to browsing a story that instructs readers how to building a nuclear bomb. Trouble is, that story was apparently a joke. Mohamed says that he made the admission -- and others relating to purported terrorism -- after being beaten, hung by his wrists for a week, having a gun held to his head, and held in a dungeon-like cell at the US prison at Guantanamo Bay. A British newspaper reported Sunday that the "offending article," "How to Build An H-Bomb," was actually published in Rolling Stone and re-posted on other websites. Mohamed was subject not simply to apparent torture but also to the Bush Administration's extraordinary rendition program, in which terrorist suspects are kidnapped and put on private jets, then dropped in third-party countries that condone torture.

Among the things that it's illegal to do these days, add "reading Rolling Stone while Muslim." Better put down Mad Magazine too, just to be on the safe side. The piece tells us:

"Unclassified evidence corroborates Binyam’s claims that he was threatened – at the time the White House was obsessed by the idea terrorists had access to nuclear materials," said Mohamed's lawyer, Clive Stafford Smith. "Binyam said that he told them about a website he had once seen on the internet called How To Build An H-Bomb. He said that this was a joke but they thought it might be serious.

"I am speculating but I think this news was sent up the line to the White House, which is when the paranoia kicked in," Stafford Smith added. "This is how they made their huge mistake, thinking he was a major terrorist as opposed to a London janitor."

Feel safer now? Never let it be said that the Bush administration wasn't paranoid enough. They were always willing to err on the side of stupidity and cruelty.