50 years for the guilty, and only ten (or seven) for the innocent

I was stunned to learn through this Ottawa Citizen article that an Afghan man was imprisoned for seven years at the infamous Bagram base based on suspicions that he was the ”main money handler for Osama bin Laden”. It turned out Mr. Wazir was no more than a simple family man who was trying hard to feed his family. He operated a money transfer business by which Afghanis and others used his service. He was certainly not a terrorist as he was first portrayed.

The worst part is that Mr. Harkat happened to deal with Mr. Wazir at some point in time. That formed part of the allegations against Mr. Harkat who also endured seven years of imprisonment in a Canadian prison.

Immediately after I finished reading the story I had a flashback about what prisoners were told when I arrived at the Sednaya prison in August of 2003. Anxious to know their fate, prisoners asked the prison manager, while he was on a regular prison inspection tour, how long they would be held in prison. His reply was “the innocent is held here for about 5 to 10 years and the guilty is held here for up to 50 years”.

I will leave it up to you to comment and reflect upon the similarities.