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LA STAMPA

Watching Bin Laden’s End (From Tunisia) With A Guantanamo Survivor

Former Guantanamo inmate Adel Ben Mabrouk is back home in Tunisia after a decade behind bars. He speaks of his respect for Osama Bin Laden and his plans to write a book on his prison experiences.

(JTF Guantanamo)
(JTF Guantanamo)
Domenico Quirico

TUNIS - Adel Ben Mabrouk has seen the inside of Italian prison cells from Milan in the north to Benevento in the south. He also spent eight years behind the barbed wire of a certain U.S. military prison on the island of Cuba.

Last February, a Milan Judge convicted this 40-year-old Tunisian of criminal association with terrorist intent, but then freed him from jail, citing the time he'd spent incarcerated at Guantanamo as "not democratic" and the conditions "inhumane". Mabrouk is a survivor of Afghanistan, where he was arrested at the end of 2001 for his alleged associations with Al Qaeda.

I met him at his house in Tunisia. By chance, it was this past Monday, soon after Osama Bin Laden's death had been announced. On the television screen in his living room, France 24's Arabic channel was broadcasting the images of the collapsing Twin Towers, Bin Laden, and the stories of some of his many victims.

Looking at the screen, with a strange smile on his face, Mabrouk says: "The Americans… they are smart and bastards at the same time." He then picks up the remote control, and starts looking for the Italian Rai TV channel, in vain. "I love watching Italian soccer. How did Inter of Milan do yesterday? What a team."

I ask him what Bin Laden meant for him: Martyr? Madman? Killer?

"He was a respectable man. Even his enemies should recognize that he deserved respect," Mabrouk responds. "He was a man of honor."

After eight years in Guantanamo, American authorities handed Mabrouk over to Italy. In 2005, Italian authorities had issued an arrest warrant accusing him of international terrorism, falsification of documents, aiding illegal immigration, theft and drug trafficking.

Following Milan judge Armando Spataro's decision to free him, Mabrouk was expelled from Italy. He now lives in the notorious Zaharouni neighborhood of Tunis, an area that is too dangerous to frequent at night.

Mabrouk spends his new life between the local mosque and the garage he runs with his brother. People who pass in front of the garage stop to say hello. They show a sort of respect and admiration for him. Mabrouk's brother, who convinced him to accept this interview, had also been arrested in Afghanistan, accused of terrorism and jailed for seven years in Tunisia.

Prior to his release, Mabrouk spent a total of 10 years in jails. He has been incarcerated in the Italian prisons of Pesaro Asti, Fossombrone, Macomer, Benevento, and Milan, as well in the United States-run Guantanamo and Kandahar military prisons in Afghanistan.

His tales are related to life in jail. He speaks about the fetters used in Pakistan. "It's like in the times of Christ. They put rings around your ankles which are connected by a bar and another bar across the legs. You have to raise the bar in order to walk," he explains.

Does his body have the signs of all this tortures? "Maybe, but I don't realize it. Perhaps Guantanamo inmates like me are all crazy without knowing it," he says with a dry laugh. "It's only when we are out surrounded by people, and we see them looking at us, that we realize."

Every now and again, Mabrouk falls into impenetrable silences. He had said after the second question, "Look, it's better if I just speak. I don't like to answer questions, because I feel like if I am back there. I was interrogated 200 times in Guantanamo, by the CIA, the Italian special forces and those bastards of our Tunisian secret services -- Ben Ali's men. I knew all the questions. They were always the same. There were three questions to which I would never reply: what do you think about kamikazes? How did you become a radical Islamist? Have you ever fired a gun?"

On the question of his faith, he denies that radical imams he met during a stint in an Italian jail for drug-dealing had an impact on him. "This is bullshit. I just had many things to confess, that's all. It was like to be born again. We Muslims have God inside, our faith comes from our souls… I stopped taking drugs, started working as a barber, then as a driver for a company in Cernusco. I had even applied for a regular Visa, but there was that old conviction for drug trafficking. Always the same…"

He finally opens up about Afghanistan and why he went there in February 2001 "It was a place where good Muslims felt at home. I was scared that the Italians authorities would hand me over me to Ben Alì, accusing me of being a radical Islamist. In Afghanistan I lived in a shelter for foreigners. The Taliban took us in, they gave us a home."

After 9/11, when the Taliban regime fell apart, Mabrouk crossed the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, under the US bombing. There, Pakistani authorities arrested him and 150 other people. "They sold me to the Americans for $5,000 just because Bush needed people to fill up the jails as part of the war on terrorism."

He was jailed in Guantanamo. "Look, in Guantanamo there was a lot of good, not just evil. I would like to write a book about it. The title would be Guantanamo, Between Good and Evil. Yes, there we understood who the Americans really are, and we also understood our faith better. We were from 50 countries, and 80% of us learned the Koran by heart. That is not a prison. It is a war camp where psychologists and psychiatrists are in charge. If you do not have faith, you cannot survive in those conditions. I could tell about some amazing gestures, even from the guardians. In Guantanamo I understood one thing: the human being is good, even there."

photo - JTF Guantanamo

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Green

Forest Networks? Revisiting The Science Of Trees And Funghi "Reaching Out"

A compelling story about how forest fungal networks communicate has garnered much public interest. Is any of it true?

Thomas Brail films the roots of a cut tree with his smartphone.

Arborist and conservationist Thomas Brail at a clearcutting near his hometown of Mazamet in the Tarn, France.

Melanie Jones, Jason Hoeksema, & Justine Karst

Over the past few years, a fascinating narrative about forests and fungi has captured the public imagination. It holds that the roots of neighboring trees can be connected by fungal filaments, forming massive underground networks that can span entire forests — a so-called wood-wide web. Through this web, the story goes, trees share carbon, water, and other nutrients, and even send chemical warnings of dangers such as insect attacks. The narrative — recounted in books, podcasts, TV series, documentaries, and news articles — has prompted some experts to rethink not only forest management but the relationships between self-interest and altruism in human society.

But is any of it true?

The three of us have studied forest fungi for our whole careers, and even we were surprised by some of the more extraordinary claims surfacing in the media about the wood-wide web. Thinking we had missed something, we thoroughly reviewed 26 field studies, including several of our own, that looked at the role fungal networks play in resource transfer in forests. What we found shows how easily confirmation bias, unchecked claims, and credulous news reporting can, over time, distort research findings beyond recognition. It should serve as a cautionary tale for scientists and journalists alike.

First, let’s be clear: Fungi do grow inside and on tree roots, forming a symbiosis called a mycorrhiza, or fungus-root. Mycorrhizae are essential for the normal growth of trees. Among other things, the fungi can take up from the soil, and transfer to the tree, nutrients that roots could not otherwise access. In return, fungi receive from the roots sugars they need to grow.

As fungal filaments spread out through forest soil, they will often, at least temporarily, physically connect the roots of two neighboring trees. The resulting system of interconnected tree roots is called a common mycorrhizal network, or CMN.

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