> I like how everyone here takes this guys word for everything.
It's not very different from the alternative, which is taking the word of whoever put/keeps him there without trial.
Now one of these parties is well-known for enacting cruelties on human beings in situations exactly like these, and the other we really don't know anything about, at all.
Therefore the only right and humane thing to do is to give the latter some benefit of the doubt.
> After all, the US government likes to round up random people around the world and put them in max security detainment
Well yes, such fuck-ups have happened before, as a matter of fact:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2005/jan/14/usa.germany
And that's just the first example I pulled from the top of Google. There's many more. So truly, there is ALL the reason to assume at least some of the Gitmo prisoners are innocent and kept simply because they are the result of a fuck-up nobody wants to own up to.
> but I also wouldn't bet money on a Gitmo prisoner's "honest" word either.
Why? What do you know about why they are there? There's been no trials, they are only prisoners because the people keeping them say they're guilty of something. So you can't use the fact they are prisoners to decide their honesty, that would be circular reasoning. Both parties have an interest in lying that is almost completely independent of guilt: One has been kept in a secret prison for 11 years subjected to inhumane treatment, and the other side wants to keep a lid on the whole Gitmo thing (maybe even especially if they weren't guilty).
Also, 11 years, man. As I said, you don't know what he did, you don't even know what he's being accused of. Stepping aside from the (very real) possibility of him being completely innocent, what if he did do something, maybe it was terrible, or maybe it was something small and stupid that in no way warrants being locked up in Gitmo for 11 years. And in a year from now you'll have to argue that all those people are guilty of a crime that warrants at least 12 years in a terrible prison, and the year after that, and after that, etc. All the while not having a single clue what these people did, what they are accused of.
It's pretty obvious that at least one of the sides here is guilty.