I've never known those who make this claim to provide evidence for it, other than a combination of the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy (after this therefore because of this) and the commonsense suggestion that falsely imprisoned people might well be expected to resent those who imprisoned them. I accept the latter, but I have some difficulty making the leap from resentment to terrorist acts. After all, we have people in the U.S. who experience false imprisonment and the like, and they don't seem to go terrorist in any great percentage.
Christopher Hitchens, that liberal journalist with an outlook on foreign policy that pleases conservatives more often than not, offered his opinion over at Slate:
(I)f we think it probable or possible that a man would only mutate into such a monster after undergoing the Guantanamo experience, then I can suggest one reason why that might be. Nothing prepared me for the way in which the authorities at the camp have allowed the most extreme religious cultists among the inmates to be the organizers of the prisoners' daily routine. Suppose that you were a secular or unfanatical person caught in the net by mistake; you would still find yourself being compelled to pray five times a day (the guards are not permitted to interrupt), to have a Quran in your cell, and to eat food prepared to halal (or Sharia) standards. I suppose you could ask to abstain, but, in such a case, I wouldn't much fancy your chances.Hitchens makes a good point. The accomodation of the detainees' religious beliefs almost makes it a little Swat valley in a little corner of Cuba.
Though it often may simply be the case that the released detainees were radical to begin with.
Anyone with a line on good evidence showing that ill treatment of detainees results in radicalization is encouraged to point the way in the comments.
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