BLINDFOLDED, manacled, shaved and transported to the other side of the world. This was the sort of punishment that convicts in the 19th century could expect. It is not the treatment that one expects the United States, the world's most advanced nation, to be handing out to the prisoners it has captured in Afghanistan.
The way the US has handled the al-Qaeda prisoners is particularly ironic given that the war in Afghanistan was fought as a battle to preserve liberal democratic values from those such as Osama bin Laden who wished to destroy them.
It is not merely the physical treatment of the prisoners that is disturbing. Even more disconcerting is the cynical reasoning that appears to be behind holding the prisoners at the Guantanamo base in Cuba. This is a move to almost completely remove whatever legal rights the prisoners have. In the first place, Washington has said they will not be treated as prisoners of war, stripping one layer of legal protection. Secondly, they are housed in a military base outside the US, and are arguably outside the jurisdiction of US courts.
Washington is unrepentant, and the US media, normally so vigilant about abuses the world over, have been strangely muted about the way the prisoners have been treated.
The response from different parts of the world to the treatment of the prisoners provides a graphic insight into the structure of power in the world today. Had any other country treated its prisoners this way, it would have been met with instant condemnation from the rest of the world, not least the US.
But in this case, the response has been minimal. Britain, the most loyal of allies, has made a few muffled sounds of concern as its own citizens are among the prisoners. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary Robinson, has stuck her neck out and expressed concern about the way the prisoners are being treated. But she is an exception. There is a general acceptance that the world's only superpower can do pretty much what it wants.