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The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
Kidnappings & Torture |
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March 7th,
2009 - Guantanamo Prisoner Tells of Dark Afghan Prison News article from the Associated
Press News article from Agence France
Presse |
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Guantanamo Prisoner Tells of
Dark Afghan Prison By Robert Barr Associated Press March 7, 2009 London - A former prisoner
at Guantanamo Bay says his worst months in custody were spent in a dark
prison in Afghanistan, where he says he was shackled in uncomfortable positions
for days on end and blasted with constant loud music which made sleep
impossible. Binyam Mohamed, a British
resident who was freed from the U.S. prison in Cuba on Feb. 23 after seven
years in U.S. custody, described his time in Afghanistan in an interview
published in The Mail on Sunday newspaper. "That was when I came
close to insanity," the newspaper quoted him as saying. "It seems
like a miracle my brain is still intact." Allegations of abuse in the
"dark prison" surfaced in 2005 in a report by Human Rights Watch,
based on accounts provided by lawyers for Mohamed and seven other prisoners
at Guantanamo Bay. Mohamed, 30, an Ethiopian
who came to Britain as a teenager, was accused of plotting al-Qaida attacks
in the United States, but war crimes charges against him were dropped last
year. He was arrested in Pakistan
on April 10, 2002 while trying to leave the country on a false passport. Britain's High Court, ruling
in a case brought by Mohamed's lawyers last year, said there was no evidence of
where he was held until May 2004, when he was transferred to Bagram in
Afghanistan. The British government
accepted, however, that Mohamed had established an arguable case that he was
"detained unlawfully and incommunicado at the 'dark prison' near Kabul
where he was subject to torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment by
or on behalf of the United States." Mohamed says he was taken to
Morocco on a secret CIA rendition flight in July, 2002. He claims he was
tortured during 18 months in Morocco, including having his penis cut. In January 2004, he says, he
was taken to the prison in Afghanistan, where he says he saw light only when
guards carrying flashlights brought trays of food - food that often made him
ill and caused him to lose weight rapidly, he says. "The toilet in the cell
was a bucket. Without light, you either find the bucket or you go on your
bed," the newspaper quoted him as saying. "There were
loudspeakers in the cell, pumping out what felt like about 160 watts, a deafening
volume, nonstop, 24 hours a day. They played the same CD for a month, 'The
Eminem Show.' It's got about 20 songs on it and when it was finished it went
back to the beginning and started again. "While that was
happening, a lot of the time, for hour after hour, they had me shackled.
Sometimes it was in a standing position, with my wrists chained to the top of
the door frame. Sometimes they were chained in the middle, at waist level,
and sometimes they were chained at the bottom, on the floor. "The longest was when
they chained me for eight days on end, in a position that meant I couldn't
stand straight nor sit. I couldn't sleep. I had no idea whether it was day or
night." He said he was given one
shower a week, "with your arms chained above you, stripped naked, in the
dark, with someone else washing you." "The water was salty
and afterwards you felt dirtier than when you went in. It wasn't a shower for
washing: it was for humiliation," he said. "The floor was made of
cement dust. Whatever movement you made, the air would be full of cement and
I started getting breathing problems," he added. Mohamed was moved out of the
dark prison to another prison at Bagram air base in May 2004. In September,
he was transferred to Guantanamo. Copyright © 2009 The
Associated Press. External link: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5junnlo64ITDwX7j8laiUSbOIYtIgD96PC4QO0 Guantanamo worse since Obama
election: ex-detainee From Agence France Presse March 7, 2009 London - A freed Guantanamo
prisoner has said conditions at the US detention camp in Cuba have worsened
since President Barack Obama was elected, claiming guards wanted to
"take their last revenge". Binyam Mohamed, the first
detainee to be transferred out of Guantanamo Bay since Obama took office,
also said British agents "sold me out" by cooperating with his
alleged torturers, in his first interview since release which was published
Sunday. Mohamed, a 30-year-old
Ethiopian-born former British resident, gave further details of what he has
called the "medieval" torture he faced in Pakistan and Morocco, as
well as in a secret CIA prison in Kabul and at Guantanamo. "The result of my
experience is that I feel emotionally dead," he told the Mail on Sunday
newspaper. "It seems like a miracle my brain is still intact." Far from improving, Mohamed
said conditions at Guantanamo have worsened since Obama was elected in
November. The US president had
promised during his campaign to shut down the Guantanamo prison and two days
after taking office announced it would close this year. "Since the election
it's got harsher," Mohamed told the newspaper. "The guards would
say, 'yes, this place is going to close down,' but it was like they wanted to
take their last revenge." He also claimed the
Emergency Reaction Force at Guantanamo, a team which he said punishes inmates
in their cells and once almost gouged his eyes out when he declined to give
his fingerprints, is now being used more often. Mohamed said he was beaten
at Guantanamo and also described mistreatment at other detention centres. He said his chest and penis
were slashed with razors while he was held in Morocco. In Afghanistan, he said he
lived in constant darkness for five months and "came close to
insanity" after being forced to listen to the same album by rapper
Eminem at a deafening volume for a solid month. He flew back to Britain last
month, tasting freedom for the first time since 2002 when he was arrested in
Pakistan on suspicion of attending an Al-Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan
and plotting to build a radioactive "dirty bomb". But the United States never
charged him, and British police also questioned him on his return and let him
go free. In the newspaper interview,
Mohamed gave further details of his claim that British officials had colluded
in his alleged torture. He said while he was in
Morocco in 2002, his Moroccan interrogators "started bringing British files
to the interrogations... it was obvious the British were feeding them
questions about people in London. "When I realised that
the British were cooperating with the people torturing me, I felt completely
naked," he said. "They sold me out." He said he subsequently made
false confessions about one plot to build a "dirty" nuclear bomb
and another to blow up apartments in New York linked to alleged 9/11
mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. The paper also quoted two
telegrams, shown to Mohamed by his military lawyer, from Britain's MI5
security service to the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in November
2002. They allegedly detail specific questions that the British wanted to be
put to Mohamed. "We note that we have
also requested that briefs be put to Binyam Mohamed and would appreciate a
guide from you as to the likely timescale for these too," one is quoted
as saying. "We fully appreciate
that this can be a long-winded process but the urgent nature of these
enquiries will be obvious to you." In response to the claims,
Britain's Foreign Office released a statement saying: "We abhor torture
and never order it or condone it... "In the case of Binyam
Mohamed, an allegation of possible criminal wrong-doing has been referred to
the Attorney General. We need now to wait for her report." Mohamed is undergoing
therapy to come to terms with his experiences. Looking to the future, he
said he wanted to stay in Britain, which is currently considering whether to
let him remain. "It's the only place I can call home," he said. In an editorial, this week's
Independent on Sunday said his case was "only the most dreadful of many
instances where the British government's policy seems to have been to turn a
blind eye". Copyright © 2009 AFP. All
rights reserved. External link: http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5ifIr1uCPmjbJrjlnr20okZpghUcg |