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The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
Kidnappings & Torture |
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July 5th,
2009 - Binyam Mohamed Launches Fight to Stop US Destroying Torture Images |
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Binyam Mohamed Launches
Legal Fight to Stop US Destroying Torture Images British resident says photographs are evidence of abuse at Guantánamo By Richard Norton-Taylor The Guardian July 5, 2009 Former Guantánamo detainee Binyam
Mohamed has launched an urgent legal attempt to prevent the US courts from
destroying crucial evidence that he says proves he was abused while being
held at the detention camp, the Guardian has learned. The evidence is said to
consist of a photograph of Mohamed, a British resident, taken after he was
severely beaten by guards at the US navy base in Cuba. The image, now held by the
Pentagon, had been put on his cell door, he says. Mohamed claims he was told
later that this was done because he had been beaten so badly that it was
difficult for the guards to identify him. In a sworn statement seen by
the Guardian, Mohamed has appealed to the federal district court in
Washington not to destroy the photograph, which neither he nor his lawyers
have a copy of, and which is classified under US law. The US government considered
the case closed once Mohamed was released and returned to Britain in
February. The photograph will be destroyed within 30 days of his case being
dismissed by the American courts - a decision on which is due to be taken by
a judge imminently, Clive Stafford Smith, Mohamed's British lawyer and
director of Reprieve, the legal charity, said today. Under US law, evidence
relating to dismissed cases must be automatically destroyed. The only way to
preserve the photograph is to have it accepted as a court document. This is the aim of Mohamed's
appeal and he says he needs the image as a crucial piece of evidence to fight
his case against US authorities for unlawful incarceration and abuse. "That
is one piece of physical evidence that I know exists of my abuse," he
says in the statement, adding that it was taken in Guantánamo in 2006. After
being kicked and punched, he says his guards "applied force to a
pressure point on my arm, twisting the handcuffs up ... They tried to open my
closed fists up by bending my fingers back one at a time." They took a
picture of him when, he says, he was on the floor pinioned by the guards. He
continues: "They then slammed me and my Qur'an into the fence."
After he objected, he says, they "slammed me into the fence again". He adds: "They then
strapped me into a restraint chair and cut off half my beard. They then
performed the humiliating 'anal cavity search', although it was painfully
obvious that there was nothing to find." Mohamed also describes how
at one point he screamed and that this "made them redouble their efforts
and my situation got worse". He adds: "One [military
guard] took the heel of my hand and pushed my nose up violently. One soldier pulled
on my jaw. They slammed my forehead down on the concrete floor. One grabbed
my testicles and punched me." Mohamed said: "The
authorities have consistently denied that I have been abused, and this is
physical evidence that I am telling the truth, and they are not." The Guardian is also writing
to the court asking for the photographs to be disclosed in the interests of
open justice and freedom of expression. Mohamed's lawyers and media
organisations are already embroiled in a dispute in the UK high court over a
refusal by David Miliband, the foreign secretary, and the US to disclose what
their intelligence agencies knew about Mohamed's torture. Mohamed was seized and held
in Pakistan in 2002 before being secretly renditioned to Morocco. He was
subsequently flown to Afghanistan before being sent to Guantánamo. Mohamed
says he knows of other photographs taken of him in Morocco and Afghanistan,
but he has not seen them. "These pictures including photos of my
genitals," he said. "Although the US authorities still apparently
deny it and refuse even to admit that I was rendered to Morocco, I was
horribly tortured there and had a razor blade taken to my genitals". He
also says he suspects that witness B - an MI5 officer who interrogated him in
Pakistan in 2002 and currently the subject of a British police investigation
- is being used as a scapegoat. "The main responsibility lies with those
who established the policy of abuse, not with the functionaries who carried
out their orders," he says in his statement. Stafford Smith said:
"It is difficult to understand the continuing policy of the Obama
administration. Surely the public has the right to know the crimes committed
by US personnel against a British resident like Binyam Mohamed." External link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jul/05/binyam-mohamed-guantanamo-evidence-photographs |