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The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
Kidnappings & Torture |
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February 23rd,
2009 - Gitmo Detainee who Claimed Torture is Freed News article from the
Associated Press |
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Gitmo Detainee
Who Claimed Torture is Freed By Paisley Dodds Associated Press February 23, 2009 London - A Guantanamo prisoner
who claims he was tortured at a covert CIA site in Morocco returned to
Britain a free man Monday after nearly seven years in U.S. captivity - the
first inmate from the U.S. prison camp freed since President Barack Obama
took office. Binyam Mohamed, once accused
by U.S. officials of being part of a conspiracy to detonate a "dirty
bomb" on American soil, flew to a British military base. He was released after being
interviewed for four hours by police and immigration officials. He had to
fill out new paperwork for residency since his permit expired in 2004. Mohamed's claims of torture,
abuse and extraordinary rendition are at the heart of several lawsuits.
Lawyers on both sides of the Atlantic are suing for secret documents they say
prove the United States sent Mohamed to Morocco and that Britain knew of the
mistreatment - a violation under the 1994 U.N. Convention Against Torture. "I have been through an
experience that I never thought to encounter in my darkest nightmares,"
Mohamed said in a statement released by his attorneys. "Before this
ordeal, `torture' was an abstract word to me. ... It is still difficult for
me to believe that I was abducted, hauled from one country to the next, and
tortured in medieval ways all orchestrated by the United States
government." He said he wasn't yet
"physically nor mentally capable of facing the media." His lawyers said they would
provide money for his accommodations and living expenses. Mohamed's case could have
far-reaching legal implications for the Obama administration and Britain,
America's closest partner during its "war on terror." U.S. Attorney General Eric
Holder is expected at the Guantanamo detention center Monday as the Obama
administration weighs what is needed to shut the facility down. "The friendship and
assistance of the international community is vitally important as we work to
close Guantanamo, and we greatly appreciate the efforts of the British
government to work with us on the transfer of Binyam Mohammed," Holder
said in a statement. Britain's attorney general
has opened an investigation into whether there was criminal wrongdoing on the
part of Britain or a British security agent from MI5 who interrogated Mohamed
in Pakistan, where he was arrested in 2002. Two senior British judges, meanwhile,
have reopened a case into whether 42 secret U.S. intelligence documents
shared with Britain should be made public. Several other lawsuits are
under way in the United States against a Boeing subsidiary that allegedly
supplied planes for rendition flights to Morocco and for the disclosure of
Bush-era legal memos on renditions and interrogation tactics. The United States has
refused to account for the 18 months Mohamed says he was in Morocco. "I am so glad and so
happy, more than words can express," Mohamed's sister, Zuhra Mohamed,
said Monday. The 30-year-old Ethiopian
refugee has few remaining links to Britain. His brother and sister live in
the United States. His parents are said to be back in Ethiopia. And his
British residency that he obtained when he was teenager has since expired. Any revelations from the
lawsuits could be particularly damaging for the British government, which
unlike the Obama administration, doesn't have its predecessors to blame. "I assure you that we
have done everything by the law," Prime Minister Gordon Brown told
reporters last week when faced with questions over Mohamed's case. Foreign Secretary David
Miliband said Britain has been asking for the return of former UK residents
since 2007. "We very much welcome
President Obama's commitment to close Guantanamo Bay, and I see today's
return of Binyam Mohamed as the first step toward that shared goal,"
Miliband said. Mohamed's family came to
London from Ethiopia in 1994. It applied for asylum following the ouster of
Marxist dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam's ouster, but the family was only
given temporary residency. Schooled in West London,
Mohamed worked as a janitor and later became a student of electrical
engineering before converting to Islam in 2001. Shortly afterward, he said
he went to Pakistan and Afghanistan to escape a bad circle of London friends
and experience an Islamic society. But he was detained in the Pakistani port
city of Karachi in 2002 for using a false passport to return to Britain. For three months, he says he
was tortured by Pakistani agents, who hung him for a week by a leather strap
around his wrists. He says at least one MI5 officer questioned him there. He claims he was handed over
to U.S. authorities in July 2002, and then sent to Morocco where he was
tortured for 18 months. According to his account, one of his foreign
interrogators slashed his penis with a scalpel. Many of the estimated 750
detainees who have passed through Guantanamo prison camp since it opened in
January 2002 have reported mental and physical abuse, but few have detailed
such sustained physical and mental abuse at an alleged CIA covert site. Mohamed claims he eventually
confessed to an array of charges to stop his abuse - a confession that laid
the groundwork for his transfer to another CIA site in Afghanistan, where he
said he was starved and beaten before being sent to Guantanamo in 2004. In May of 2008, Mohamed was
charged with conspiring with al-Qaida members to murder and commit terrorism.
He also was accused in a "dirty bomb" plot to fill U.S. apartments
with natural gas and blow them up. But then in October all
charges were dropped - only months after his lawyers filed a lawsuit in
Britain for the disclosure of the 42 secret documents. Two other former British
residents remain in Guantanamo: Saudi-born Shaker Aamer, 37, and Algerian
Ahmed Belbacha, 39. Copyright © 2009 The
Associated Press. External link: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5junnlo64ITDwX7j8laiUSbOIYtIgD96HEQC00 |