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Guantánamo Man's Family Release 'Torture' Dossier
· Relatives of UK resident publicise allegations· Family of Libyan national release detailed dossier
A British resident held by the US as an alleged terrorist has claimed his captors repeatedly tortured him, subjecting him to beatings, sexual abuse and threats of execution.
Omar Deghayes, 37, is one of five British residents who the United Kingdom government last week asked the US to release from Guantanámo Bay, after years of refusing to help them because they were not UK citizens.
Yesterday the family of Mr Deghayes decided to release a detailed dossier of alleged torture which the former law student dictated to a lawyer who visited him in the Cuban internment camp.
He is a Libyan national whose family fled to the UK after their trade unionist father was murdered by the Gadafy regime in 1980.Mr Deghayes was captured in Pakistan - his family claim by bounty hunters - after the US attacked Afghanistan. They say he had gone there to start a business exporting dried fruit to a leading supermarket.In the dossier, he claims to have seen US guards kill people, witnessed prisoners being partially drowned, and saw the Qur'an thrown into a toilet by a US guard.
The new claims come after earlier Guardian reports of Mr Deghayes's ill treatment, including allegations that he was left blinded in one eye after a soldier plunged his finger into it, and claims that he had human excrement smeared on his face.
Mr Deghayes grew up in Brighton and studied law at Wolverhampton University and then studied in Huddersfield. His family say he is not a terrorist and opposed violence.
The US says al-Qaida tells its operatives to allege ill treatment, though parts of Mr Deghayes' account are consistent with those from former detainees.
The dossier contains far more allegations and detail than previously made public. Mr Deghayes says "sexual abuse did occur", but says he can not bear to relive the details until he is released: "It is very distressing and sad to go through and remember again."
He says he was threatened with being sent back to Libya where his family fear he would be killed.
He was first arrested in Lahore, Pakistan, in late 2001-early 2002, then taken to Bagram in Afghanistan, before being sent to Guantánamo Bay.
The allegations challenge President George Bush's repeated claims that the US does not use torture.
He says that in Lahore prison he was subjected to electric shocks: "The more I scream they will laugh and do it again ... my screams all in vain."
He says that in Pakistan he was handed over to the Americans who hooded him and placed him on plane in a torture position.
"Two soldiers locked their arms into mine and lifted me off the ground. All my [weight] borne by my arms which were shackled behind my back.
"I was thrown in the plane. There were many others in the torture position."
After he was moved to Bagram in Afghanistan, he says he saw electric shocks used on other detainees and here he also saw death threats, with guards pointing their rifles at the Muslim men.
He says he also witnessed a prisoner shot dead after he had gone to the aid of an inmate who was being beaten and kicked by the guards: "The American said he tried to take the gun."
Another inmate was beaten to death: "One by the name of Abdaulmalik, Moroccan and Italian, was beaten until I heard no sound of him after the screaming.
"There was afterwards panic in prison and the guards running about in fear saying to each other the Arab has died. I have not seen this young man again."
Another inmate, Mr Deghayes claims, was beaten until blood dripped on the cell floor and he was left "paralysed and mentally damaged".
In Bagram he says he was chained in a cage "with hands stretched above [my] head ...causing suffocation".
In Bagram he says he went without food for 45 days and was subjected to water torture: "They hold me naked in the night, freezing cold, and throw buckets of water and fill the bucket and throw [it] again. I shiver and shake badly and try to sit down to gain warmth. They kick and punch and say stand up until I fall to the ground in weakness."
While moving from Bagram to Guantánamo, he says he was so ill he suffered hallucinations that he was back in the UK and travelling on a train, after beatings and 45 days without food.
In Guantánamo Mr Deghayes says he was beaten on his first day. Special teams which tackle allegedly disruptive prisoners repeatedly beat him up, he claims.
Prisoners were also given mystery injections. He says an FBI interrogator called Craig said he would face execution, and that he would not get a proper trial.
He says: "Many times one FBI interrogator by the name of Craig said, 'Omar, it is nothing like the law you studied in the UK. There will never be a proper court and lawyers etc, it would be only a military tribunal to determine your future and your life. Your best choice is to cooperate with me."
He says he was subjected to taunts insulting his religion and during his first year in Guantánamo a Qur'an was thrown in a toilet, causing a riot among inmates. As a punishment his head and beard were shaved.
In Guantánamo, he says, "they would pretend to search and want to put their hands on people's genitalia".
His brother, Abubaker Deghayes, 39, said: "I cannot believe how the Americans can do this to him, and astonished how he could survive this."
Mr Deghayes's mother, Zohra Zewawi, said she feared for her son's mental health if he ever is released.
"I worry that something has happened to his mind.
"He is being tortured. I read his diary. When he gets out I fear he will not be normal Omar. I'm sure he will have changed."
© 2007 The Guardian
18 Comments so far
Show AllWhy would any honest American not want to impeach this most corrupt President? In fact impeachment should only be the start. This administration has made such a mockery of law and order it is a world-wide disgrace. How can we ever be a world leader again and spread democracy to free countries when we allow such corrupt people to lead this once great nation.
Remember the big huff about Tiananmen Square in 1989. That was in the second Bush Administration (the first was 1980-1988) I remember stating at that time that the United States of America does not allow its citizens enough freedom to stage that kind of demonstration. Can anyone even image the Freedom it would take to create a 6 week unauthorized protest with 500,000 people protesting against the government? Our government would arrest and imprison all protesters the first day. Cindy Sheehan knows how long our government allows protests before they use police action.
Henceforth, we have no demonstrations because we have no freedom.
Whenever you see large demonstrations on TV they are always in other countries, because Freedom Loving Americans know we do not live in a democracy we live in a police state. We are now under Bush's 3rd administrations which has totally gutted the rights of free Americans. This 3rd Bush administration hates freedom so much that will arrest anyone who opposes the brutally corrupt police state created by the prior Bush administrations.
The tortures at Guantanamo bay are simply an extension of the way the Bush administration deals with all Americans.
Sad to say it is already too late. Freedom is simply a whimsical myth from a by-gone era.
Forget Impeachment. Try this:
The War Crimes Act of 1996: Bush, Rumsfeld could be indicted under US law
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=20051028&articleId=1159
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/08/AR2006080801276.html
Our soldiers are war criminals, just like Bush, Cheney, Rummy, Condi, Powell, Wolfowitz..... and the Dems are "Bush enablers"
Interrogator arrogance- they THINK they are safe from history's prying eyes, so delusional. We know about it now, and we'll know about it even more, tomorrow, and the next day, and the next...
Who knows how many victims these war criminals have murdered in prison- sanctioned and encouraged by Bush & Co. I wonder if they are attempting a clean sweep, like the Nazis, before their ill-constructed empire crumbled at the end of WWII.
Tony Blair: "I know in my heart I did the right thing." How proud he must be of his boyfriend's soldiers' treatments of captives.
NOT DETAINEES. Captives.
How I wish there really were a Hell, and Tony and George and co. would all be there.
Only fools support the bastards who find Guantánamo & Torture necessary and acceptable.
Find out which candidate shares your views:
http://www.dehp.net/candidate/index.php
_________________________
It's the political equivalent of a "blind taste test" & has been taken by more than 100,000 people
dont forget to support the torturers...err...troops.
Better lock up your sons and daughters when these "soldiers" tours are done and they return home.
Experience with sexual torture tends to be addictive...you dont want little Johnny and Janey gettibg abducted by these sick fucks on their way home from school.
As the Attorney General put it in his memo: "I think sexual abuse is acceptable and defendable as long as it doesn't reach the level of snuff movie."
enjoy everyday-the animals,your friends,your bike,your wife,your son,your daughter,your husband
Hey Freedom Loving American - there is always hope. Americans should not start acting like the Germas before the NAZI's took over. Complacent, accepting of less and less freedom in the name of the most heinous kind of false security.
There is always hope. Do you think the people of the Czech Republic ever thought that they would have freedom? We have lived only 6-7 years under a dictator leading a fascist government. It has gotten progressivle worse and all 3 branches of the government have violated or otherwise failed to uphold their constitutional duties since November 2000 and corporate sponsored elections are the norm but it can always get worse. Just ask anyone who lived under Stalin's regime in the former USSR.
The hope is real and tangible. People will only put up with so much, even in America where the population is kept sequestered from world news and events and force fed a steady diet of missing blonde girls in Aruba, Wisconsin, Montana or anywhere USA.
This weekend Sen. Biden announced that while he thought impeachment proceedings a waste of time, he stated the Congress and Senate should be preparing to look into the possibility of bringing criminal charges against the administration. Of course this is also probably just political wind since Biden represents the Financial industries located in his home state of Delaware. The possibilty is all too real though which is why there was so much arm twisting going before the President legalized torture last week with Democratic support. Legal cover for their clearly illegal actions over the past 6-7 years.
Clearly this entire government is criminal. But we still have plenty of freedom and so far no one has stopped me from exercising my free speech. So I think remaining positive about the future will work best, especially if we follow that up with some real action. We have to create the economy of the future and make it sustainable without help from government. we also have to support our troops by not sending them off to fight wars for corporate security while lying to Americans and calling it national security.
I do not support Nazis, thugs, criminals and perverts - or those that do - those that do not stand up to evil are just as guilty as those who order and commit the acts
Bu$h the inferior SAID THAT WE DON"T TORTURE! What part of that don't you understand? Case closed.
I'd like to subject Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Rice to some of their so-called "enhanced interrogation techniques" and then ask them if they still think it's not torture.
When will the international community get off their butts and impose sanctions and embargos against the US? Not one country in the UN has called for sanctioning the US! NOT ONE!!It's time for the International Community to stop being enablers!!Enough is enough. How many more lives have to be wrecked by the Bush-Cheney dictatorship to make the world do something!!What the hell will it take, world?!?!?Your disdain for ultraviolent US policies ring hollow when not followed by action!!
The rest of the world is not going to sanction the United States, or say much about us. We have a sufficient amount of nuclear warheads pointed at them to wipe them out. So while the world watches in horror, the torture,and brutality goes on.
Good Americans watch their televisions, and believe what they are told. Stories about our government's torture camps are only stories. Stories about the German Concentration Camps were only stories. They were probably not true. Some Germans said, "May be they are true." Thank god I am not a Jew,or Gay, or one of those people that doesn't fit in.
Unless you are a terrorist,or dress in those strange middle eastern cloths, or have brown skin, you have nothing to be concerned about. Pass the potato chips.
I will be the first to admit, I do not understand what has happened to the American people? Why they aren't incensed by this corrupt administration? Why they aren't marching in the streets demanding this thug be gotten out of office? Why he even has one supporter? Why he is still in office and not swinging from a gallows like Saddam? Let's face it folks! The ultimate responsibility for this disaster rests with the American people! They are the ones who do not demand this man be gotten out of office! You can't blame the soldiers who are carrying out these people's orders. The criminal's at the top are the ones who are sanctioning such behavior! Bush/Cheney made it clear from day one these Arab's were not deserving of any better treatment than cattle. I have complained to Senator's and Congressmen to where I am sick of complaining. And still nothing happens. Because there is a large block of American's out there who think this thug (Bush) is the savior of the free world. It's a nightmare coming true! It's Germany in the 30's all over again. The Senator from my home state made the statement the War was Lost! The outcry from the 'redneck' fascist Republican crowd was deafening. They were incensed he could utter such a statement. So how do you solve the problem when this element is still present? I think our country is going down the tubes. But it's coming from those so called 'patriot's' who imagine we are the policemen of the world and have every right to tromp anyone who gets in our way. There first response is always 'nuke em'! The mentality of these people is sickening! I do not understand what has happened to us as a nation? It seems to me like when the first plane hit the world trade center our moral's and sense of 'right and wrong' instantly went out the window!
Yea right, the war crimes act. The only one's punished from the first round of trials were the inlisted soldiers that carried out the orders. Kind of funny we haven't heard a thing from how they feel about their service to our country since the trials. Or even the families of these men and women. I take that back. Its not funny. Its the forth reich. heil bush/cheney, resist the neoconservative forth reich!
Bush, was- Bushe, in Germany.
Is it possible that someone has taken Hitler's dreams and aspirations such as complete world domination? and the (m)asses are oblivious?
"we shall never forget"
torture is normal/acceptable?