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Briton details US abuse at Guantanamo
(Agencies)
Updated: 2004-12-18 10:36
A Briton released from the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay told Europe's top
human rights body Friday he was beaten, shackled, kept in a cramped cage and fed
rotten food as part of "systematic abuse" in American custody.
![Briton Jamal al-Harith, a former inmate at Guantanamo Bay, gestures after his testimony to Europe's top human rights body in Paris Friday, Dec. 17, 2004. Al-Harith said he was beaten, shackled, kept in a cramped cage and fed rotten food as part of systematic abuse during his two years at the U.S. detention facility. Detained in Afghanistan in 2001, al-Harith maintains he never had any ties with terrorism. He was returned to Britain in March. [AP]](xin_561201181038697493512.jpg)
Briton Jamal
al-Harith, a former inmate at Guantanamo Bay, gestures after his testimony
to Europe's top human rights body in Paris Friday, Dec. 17, 2004.
Al-Harith said he was beaten, shackled, kept in a cramped cage and fed
rotten food as part of systematic abuse during his two years at the U.S.
detention facility. Detained in Afghanistan in 2001, al-Harith
maintains he never had any ties with terrorism. He was returned to Britain
in March. [AP] | Jamal al-Harith's testimony
before a Council of Europe panel came as part of an inquiry by the body into
human rights abuses at the U.S. detention facility to be made public in a report
due out early next year.
Reading from a 10-page statement, al-Harith described his two-year detention
at Guantanamo Bay as a period of continual mistreatment that ranged from
humiliation and 15-hour interrogations to physical abuse that he says left
scars.
At one point, al-Harith said he refused to take an unidentified injection and
was chained up and attacked by five men wearing helmets, body armor and shields.
"They jumped on my legs and back and they kicked and punched me," said the
37-year-old Web site designer and father of three from Manchester, England.
"Then I was put in isolation for a month."
Al-Harith said he was kept mostly in a wire cage and given food marked "10 to
12 years beyond their usable date" as well as "black and rotten" fruit.
Sometimes, unmuzzled dogs were brought to the cage and encouraged to bark, he
said.
Detained in Afghanistan in October 2001, al-Harith maintains he had traveled
to the region to attend a religious retreat in Pakistan.
He and three other Britons were released in March and have filed a lawsuit in
a U.S. court seeking $10 million each in damages. Never charged, they maintain
they were innocents caught up in the American war on terrorism. They were denied
access to lawyers, as are most prisoners in Guantanamo.
When al-Harith and the others filed their lawsuits in October, the
Pentagon denied the abuse allegations and said the men were properly held
in Guantanamo after being captured in Afghanistan and having fought for
al-Qaida.
"The U.S. policy is to treat all detainees and to conduct interrogations,
wherever they may occur, is in a manner consistent with all U.S. legal
obligations," Maj. Michael Shavers, a Pentagon spokesman, said at the time.
Robert Lizar, al-Harith's lawyer, urged the panel to use strong language in
its report and to condemn U.S. behavior at Guantanamo that he called "totally
shocking and unacceptable from international norms."
"The actions are closer to those of kidnappers and bandits than to those of a
state with a strong tradition of liberty and due process," Lizar said.
Al-Harith said that during long interrogations, he was given no choice but to
urinate on the floor and repeatedly threatened or asked to confess to crimes he
had not committed in exchange for a payoff.
Interrogators threatened to seize his family's home unless he admitted to
having gone to Pakistan to buy drugs or to become involved with terrorism,
al-Harith said.
"On another occasion, the interrogators promised me money, a car, a house, a
job if I admitted those things," he said. "I refused."
During questioning, al-Harith said he was placed in shackles that prevented
him from standing upright and that cut into his flesh, leaving scars on his
wrists and ankles.
Similar abuses are detailed in a memo obtained exclusively by The Associated
Press this month that suggests the Defense Department has done nothing about FBI
complaints of "highly aggressive" interrogations reported as early as 2002. The
memo quotes a Marine telling an FBI observer that some interrogations led to
prisoners "curling into a fetal position on the floor and crying in pain,"
according to the letter dated July 14, 2004.
Kevin McNamara, who presided over Friday's hearing for the council, said the
global fight against terrorism should not be used as an excuse to violate basic
human rights, the right to a fair trial and the rule of law.
"Hundreds of what must be presumed to be innocent people remain in
indeterminate detention in Guantanamo Bay," he said. "By all accounts, the abuse
continues."
McNamara said the council plans to publish its report on the subject in the
early months of 2005.
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