One of the British men released from Guantanamo Bay said through his lawyer Friday that US authorities beat him, interrogated him at gunpoint and subjected him to "inhuman conditions" during his detention.
Louise Christian, Tarek Dergoul's attorney, said his family believed his experiences had damaged him psychologically.
He was among five Britons returned home from the US Navy base in Cuba and released this week.
He is the second of the group to publicly describe conditions at the camp, where former fellow detainee Jamal al-Harith said earlier he had suffered beatings, humiliation and interrogation for up to 12 hours at a time. Families of all the freed men, who were not charged, have said they were innocents caught up in the US war on terrorism.
US Secretary of State Colin Powell told a British television network it was "unlikely" abuses were taking place at Guantanamo. "Because we are Americans, we don't abuse people who are in our care," he said, according to a transcript released by ITV.
Christian said Dergoul had begun telling her and his family about "the horrific things which happened to him during detention at Bagram (US air base in Afghanistan), Kandahar and Guantanamo Bay." He alleged "gross breaches of human rights" and demanded that the 640 detainees still in Guantanamo be freed immediately, she said.
US authorities say prisoners at the camp are suspected of links to Afghanistan's fallen Taliban regime or the al-Qaeda terror network. The US military repeatedly has denied that Guantanamo prisoners have been mistreated.
Dergoul described "botched medical treatment, interrogation at gunpoint, beatings and inhuman conditions" and condemned the US and British governments, Christian said.
"Tarek finds it very difficult to talk about things and his family believe his mental health has been severely affected by the trauma he has suffered," she said.
She declined to give any further details and said Dergoul, 26, of east London, would not be speaking to journalists any time soon because of health problems.
He reportedly flew to Pakistan in 2001 to learn Arabic after giving up his job caring for the elderly and was allegedly captured in Afghanistan. His family has insisted he has no links to terrorism and said he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Al-Harith told Britain's ITV network that interrogators at Guantanamo had applied intense psychological pressure, telling him that authorities in Britain would seize his family's home and all their money, turning them onto the street if he did not admit he was involved in terrorism.
"He was obviously trying some mind game but I said `I don't believe you,'" said al-Harith, 37.
Many detainees were given regular injections, after which "they would just sit there like in a daze and sometimes you would see them shaking," he said.
He said he was beaten and put in isolation because he refused injections and was sometimes forcibly given unidentified drugs.
Al-Harith said he had never had any ties to terrorism and would seek compensation from the US government for his two years at Guantanamo.
The five detainees were flown back to Britain on Tuesday. Al-Harith was freed after several hours of questioning and the others were released on Wednesday.
Powell told ITV that charges of abuse were unwarranted and that it was "not in the American tradition to treat people in that manner."
He said the prisoners' long detentions were justified.
"They were picked up in very dangerous circumstances, and we had to protect ourselves by bringing these people to Guantanamo to see what they knew about terrorism and see if they were responsible for any of the kinds of things that have been happening in the world," ITV's transcript quoted him as saying.
Britain and the United States are continuing discussions about the remaining four Britons at the camp. Britain has insisted its nationals either receive fair trials or be returned home.
South Korea’s air force yesterday apologized for a 2021 midair collision involving two fighter jets, a day after auditors said the pilots were taking selfies and filming during the flight and held them responsible for the accident. “We sincerely apologize to the public for the concern caused by the accident that occurred in 2021,” an air force spokesman told a news conference, adding that one of the pilots involved had been suspended from flying duties, received severe disciplinary action and has since left the military. The apology followed a report released on Wednesday by the South Korean Board of Audit and Inspection,
Indonesian police have arrested 13 people after shocking images of alleged abuse against small children at a daycare center went viral, sparking outrage across the nation, officials said on Monday. Police on Friday last week raided Little Aresha, a daycare center in Yogyakarta on Java island, following a report from a former employee. CCTV footage circulating on social media showed children, most younger than two, lying on the floor wearing only diapers, their hands and feet bound with rags. The police have confirmed that the footage is authentic. Police said they also found 20 children crammed into a room just 3m by 3m. “So
About 240 Indians claiming descent from a Biblical tribe landed at Tel Aviv airport on Thursday as part of a government operation to relocate them to Israel. The newcomers passed under a balloon arch in blue and white, the colors of the Israeli flag, as dozens of well-wishers welcomed them with a traditional Jewish song. They were the first “bnei Menashe” (“sons of Manasseh”) to arrive in Israel since the government in November last year announced funding for the immigration of about 6,000 members of the community from the states of Manipur and Mizoram in northeast India. The community claims to descend from
‘TROUBLING’: The firing of Phelan, who was an adviser to a nonprofit that supported the defense of Taiwan, was another example of ‘dysfunction’ under Trump, a US senator said US Secretary of the Navy John Phelan has been fired, a US official and a person familiar with the matter said on Wednesday, in another wartime shakeup at the Pentagon coming just weeks after US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth ousted the Army’s top general. The Pentagon announced his departure in a brief statement, saying he was leaving the administration “effective immediately,” but it did not provide a reason or say whether it was his decision to go. The sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Phelan was dismissed in part because he was moving too slowly to implement reforms to
RSS