Four Britons, who claim they were repeatedly tortured at Guantanamo Bay on Wednesday began suing US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and other US military leaders for £6 million (US$11 million) each in compensation.
Defendants in the law suit also include the chairman of the joint US chiefs of staff, General Richard Myers, and the former head of the prison camp, Major General Geoffrey Miller, now in charge at Abu Ghraib in Iraq.
The four Britons were released in March after spending nearly three years at Guantanamo in conditions that have been condemned by human rights groups.
The action has been brought by the so-called Tipton three (after the town in the north of England where they come from), Shafiq Rasul, Asif Iqbal and Rhuhel Ahmed, and Jamal al-Harith from Manchester.
All deny links or involvement in terrorism.
The law suit alleges the Britons were "repeatedly struck with rifle butts, punched, kicked and slapped. They were short-shackled in painful stress positions for many hours ... causing deep flesh wounds and permanent scarring."
"Plaintiffs were also threatened with unmuzzled dogs, forced to strip naked, subjected to repeated forced body-cavity searches, intentionally subjected to extremes of heat and cold for the purpose of causing suffering," the lawsuit claims.
The lawsuit claims the mistreatment was "in plain violation" of the US Constitution, federal law and its international treaty obligations.
The Britons say the highest levels of the US government are to blame: "It was the result of deliberate and foreseeable action taken by defendant Rums-feld and senior officers to flout or evade the US constitution ... law ... treaty obligations and long established norms of customary international law."
In a December 2002 memo, Rumsfeld authorized the "use of mild, non-injurious physical contact, such as grabbing, poking in the chest with the finger and light pushing."
Also approved were stress positions, isolation for 30 days, deprivation of light and other stimuli, 20-hour interrogations, convincing detainees that death or severe pain was imminent, shaving the beards of Muslim men and using dogs.
In one declassified US document, a lawyer advises "the use of a wet towel to induce the misperception of suffocation would also be permissible."
In August, the Tipton three released a 115-page dossier detailing their alleged ill-treatment. The Red Cross said the allegations were so serious that, if true, they amounted to war crimes.
Eventually one of the Tipton three confessed to meeting Osama bin Laden at an al-Qaeda training camp. But British intelligence established that he was working in a store in the UK at the time.
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