Guantanamo detainee claims abuse (phone call from Gitmo-according to Maddow/MSNBC)

[kpete]

Source: Al Jazeera

Guantanamo detainee claims abuse
The Guantanamo prison facility has been
heavily criticised by rights groups

An inmate in the US prison facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, has told Al Jazeera he has been beaten while in custody and tear gassed after refusing to leave his cell.

Mohammad Al-Qaraani, a Chadian national, said in a phone call to Al Jazeera that the alleged ill-treatment has occurred since the election of Barack Obama as US president.

"This treatment started about 20 days before Obama came into power, and since then I've been subjected to it almost every day," he told Al Jazeera.

"Since Obama took charge he has not shown us that anything will change."

On his second day in office, Obama ordered the closure of Guantanamo Bay, which has been heavily criticised by rights groups over reports of ill-treatment of detainees.

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2009/04/2009414174251712694.html

Read more: http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2009/04/2009414174251712694.html

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(phone call from Gitmo-according to Maddow/MSNBC)

Rachel just now reported on this

[Hissyspit]

1. Rachel's Coverage Video HERE:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=385x296811

[Turborama]

2. Guantanamo detainee claims (recent) abuse

Source: Al Jazeera English

An inmate in the US prison facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, has told Al Jazeera that he has been beaten while in custody and had tear gas used on him after refusing to leave his cell.

Mohammad al-Qaraani, a Chadian national, said in a phone call to Al Jazeera that the alleged ill-treatment "started about 20 days" before Barack Obama became US president and "since then I've been subjected to it almost every day".

"Since Obama took charge he has not shown us that anything will change," he said.

=snip=

'No change'

After being transferred to a different area of the prison for those awaiting release from Guantanamo Bay, al-Qaraani was allowed to make phone calls and he called Sami al-Hajj, an Al Jazeera journalist who spent six years in the US military prison before being released last year.

=snip=

Read more: http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2009/04/2009414233431153300.html

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Video of this report and an interview with Sami al-Hajj can be seen here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=385x296858

[EFerrari]

3. I bet Amy will report this in the morning. Hope so.

:kick:

[Coventina]

4. Guantánamo Detainee Phones Al Jazeera From Prison

Source: New York Times

Given the opportunity to make a phone call from the U.S. detention facility in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, a detainee awaiting release reportedly phoned Al Jazeera to complain about his treatment.

In a video report (embedded above) posted on the Arab broadcaster’s English-language Web site on Tuesday, Mohammed El Gharani (whose name is transliterated differently by Al Jazeera) told a journalist for Al Jazeera, Sami al-Hajj, who was himself detained for six years in Guantánamo, that he had recently suffered abuse from guards at the prison.

According to Al Jazeera, Mr. Gharani said that guards had used tear gas on him when he refused to leave his cell and he had been beaten. The text of a written report on Al Jazeera’s Web site says that the detainee “said in a phone call to Al Jazeera that the alleged ill-treatment ’started about 20 days’ before Barack Obama became U.S. president and ’since then I’ve been subjected to it almost every day.’”

(snip)

There is some uncertainty about how old Mr. Gharani is — Reuters and The A.P. both report that he is 21, but a British legal aid charity, Reprieve, which visited his family in Chad, says that he was 14 when he was arrested in October, 2001, in Pakistan. A database created by The Times on the detainees, which includes copies of documents used in proceedings against Mr. Gharani by military lawyers, says that he is now “a 22- or 23-year-old citizen of Chad.”

Read more: http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/15/guantanamo-detainee-phones-al-jazeera-from-prison/?hp