"Questioned at gunpoint, shackled, forced to pose naked...Guantánamo"

[G_j]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,4985336-111575,00.html


Questioned at gunpoint, shackled, forced to pose naked. British detainees tell their stories of Guantánamo Bay

Vikram Dodd and Tania Branigan
Wednesday August 4, 2004

The Guardian

Britain and the US last night faced fresh allegations of abuses after a British terror suspect said an SAS soldier had interrogated him for three hours while an American colleague pointed a gun at him and threatened to shoot him.
The allegation is contained in a new dossier detailing repeated beatings and humiliation suffered by three Britons who were captured in Afghanistan, then held in Guantánamo Bay for two years, before being released in March without charge.

Rhuhel Ahmed, one of the "Tipton Three", claims in the 115-page dossier that shortly after his capture in November 2001 he was interviewed in Afghanistan by a British interrogator who said he was from the SAS. Mr Ahmed alleges he was taken by US guards to be interrogated by the British officer in a tent. "One of the US soldiers had a gun to his head and he was told if he moved they would shoot him," the report says. The SAS officer pressed him to admit he had gone to Afghanistan to fight a holy war. Last night the Ministry of Defence said it would investigate the allegation.

A spokesman said: "The British army follows the rules laid out in the Geneva convention and soldiers are told to follow that. It is not permissible to point guns at people's heads during interrogation. We would investigate if any allegation of that nature is made."

..more..

[nodictators]

1. Is this being CENSORED in the US?

AP and ABC have print stories about this new info re Guantanamo torture. The ABC story (sorry, no link) includes:

Unlike the abuse at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison, there are no photographs showing the alleged beatings at Guantanamo and no way to independently verify the claims.

U.S. military officials today said there is simply no foundation to the men's stories of abuse.

Guess, they won't being doing the story on TV, eh?

Actually, another Guardian story says there is corraborating evidnce:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/guantanamo/story/0,13743,1275525,00.html

Britain is complicit in this horror

Straw and MI5 share the blame for the degradation of Guantánamo

Victoria Brittain
Wednesday August 4, 2004
The Guardian

---snip---

Shafiq Rasul, Asif Iqbal and Ruhal Ahmed have set out the degradation they and their colleagues of many nationalities suffered: shackling in a bent position to a ring in the floor for hours or days, isolation for weeks or months, being held naked, kept in freezing air conditioning, sleep deprivation, near-starvation, imposed injections, forced shaving of hair and beard, withholding of family mail, refusal of medical attention, beatings, interrogations, psychological torture to force false confessions or false testimony against others, being confronted with confessions they never made, sexual humiliation, being shown pornographic photos and videos.

Their report is newly corroborated by four colleagues and will be impossible to dismiss. Two of the Frenchmen released on July 27 told their lawyer, Jacques Debray, details of ill-treatment they suffered in Afghanistan and Guantánamo, which Mr Debray described as "close to those of Abu Ghraib". And on radio the Swedish citizen Mehdi Ghezali, also released last month, described torture and sexual humiliation.

Meanwhile, Marcos Garcia, the lawyer for a Spaniard, Hamed Abderrahman, released in March, said last week he is bringing a lawsuit against the US and George Bush. Mr Abderrahman witnessed several prisoners attempt to hang themselves with their clothes.

[G_j]

2. Frenchmen Say Guantanamo Detention Was Like Hell

-story not picked up in the US?

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0730-07.htm

Reuters
Frenchmen Say Guantanamo Detention Was Like Hell

by Laure Bretton

PARIS - Two Frenchmen described as hell Friday their more than two years of detention in the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, their lawyer said after meeting them for the first time.

Mourad Benchellali and Nizar Sassi had concerns "about the interrogation techniques and medical experiments" at Guantanamo, Jacques Debray said outside the headquarters of the DST domestic intelligence service where the two men were being questioned.

A letter from Sassi said "bizarre" medicines had been given to inmates at night and that one caused some prisoners to break out in spots, Debray told reporters. He gave no other details.

"Each of (the two men) used the same expression, 'We have emerged from hell'," Debray said.


..more..

[tom_paine]

3. First off, the "US" no longer exists, only Imperial Amerika

though I would love the Old US to be restored!

Having said that, you should NOT expect such information damaging to The Party to be disseminated in ANY Totalitarian Natin, whether it be the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, or Kinder and Gentler Places, like Papa Doc's Haiti, Ferdinand Marcos' Phillipines, or Imperial Amerika.

The answer to your questioon is "Yes, it will not be seen on Amerikan TV Pravda, like so much else."

[muriel_volestrangler]

4. Here we see how useful torture is

"The three claim their interrogators, from a phalanx of US intelligence agencies including the CIA, accused them of being in a video shot in 2000 alongside Osama bin Laden, the al-Qaida leader, and Mohamed Atta, the leader of the September 11 attack. At the time one of the three was working in a Currys electrical store in the Midlands and two others were in trouble with the British police. Despite this, all three say the pain they were in and ill treatment led them confess to being in the video."

all they've done is cause permanent physical and mental damage to the people they've kept imprisoned for 3 years. I wouldn't trust a single bit of information they've got.

[psychopomp]

5. A sadistic hell used to exact revenge

That is about all gitmo probably is...but it is certain that we will never know the full story.

[G_j]

6. nonproductive

unless you actually want the world to see you as cruel and sadistic.

[lazarus]

7. dupe

Please add any new information to the original thread.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=726803