Ex-Guantanamo Detainee Claims Mistreatment

Friday, March 12, 2004
(7:29 AM ET)
By Audrey Woods

Associated Press Writer

The paper said al-Harith went to Pakistan weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States to learn about Muslim culture. Al-Harith was in Quetta near the Afghan border when the U.S. bombings against the Taliban began. He paid a driver to take him to Turkey, but was stopped in Afghanistan by an armed gang who accused him of being a spy after they saw his British passport and jailed him, according to the newspaper. After the Taliban fell, he stayed with the Red Cross in Kandahar arranging to go home but was picked up by the Americans and interrogated. He was finally sent to Guantanamo Bay, the newspaper said.

Police vans carrying four of the five British detainees released from Camp X-Ray in Guantanamo Bay, Asif Iqbal, Rasul Shaffik, Ruhal Ahmed, Tarek Dergoul, Jamal Al Harith, arrive at Paddington Green, London's Highest Security Police Station, Tuesday March 9, 2004. The fifth man remains at Northolt airbase, detained under Section 41 of the Terrorism 2000 Act.

Image Credit: John D McHugh -- AP

LONDON -- AP
A Briton released from the U.S. military base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, said he was beaten, humiliated and interrogated for up to 12 hours at a time during two years' detention.

In a newspaper interview headlined ``My Hell in Camp X-Ray,'' Jamal al-Harith said guards known as the Extreme Reaction Force ``waded into inmates in full riot gear, raining blows on them'' as punishment.

Undated photos of Britons Ruhal Ahmed, left, and Shafiq Rasul both of Tipton, England who were released without charge from police custody in central London, police said late Wednesday March 10, 2004. Ahmed and Rasul were arrested, with two others, on their return to Britain from U.S. military detention at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba on Tuesday. A fifth man had not been arrested when the group arrived back to Britain.

Image Credit: AP file photos/PA

The water and food was foul at Guantanamo, and sometimes as punishment, water taps in the cells would be turned off, al-Harith, 37, said in the interview, which was published Friday in the Daily Mirror.

The U.S. military repeatedly has denied that Guantanamo prisoners have been mistreated. The U.S. government says the roughly 640 prisoners are at Guantanamo because of suspicions they have links to Afghanistan's fallen Taliban regime or the al-Qaida terror network.

Police keep an eye on the media at Paddington Green Police Station in London, Wednesday March 10, 2004, as four of the five Britons released from Guantanamo Bay were being held there for further questioning. They were arrested under Britain's Terrorism Act 2000 after arriving Tuesday. The fifth was released after being questioned briefly.

Image Credit: Stefan Rousseau/PA -- AP

Al-Harith arrived in Britain Tuesday night on a military flight with four other Britons freed from Guantanamo.

``He has been detained as an innocent person for a period of two years. He has been treated in a cruel, inhumane and degrading manner,'' his lawyer, Robert Lizar, told reporters.

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2004 © The Associated Press.

Dan