Freed detainee describes Guantanamo torture

[struggle4progress]

One of four Britons freed from US detention in Guantanamo Bay last week has described being tortured, witnessing the killing of fellow detainees by US interrogators and receiving threats to his family.

In an interview with a British newspaper Moazzam Begg, arrested in Pakistan in January 2001, said his interrogation began at Bagram air base in Afghanistan.

He told The Independent on Sunday his torture included being shackled and dragged, having a suffocating hood placed on his head and being struck in the head several times.

He also said he had witnessed two fatal beatings during interrogations by US officials in Afghanistan. <snip>

http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200501/s1291925.htm

[annabanana]

1. Gonzalez taught the captors well..

Maybe he'll import his "techniques" to all American prisons once he's confirmed.

[Moderator]

2. kick

[emad]

3. Freed Briton reveals horrors of life inside Guantanamo Bay

In this exclusive statement, Moazzam Begg talks of adjusting to life 'without cages or constraints'

Martin Bright and Paul Harris
Sunday January 30, 2005
The Observer

THE Guantánamo detainee at the centre of allegations of torture at the hands of American officers broke his silence last night, to tell The Observer of the 'continuing evils faced by captives illegally held' and that he had endured 'conditions far below those of the worst convicted criminals in the developed world'.

In an exclusive statement issued to The Observer last night, 36-year-old father of four Moazzam Begg said he was still struggling to come to terms with 'the sheer magnitude of this whole episode and its profound effect on my life' and that it was the 'utmost pleasure and relief' to be reunited with his family after his three-year ordeal.

He paid tribute to his father Azmat Begg's campaign for justice for the detainees, and thanked his supporters in campaign groups and the media. He also joined the condemnation by lawyers and the detainees' family members of America's decision to release legal documents, diaries and confessions from secret military tribunals, which they dismissed as a crude attempt to smear the men.

He described the allegations against him as 'spurious' and said he would address them in his own time. 'For now, however, it is imperative that I remain in seclusion with my family and begin to readjust to my new reality: one without cages or constraints.'

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1401934,00.html

[emad]

4. Torture account from The Independent

Guantanamo account: 'I was shackled, beaten, suffocated by a plastic bag and deprived of sleep. This is how they forced my confession'
Exclusive: account by Briton released from Guantanamo Bay reveals suffering in US captivity
By Severin Carrell
30 January 2005


It was the moment - almost exactly three years ago - that Moazzam Begg's dreams of setting up an Islamic school in Afghanistan were doused by a ring at the door. It was midnight on 31 January 2001 that the heavily armed Pakistani and US intelligence officials arrived at his doorstep. And it was a year later that Moazzam Begg, 35, a former Islamic bookstore owner from Birmingham, emerged as one of nine Britons imprisoned without trial at Guantanamo Bay, accused of being a senior supporter of the al-Qa'ida network.

Moazzam Begg describes the precise moment of his arrest in the style of a pulp thriller. "Midnight. The door-bell rings, I answer, and guns are put to my head. I'm pushed in, see a Tazer crackle and I am hooded. Shackles and flexicuffs finish the job. They carry me to a vehicle and I never return home again. I could not even say a word to my wife."

That account is one of the key moments in a closely written 25-page statement for an American tribunal hearing in which Mr Begg attempts to rebut US and British government allegations that he was an active member of the al-Qa'ida network or a hardened Taliban sympathiser.

A deeply religious, conservative Muslim, Mr Begg insists he had moved with his wife Sally and their children to Kabul in July 2001 to set up a private Islamic school for boys and girls - a girls' school the Taliban refused to authorise.

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/this_britain/story.jsp?story=606020

[Tinoire]

6. Disgusting. And the US Congress abetting these crimes.

the US authorities are still refusing to release classified interviews in which he detailed the torture he claims he underwent at the hands of interrogators.

And here come our good Vichy friends...


A Home Office spokesman said that they backed the US actions. 'It is up to the Americans to release whatever documents they see fit.'

:puke:

And our Congress says torture has no problems with giving Bush a helping hand:

Congress killed measures to ban U.S. use of torture

By Douglas Jehl and David Johnston The New York Times Friday, January 14, 2005

White House opposed including restrictions

WASHINGTON At the urging of the White House, congressional leaders scrapped a legislative measure last month that would have imposed new restrictions on the use of extreme interrogation measures by U.S. intelligence officers, congressional officials say.
.
(snip)
.
The Senate had approved the new restrictions, by a 96-2 vote, as part of the intelligence reform legislation. The restrictions would have explicitly extended to intelligence officers a prohibition against the use of torture or inhumane treatment, and it would have required the CIA as well as the Pentagon to report to Congress about the methods they were using.
.
But in intense, closed-door negotiations, according to congressional officials, four senior lawmakers from the House and Senate deleted the restrictions from the final bill after the White House expressed opposition to the measure. Two congressional negotiators said in interviews that lawmakers had ultimately decided that the question of whether to extend the restrictions to intelligence officers was too complex to be included in the legislation.
.
In a letter to members of Congress, sent in October and made available by the White House on Wednesday, Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, expressed opposition to the measure on the ground that it "provides legal protections to foreign prisoners to which they are not now entitled under applicable law and policy."
.
(snip)

http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/01/13/news/ban.html

(snip)

In addition to Collins and Harman, the lawmakers involved in the conference committee negotiations were Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., and Rep. Peter Hoekstra, R-Mich.

(snip)

http://www.duluthsuperior.com/mld/duluthsuperior/10643525.htm

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=1154757

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=1151465


In interviews on Wednesday, Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, a Republican negotiator, and Rep. Jane Harman of California, a Democratic negotiator, both said the lawmakers had ultimately decided that the question of whether to extend the restrictions to intelligence officers was too complex to be included in the legislation.

http://www.indianexpress.com/full_story.php?content_id=62671

At times, their discussion included an assessment of whether specific measures, on a detainee-by-detainee basis, would cause such pain to be considered torture. In addition to Collins and Harman, the lawmakers involved in the negotiations were Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., and Rep. Peter Hoekstra, R-Mich

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2005/01/13/MNGGUAPER31.DTL

As my good friend Jack Rabbit pointed out, Congress is enabling war criminals. There is no other way to look at this.

[struggle4progress]

9. The democrats in Congress have been a continuing disappointment ...

... ever since they began falling over themselves to lick the Gippers' boots twenty or twenty-five years ago.

[daleo]

5. Rush will call this a hazing at a frat party.

I mean who among us wasn't hooded, shackled, dragged around, suffocated, and beat over the head during our university years?

[Supersedeas]

8. who wouldn't like to give the advocates of torture a lil bit of this

fraternal medicine.

[mogster]

7. Disgusting.

All major watchdogs has reported torture as a part of the 'War on terror' doctrine, not as unfortunate isolated incidents.

Yet this fails to produce ANY critical stance in the US MSM.

If Watergate happened again today, Nixon would say 'Get over it', and proceed as nothing had happened.

[burrowowl]

13. Even the U$ Human Rights Watch

which is usually very pro U$, even this got to them.

[GetTheRightVote]

10. This is just sick, I can not believe this continues......

:kick:

[antigone382]

11. Amsterdam looks better every day.

Though I'm aware of the atrocities that have been committed under the American banner, I've always loved my country. It was a love that did not come from an arrogant jingoism that was blind to its flaws, but from a belief in that essential promise of America, the promise that was written about in the Declaration of Independence, and codified into law in our Constitution and Bill of Rights. Of course I knew we were far from achieving that promise, but I believed in the possibility of it, and I believed that it was our destiny and our duty to bring it to pass, correcting our errors and learning from them as we went.

But the more I hear and read stories like these, the more I realize how backwards, brutal and downright hypocritical we can be. The more I hear these stories, the more meaningless "American" principles become to me, and the more hopeless the fight to achieve those principles seems. I really want to believe that it's worth it to keep fighting for liberty and justice for all, but nowadays it mostly seems like it's already too late. It seems that the only ethical choice open to me anymore is to leave this country that I was brought up to love, before my hands are stained with even more blood from the atrocities my tax dollars fund.

I apologize for my pessimism. It's late at night and I probably just need to go to bed. But I can't imagine a greater tragedy than this; that America, my America, is sinking further and further from the ideals for which so many of her citizens strove--that, except by a herculean effort of us all, what was once the beacon of freedom, democracy, and respect for human rights to the rest of the world, will sputter and die.

[struggle4progress]

12. We clearly have serious problems. But perhaps the opposition ...

... to this regime will be more widespread than you expect.