[Vision2020] Prisoner Alleges Torture bu U.S.

[Tom Hansen]

Courtesy of today's (February 24, 2009) Spokesman Review.

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Prisoner alleges torture by U.S.
Man released to Britain after 7 years, most at Guantanamo Bay

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Binyam Mohammed is shown Monday in London. He was recently freed from 
Guantanamo Bay where he was held for more than four years.

http://tinyurl.com/BinyamMohammed
 
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LONDON – A former British resident released after seven years in 
detention, more than four of them at the Guantanamo Bay military prison, 
arrived back in London Monday and issued a statement alleging that the 
United States government had subjected him to years of “medieval” torture.

“It is still difficult for me to believe that I was abducted, hauled from 
one country to the next, and tortured in medieval ways – all orchestrated 
by the United States government,” Binyam Mohammed, 30, said in the 
statement released by his lawyers at a London news conference.

Mohammed, 30, the first Guantanamo Bay detainee released during the Obama 
administration, has become a symbol of international anger at the anti-
terrorism practices of the United States following the Sept. 11, 2001, 
attacks.

His arrival at Royal Air Force in London early Monday afternoon ended what 
his lawyers call a seven-year odyssey of torture, “rendition” by U.S. 
authorities to secret prisons in Morocco and Afghanistan and legal limbo 
in a system where he was held without charge for much of his detention.

“He is a victim who has suffered more than any human being should ever 
suffer,” said his lawyer, Clive Stafford Smith, who visited Mohammed a 
half-dozen times in Guantanamo Bay.

U.S. officials initially charged Mohammed with a plot to detonate a 
radioactive “dirty bomb” in the United States. All charges were eventually 
dropped.

The government of British Prime Minister Gordon Brown had been petitioning 
the U.S. government for Mohammed’s return since August 2007.

British and European officials have been harshly critical of U.S. 
treatment of terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay, although few European 
governments have expressed willingness to take any of the detainees as the 
Obama administration works to close the controversial facility.

“We very much welcome President Obama’s commitment to close Guantanamo Bay 
and I see today’s return of Binyam Mohammed as the first step towards that 
shared goal,” British Foreign Secretary David Miliband said Monday.

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder – who was visiting Guantanamo Monday – 
issued a statement that said, “The friendship and assistance of the 
international community is vitally important as we work to close 
Guantanamo, and we greatly appreciate the efforts of the British 
government to work with us on the transfer of Binyam Mohammed.”

Mohammed, a native of Ethiopia who emigrated to Britain in 1994, was 
arrested in Pakistan in April 2002 and turned over to U.S. authorities a 
few months later. U.S. officials accused Mohammed of traveling to 
Afghanistan to fight with the Taliban militia, which Mohammed has denied.

In accounts provided by his lawyers, Mohammed said U.S. officials flew him 
to Morocco, and said he was tortured there for 18 months. Mohamed said he 
was beaten and had his penis cut with a razor. He said he was then 
transferred to a CIA-run site in Afghanistan and beaten at that site 
regularly before being transferred to Guantanamo in September 2004.

U.S. officials have denied taking Mohammed to Morocco and Moroccan 
officials deny having held him. U.S. officials have also repeatedly denied 
using torture against terror suspects.

Mohammed apologized for not appearing in person at the news conference, 
saying that for the moment he was “neither physically nor mentally capable 
of facing the media.”

He said he wanted to speak out on behalf of the 241 Muslim prisoners he 
said were still being held at Guantanamo, and the “thousands of other 
prisoners held by the U.S. elsewhere around the world, with no charges and 
without access to their families.”

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Seeya round town, Moscow.

Tom Hansen
Moscow, Idaho
 
"For a lapsed Lutheran born-again Buddhist pan-Humanist Universalist 
Unitarian Wiccan Agnostic like myself there's really no reason ever to go 
to work."

- Roy Zimmerman


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