Guantanamo inmate: I'm innocent
2005-10-10 14:18
Cairo - An Egyptian national released recently from Guantanamo Bay has alleged he was held by the United States military for four years but never convicted on any charges, according to an interview with the man published in a Cairo newspaper on Sunday.
Sami al-Leithy, 49, who was freed from Guantanamo on September 29, is wheelchair bound owing to spine injuries that he sustained while in detention, he told the state-owned al-Ahram newspaper.
The injuries, he said, were a result of being forced to walk for a half hour each day while shackled at the hands, waist and feet in a manner that made him stoop.
While incarcerated al-Leithy claimed he was subject to mistreatment, including blinding lights flashed in his eyes and beatings during interrogation.
Although he was brought to the infamous US detention centre in late 2001, he said the first judicial proceedings against him were not until 2004. In May 2005 he was declared innocent of all charges, after which he spent another few months in Guantanamo.
Numeruos hurdles
Al-Leithy's odyssey began in 1986 when he went to Pakistan with his brother-in-law, who as a professor at al-Azhar university in Egypt had been asked to teach at Islamabad University.
While there, al-Leithy took an MA in economics before embarking on a career in teaching to which he dedicated himself for a decade.
When the Egyptian embassy in Pakistan refused to renew his passport, he went to Afghanistan where he was granted the document and began teaching English and Arabic at the university in Kabul.
In 2001, at the outset of the US attack on Afghanistan, he sustained a head injury in Kabul. On taking refuge in Khost, because medical treatment was unavailable in the capital under siege, he fled to the border with Pakistan because of warnings of an impending US attack on the city.
There he was picked up by the Pakistani military, which turned him over to the US after which he landed in Guantanamo.
During the judicial procedures he was told that the Pakistani army claimed he was detained with 25 Arab fighters who were planning attacks on the US military. - Sapa-dpa
- SAPA