Guantanamo prisoner 'injected'

2005-06-12 20:54

Washington - A Saudi man held as a top "terror" suspect by the United States at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba was forcibly injected with fluids, grilled in proximity to military dogs and apparently "straddled" by a female soldier, according to a top secret log obtained by Time magazine.

Mohammed al-Qahtani was forcibly injected with an undisclosed volume of fluids after refusing food and water in late 2002, according to the 84-page interrogation log obtained by Time and released Sunday.

The log - parts of which are incomplete - provides a detailed account of some of the measures that have been used against a detainee at the camp, many of the measures have been criticized by rights groups.

President George W Bush said on Wednesday he was ready to examine alternatives to the US camp for "war on terror" detainees at Guantanamo, but defended the treatment of prisoners there as humane and proper.

Al-Qahtani - detainee 063 - was captured fleeing Tora Bora, Afghanistan in December 2001 and transported to the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay two months later, according to Time.

By July 2002, the US authorities discovered al-Qahtani had been deported from Orlando airport, Florida in August 2001.

The US government contends the Saudi had tried to enter the country to participate as the alleged 20th hijacker in the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington. Time said one of the 9/11 hijackers, Mohammed Atta, was waiting to pick up al-Qahtani at Orlando airport the day he was deported.

The log obtained by Time details how al-Qahtani was interrogated for 50 days from early November to early January 2002-2003, during which 16 additional interrogation methods were approved by US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

Often awakened at 04:00 and questioned until midnight, al-Qahtani is forced to stand or sit on a metal chair, shown pictures of 9/11 victims, and told he cannot pray.

At one point, al-Qahtani mounts a food and water strike and becomes so dehydrated that medical corpsmen "forcibly administer fluids by IV drip."

After a struggle, al-Qahtani is restrained, strapped down and "given an undisclosed amount of fluids."

He subsequently tells his interrogators he works for al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, before urinating in his pants.

After Rumsfeld approved the new interrogation measures on December 2, 2002, the suspect is subjected to a drill known as an "Invasion of Space" by a female, according to Time.

"He was laid out on the floor so I straddled him without putting my weight on him. He would then attempt to move me off of him by bending his legs in order to lift me off but this failed because the MPs were holding his legs down with their hands," one log entry from December states.

The US Supreme Court has ruled that Guantanamo inmates can contest their detention in a civil court, but no prisoner has yet to do so, and no detainee has yet been brought to trial by the US government.

There are currently about 540 inmates from 40 countries there.

- SAPA