Hell of Camp X-Ray exposed

2004-03-12 07:54

London - One of five Britons released from the US military base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, said he suffered beatings, humiliation and interrogation for up to 12 hours at a time during two years' detention.

In an interview with the Daily Mirror headlined My Hell in Camp X-Ray, Jamal al-Harith said punishment beatings were handed out by guards known as the Extreme Reaction Force who "waded into inmates in full riot gear, raining blows on them".

The US government says the roughly 640 prisoners held at Guantanamo are there because of suspicions that they have links to Afghanistan's fallen Taliban regime or the al-Qaeda terror network.

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

"They would shut off the water before prayers so we couldn't wash ourselves according to our religion," al-Harith told the paper. "We were only allowed a shower once a week at the beginning, and none at all in solitary confinement. This was tough because you are supposed to be clean when you pray."

Vice girls

The article said "vice girls" were used to torment the most religiously devout detainees, who had not seen "unveiled" women.

"The whole point of Guantanamo was to get to you psychologically. The beatings were not nearly as bad as the psychological torture," al-Harith was quoted as saying.

He was regularly interrogated by FBI and CIA agents, and later Britain's MI5, the newspaper said.

Chained to floor

"On 40 occasions, he was (put) in chains, which were bolted to the floor, for up to 12 hours at a time," the account said.

Al-Harith describes a stay in an isolation unit known as an ISO, where those accused of misbehaving were kept in solitary confinement with just a mat and towel.

The paper says 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 US 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, the newspaper said.

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.

Al-Harith said he arrived at the US military detention centre in Cuba on February 11, 2002.

"I tried not to think about my family for two years because it hurt so much," the paper quoted him as saying. "I tired to contain everything. It was very difficult, but I survived - and I survived well."

The Mirror said al-Harith was divorced and has three children aged three, four and eight.

- AP