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An
undated handout photograph shows Begg (top) with family. (Reuters)
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CAIRO,
January 30 (IslamOnline.net) – A Briton recently freed from the
notorious Guantanamo detention camp has accused his US captors of
coercing him into making a false confession of being member of
Al-Qaeda and has given accounts of torture by American jailers at
Bagram airbase in Afghanistan, a British daily reported on Sunday,
January 30.
“I
was dragged into an isolation room, my hands shackled from behind to
my ankles, and a suffocating hood placed over my head,” Moazzam Begg
said in his 25-page testimony to an American tribunal hearing, which
has been seen and revealed by The Independent.
“I
was struck about the head several times, then left in that manner on
the floor for several hours, only to be interrogated again,” he said
in the first detailed account to emerge since his release.
Begg
is one of four Britons who were freed last week from infamous
Guantanamo along with Feroz Abbasi, 24, Richard Belmar, 25, and Martin
Mubanga, 32.
All
four men were held by anti-terrorism police upon arrival in London on
Tuesday, January 25, for questioning for nearly 24 hours before being
released without charge.
Begg
was imprisoned in Bagram in February 2002 with an “enemy prisoner of
war” identity.
In
further passages of his testimony, he recalls seeing US interrogators
using a series of illegal practices to extract confessions from
detainees at Bagram.
He
said that included “sleep deprivation; racial and religious taunts;
being chained to a door for hours - with a suffocating plastic sandbag
as a hood; arm twisting and forced bowing; and several beatings.”
Begg
complained that during his one-year detention in Afghanistan he was
“forced to share a bucket as a latrine with several others; forcibly
stripped naked and photographed in front of several people; forced to
take communal showers in freezing cold water, denied natural light and
fresh food.”
Under
Duress
Begg
further said he was “coerced” into making and signing false
confession at Guantanamo on 13 February 2003 by the same US
interrogators who tortured him at Bagram airbase.
He
added that the confession, which described him as a member of Al-Qaeda
network, was made against a backdrop of “threats of summary trials,
life imprisonment and execution.”
The
false confession led to Begg being one of the first six Guantanamo
detainees designated for trial as terrorists by US President George W.
Bush later in 2003.
Begg
also charged that his US captors had threatened his family, killed
fellow detainees and interrogated him more than 250 times, the
mass-circulation British daily said.
On
January 2, The Observer said that British lawyer Clive Stafford
Smith said one of his two clients, Begg and Belmar, was tortured using
“strappado”, a technique in which prisoners are left suspended
from a roof bar with handcuffs.
A
former Afghan police colonel accused US forces of torturing and
sexually abusing him while in several US-run detention centers across Afghanistan.
Human
Rights Watch said last year that the US forces in Afghanistan were
setting a
terrible example in arbitrarily detaining civilians, using
excessive force during arrests and mistreating detainees.
In
June, the Human Rights Watch issued a report entitled “The Road
To Abu Ghraib” linking the abuse of detainees in
Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo to the policies adopted by
Bush in his so-called war on terror.
