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"I have been through an experience that I never thought to encounter in my darkest nightmares," Mohamed. |
CAIRO — Breathing the air of freedom after a seven-year ordeal, Binyam Mohamed remembered unimaginable sufferings endured at the hands of his US captors in notorious Guantanamo.
"I have been through an experience that I never thought to encounter in my darkest nightmares," Mohamed, 30, said in a statement read by his lawyer upon his return to his home in London on Monday, February 23.
"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 US government."
Suspected of working with Al-Qaeda and plotting to build a radioactive "dirty bomb," he was arrested by US and Pakistani secret agents in Karachi in 2002.
Mohamed, who was born in Ethiopia but held British residency at the time of his arrest, was then taken to Morocco and Afghanistan before he was eventually flown in 2004 to Guantanamo.
He insists he was tortured in all four stops.
Among many other things, Mohamed claimed his genitals were slashed with a scalpel.
"Before this ordeal, 'torture' was an abstract word to me," he said.
"I could never have imagined that I would be its victim."
US authorities released Mohamed on Monday after dropping all charges against him, the first such case under President Barack Obama who has ordered the notorious detention center closure within a year.
"While I want to recover, and put it all as far in my past as I can, I also know I have an obligation to the people who still remain in those torture chambers," Mohamed said.
The US has been holding hundreds of detainees at Guantanamo for years, branding them unlawful enemy combatants to deny them legal rights under the American legal system.
There are now about 250 prisoners inside the notorious prison and the Justice Department is expected to start a thorough review of their cases soon.
Not Over
Mohamed regretted that British officials who were supposed to be his rescuers had allied themselves with his abusers.
"I have to say, more in sadness than in anger, that many have been complicit in my own horrors over the past seven years," he fumed.
"I had met with British intelligence in Pakistan. I had been open with them. Yet the very people who I had hoped would come to my rescue, I later realized, had allied themselves with my abusers," Mohamed added.
"For myself, the very worst moment came when I realized in Morocco that the people who were torturing me were receiving questions and materials from British intelligence."
Mohamed vowed to do all in his power to being those responsible for his rendition, torture and unlawful imprisonment to justice.
"I am not asking for vengeance; only that the truth should be made known so that nobody in the future should have to endure what I have endured." |
