Guantanamo prisoner: “After a while, we stopped asking for human rights – we wanted animal rights.”
Senator: “Almost everybody was naked all the time.”
I remember when these accounts first came out I thought they might be exaggerated.
Tarek Dergoul, 26, from London, also condemned the British government for allowing his continued detention in Bagram and Kandahar in Afghanistan and then the US base in Cuba and called for the release of remaining detainees.
The former care worker is in poor physical and mental health after his two-year ordeal. He is believed to have had an arm amputated and have difficulty walking.
“Tarek Dergoul has started to try to give his family and solicitor, Louise Christian, an account of the horrific things which happened to him during detention at Bagram, Kandahar and Guantánamo Bay,” said a statement released last night.
“This has included an account of botched medical treatment, interrogation at gunpoint, beatings and inhumane conditions.
“[He] condemns the US and UK governments for allowing these gross breaches of human rights and demands the release of all the other detainees.”
It added: “Tarek finds it very difficult to talk about these things and his family believe his mental health has been severely affected by the trauma he has suffered. We therefore appeal to the media to respect his privacy and not to try and find him.”
Mr Dergoul is not expected to speak to journalists in the foreseeable future.
The accusations will fuel international concern about the detention camp, coming after claims of punishment beatings and psychological torture by another Briton.
Jamal Udeen, also known as Jamal al-Harith, told the Mirror: “The whole point … was to get to you psychologically. The beatings were not nearly as bad as the psychological torture – bruises heal after a week but the other stuff stays with you.”
He also said the men were asked to sign a confession that they were linked to the Taliban and al-Qaida before their release. He refused: “I would rather have stayed in Guantánamo than sign that paper.”
A Pentagon spokeswoman described the allegations as “simply lies”, while the secretary of state, Colin Powell, said yesterday he believed the US treated detainees “in a very, very humanitarian way”. He told ITV1’s Tonight With Trevor McDonald: “Because we are Americans, we don’t abuse people in our care.”
I really used to have trouble with the claim that nude prostitutes were brought in to parade around in front of the Muslim prisoners.
A Briton released from Guantánamo alleged that, as in Abu Ghraib, sexual humiliation was identified by US officials as a way of breaking Muslim detainees. In Iraq it was the simulation of oral sex, forced masturbation and human pyramids, withpeople kept naked for long spells. In Guantánamo, according to one British detainee, naked prostitutes paraded before inmates to taunt them.
I just couldn’t imagine it. Well, now I can imagine it.
Private First Class Lynndie England has already become the face of the scandal, shown in pictures pointing at a naked Iraqi and holding another by a leash.
She has claimed she was following orders from senior personnel and the photos were used to terrify other inmates into talking.
But unpublished photographs show Pte England engaged in sex acts with other soldiers, some senators told NBC.
The 100 senators were able to view hundreds of sickening pictures of prisoner abuse last night – images which the Pentagon now say will not be made publicly available.
“She was having sex with numerous partners. It appeared to be consensual,” said one senator.
“Almost everybody was naked all the time,” another said.
