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Prisoners sodomized and tortured with electric shocks

Taken from Gnnaam International
February 8, 2005

ELEVEN detainees on the base in Guantánamo have reported that US soldiers in Afghanistan and Pakistan tortured them prior to sending them to the Cuban base, using chains, electric shocks and sodomy, according to notes taken by a lawyer circulated on Monday, reports AP.

Some of the men said that they had confessed to having belonged to the Taliban or the Al Qaeda terrorist network solely for the purpose of ending the torture, stated Tom Wilner, lawyer to 11 Kuwaitis being held at Guantánamo.

For some time now, human rights defense groups and lawyers for the prisoners have condemned the fact that part of the information which led to the detentions in Guantánamo was obtained through abuse and torture. Many of the 545 prisoners have been in Guantánamo for over three years, the majority of them without being charged.

"At Guatanamo, the physical abuse, at least for the Kuwaitis, has stopped, but there has been a switch to mental torture," said Wilner during a telephone interview from Washington. He added that Charles Manson, who led a group of adolescents in an orgy of murders at the beginning of the 1970s, has better prison conditions than these men.

Amongst Wilner’s clients is a young man accused of being Osama bin Laden’s spiritual advisor and a low-ranking member of the Taliban regime. No charges have been brought against either of them.

According to Wilner’s notes, one of the detainees told him that the US soldiers had repeatedly insisted that they were members of the Taliban or Al Qaeda. They continued to beat him until eventually he told them he was a member of the Taliban. The detainees said they did not want to be identified for fear of reprisals. Paraguayan Senator Domingo Laino told Prensa Latina that "many female Iraqi prisoners have been raped, and on being released, committed suicide or were killed by their families, because in Islam when a woman is raped it is considered to be dishonorable for her and her family." Lain is to launch his book Derechos Humanos Estados Unidos-Iraq (Human Rights United States – Iraq) in Havana.

 

 

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