'One of them made cuts in my penis, I was in agony' Options

[no retreat, no s...]

'One of them made cuts in my penis. I was in agony'

Tuesday August 2, 2005
The Guardian


Benyam Mohammed travelled from London to Afghanistan in July 2001, but after September 11 he fled to Pakistan. He was arrested at Karachi airport on April 10 2002, and describes being flown by a US government plane to a prison in Morocco. These are extracts from his diary.
They cut off my clothes with some kind of doctor's scalpel. I was naked. I tried to put on a brave face. But maybe I was going to be raped. Maybe they'd electrocute me. Maybe castrate me.


They took the scalpel to my right chest. It was only a small cut. Maybe an inch. At first I just screamed ... I was just shocked, I wasn't expecting ... Then they cut my left chest. This time I didn't want to scream because I knew it was coming.
One of them took my penis in his hand and began to make cuts. He did it once, and they stood still for maybe a minute, watching my reaction. I was in agony. They must have done this 20 to 30 times, in maybe two hours. There was blood all over. "I told you I was going to teach you who's the man," [one] eventually said.

They cut all over my private parts. One of them said it would be better just to cut it off, as I would only breed terrorists. I asked for a doctor.

Doctor No 1 carried a briefcase. "You're all right, aren't you? But I'm going to say a prayer for you." Doctor No 2 gave me an Alka-Seltzer for the pain. I told him about my penis. "I need to see it. How did this happen?" I told him. He looked like it was just another patient. "Put this cream on it two times a day. Morning and night." He gave me some kind of antibiotic.

I was in Morocco for 18 months. Once they began this, they would do it to me about once a month. One time I asked a guard: "What's the point of this? I've got nothing I can say to them. I've told them everything I possibly could."

"As far as I know, it's just to degrade you. So when you leave here, you'll have these scars and you'll never forget. So you'll always fear doing anything but what the US wants."

Later, when a US airplane picked me up the following January, a female MP took pictures. She was one of the few Americans who ever showed me any sympathy. When she saw the injuries I had she gasped. They treated me and took more photos when I was in Kabul. Someone told me this was "to show Washington it's healing".

But in Morocco, there were even worse things. Too horrible to remember, let alone talk about. About once a week or even once every two weeks I would be taken for interrogation, where they would tell me what to say. They said if you say this story as we read it, you will just go to court as a witness and all this torture will stop. I eventually repeated what was read out to me.

When I got to Morocco they said some big people in al-Qaida were talking about me. They talked about Jose Padilla and they said I was going to testify against him and big people. They named Khalid Sheikh Mohamed, Abu Zubaidah and Ibn Sheikh al-Libi [all senior al-Qaida leaders who are now in US custody]. It was hard to pin down the exact story because what they wanted changed from Morocco to when later I was in the Dark Prison [a detention centre in Kabul with windowless cells and American staff], to Bagram and again in Guantánamo Bay.

They told me that I must plead guilty. I'd have to say I was an al-Qaida operations man, an ideas man. I kept insisting that I had only been in Afghanistan a short while. "We don't care," was all they'd say.

I was also questioned about my links with Britain. The interrogator told me: "We have photos of people given to us by MI5. Do you know these?" I realised that the British were sending questions to the Moroccans. I was at first surprised that the Brits were siding with the Americans.

On August 6, I thought I was going to be transferred out of there [the prison]. They came in and cuffed my hands behind my back.

But then three men came in with black masks. It seemed to go on for hours. I was in so much pain I'd fall to my knees. They'd pull me back up and hit me again. They'd kick me in my thighs as I got up. I vomited within the first few punches. I really didn't speak at all though. I didn't have the energy or will to say anything. I just wanted for it to end. After that, there was to be no more first-class treatment. No bathroom. No food for a while.

During September-October 2002, I was taken in a car to another place. The room was bigger, it had its own toilet, and a window which was opaque.

They gave me a toothbrush and Colgate toothpaste. I was allowed to recover from the scalpel for about two weeks, and the guards said nothing about it.

Then they cuffed me and put earphones on my head. They played hip-hop and rock music, very loud. I remember they played Meat Loaf and Aerosmith over and over. A couple of days later they did the same thing. Same music.

For 18 months, there was not one night when I could sleep well. Sometimes I would go 48 hours without sleep. At night, they would bang the metal doors, bang the flap on the door, or just come right in.

They continued with two or three interrogations a month. They weren't really interrogations, more like training me what to say. The interrogator told me what was going on. "We're going to change your brain," he said.

I suffered the razor treatment about once a month for the remaining time I was in Morocco, even after I'd agreed to confess to whatever they wanted to hear. It became like a routine. They'd come in, tie me up, spend maybe an hour doing it. They never spoke to me. Then they'd tip some kind of liquid on me - the burning was like grasping a hot coal. The cutting, that was one kind of pain. The burning, that was another.

In all the 18 months I was there, I never went outside. I never saw the sun, not even once. I never saw any human being except the guards and my tormentors, unless you count the pictures they showed me.


http://www.guardian.co.uk/guantanamo/story...1540750,00.html

[no retreat, no s...]

12 December 2005 13:13 Home > News > UK > Legal
Torture victim: 'They would cut me 30 times in two hours'

By Geneviève Roberts

Published: 12 December 2005
Benyam Mohammed al-Habashi is accused by the US government of planning a dirty bomb attack in America. He says he was tortured until he admitted the crime.

He was arrested at Karachi airport in April 2002, with a passport under the name of Fouad Zouawi, a friend, and with a ticket to Zurich and then on to London.

In documents compiled by the human rights lawyer Clive Stafford Smith, he describes an encounter with someone he believes to be an MI6 officer and details the horror of his torture. Mr Habashi says the officer told him 'I'll see what we can do with the Americans'. "They gave me a cup of tea with a lot of sugar in it. He said 'Where you're going you need a lot of sugar'."

He was taken to Morocco and questioned, then tortured after refusing to admit links al-Qa'ida links.

"They took the scalpel to my right chest. One of them took my penis in his hand and began to make cuts. I was in agony. They must have done this 20 to 30 times in maybe two hours. They would do it to me about once a month."

The treatment continued in the so-called "Prison of Darkness" in Kabul, where he was kept from January to May in 2004.

"The US military told us 'Bin Laden had his laugh on 9/11 so it is now our time to have our laugh'," he said. "They would hang me up. I was allowed a few hours' sleep on the second day, then I was hung up, this time for two days. My legs had swollen. My wrists and hands had gone numb.

"Then I was taken off the wall and left in the dark. There was loud music, Slim Shady and Dr Dre, for 20 days. I heard this non-stop over and over, and they changed the sounds to horrible ghost laughter and Hallowe'en sounds. The only light I saw came from guards using flashlights to bring inedible food.

"I lost 20kg in the weeks of my stay. They used to come and weigh us every other day; it seemed like they were making sure we were losing weight."

Benyam Mohammed al-Habashi is accused by the US government of planning a dirty bomb attack in America. He says he was tortured until he admitted the crime.


http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/legal/article332481.ece

[no retreat, no s...]

12 December 2005 13:18
Straw faces MPs over claims MI6 delivered suspect for torture

By Colin Brown, Deputy Political Editor
Published: 12 December 2005

Allegations that MI6 handed over a former London student to the CIA for "extraordinary rendition" and torture will be raised omorrow by MPs with Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary.

A horrific and graphic account of abuse, sleep deprivation and torture has been given to lawyers by Benyam Mohammed al-Habashi, 27, who claims he was handed to the CIA by MI6 officers after being arrested in Pakistan while trying to board a flight in Karachi on a false passport.

Mr Habashi, an Ethiopian who claimed asylum in Britain, says he was taken to CIA detention centres and subjected to systematic torture by Americans who claimed he was part of a plot to set off a nuclear "dirty bomb" in America. He said he was interrogated for 18 months in a Moroccan prison, and had his penis cut with a scalpel. He also claims he was chained to a wall for days, chained to the floor in a pitch-dark cell in Kabul, and turned into a heroin adcict.

His lawyer, Clive Stafford Smith, believes he could be the first British resident to become a victim of extraordinary rendition by the US. Mr Stafford Smith said: "There is no doubt that Benyam was rendered and tortured in a most savage and barbaric way."

He is facing trial before a military court at Guantanamo Bay - the US detention centre in Cuba - and could be jailed for life, but no date has been set for his hearing. Mr Straw and other ministers have given assurances that Britain does not condone torture and the intelligence services are not involved in torturing prisoners. The Law Lords last week ruled that evidence obtained using torture was inadmissable in British courts.

MPs on the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee who are investigating the reports of more than 400 flights by CIA planes in and out of Britain will raise the case with Mr Straw when they take further evidence from the Foreign Secretary. "This does need to be looked at and it will be raised," said a Labour member of the committee.

Mr Habashi, from Notting Hill, London, was stopped at the airport en route for London on 10 April, 2002 when he was spotted using a passport he says he borrowed from a friend "to go travelling". British intelligence officers, believed to be from MI6, were allowed to see him in a prison in Pakistan.

He told his lawyer he was taken to a military airfield and handed over to the Americans who flew him to Rabat, Morocco, on 22 July 2002, where he was held until being moved by the CIA to Afghanistan on 22 January 2004. Mr Stafford Smith believes the British were cooperating with the Moroccans. While in the prison, an interrogator told Mr Habashi: "We have been working with the British and we have photos of people given to us by MI5.''

He was flown by the CIA to Kabul, Afghanistan on 22 January 2004 for more interrogation and transferred on 18 September, 2004 to Guantanamo Bay where he has been held for over a year.

The indictment against him says he trained at terrorist camps in Afghanistan and in Karachi met Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the al-Q'aida architect of the 11 September attacks on New York, who gave him a "mission" to blow up New York apartment blocks. He admits to going to Afghanistan but denies being involved in terrorism. Al-Q'aida is said to train its followers to make false allegations of torture if captured.

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/article332539.ece

[Noonan]

I truly don't want to read more than the headline.