Posted on 07/06/2004 4:20:38 PM PDT by Jeff Gordon
In excerpts from an exclusive interview with Aljazeera, a former Guantanamo detainee reveals details of torture, abuse, and religious persecution.
Wissam Abd al-Rahman Ahmad said he was captured in Iran, transferred to a Kandahar detention facility in Afghanistan, and finally imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay.
Claiming he was beaten and routinely insulted with profanities while in Afghanistan, Ahmad said that US soldiers tried to 'break' him using psychological warfare.
"They stripped me naked with a bag over my head. One of the soldiers turned me around, removed the bag and I saw a female soldier looking at me," he said.
"They knew that it is an insult to our religion to appear thus before women," he said.
But Ahmad claimed that although he had been beaten and abused, he was asked only one question - his relationship to al-Qaida and Usama bin Ladin.
"I told the interrogator, who spoke with an Egyptian accent, that I had no involvement with al-Qaida or anyone, but the man proceeded to insult me and threaten that he would perform profanities on my mother," Ahmad told Aljazeera.
The former Guantanamo detainee - now in Jordan - had told his interrogators that Pakistani intelligence knew of his whereabouts the whole time and could corroborate his story.
Stomping on Quran
However, nothing compared to the agony of seeing the Quran defiled, Ahmad told Aljazeera.
Ahmad: US soldiers defiled the |
"I could bear all the obscene abuse and all the beatings but I was agonised to see one US soldier stomp on the Holy Quran, while another soldier in Kandahar threw it into the toilet," he said.
While in detention at Bagram air base, Ahmad recounted how a female soldier entered his cell to search him.
She had brought a dog with her and she proceeded to give the dog the Quran to sniff through.
The full interview is to be broadcast in a special segment on the Aljazeera Satellite Channel later in the week.
Legal controversy
The detention of several hundred prisoners in Afghanistan and Guantanamo is proving to be a political and legal battleground for the Bush administration.
Last week, the US Supreme Court ruled that "foreign terrorism" suspects at a US military base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba can use the American legal system to challenge their detention.
By a 6-3 vote, the justices ruled on Monday that US courts do have jurisdiction to consider the claims of the prisoners who say in their lawsuits they are being held illegally in violation of their rights.
The ruling did not address the merits of the claims, but allowed the prisoners to pursue their lawsuits, which lower courts had dismissed.
Justice John Paul Stevens said for the majority that US courts have jurisdiction to consider challenges to the legality of the detention of foreign nationals captured abroad in connection with hostilities and incarcerated at Guantanamo Bay.
The justices overturned a US court appeal ruling that lawsuits should be dismissed on the grounds that the military base was outside US sovereign territory and that rights of habeas corpus were unavailable to foreign nationals outside US territory.
Damn, I couldnt even get past the first line..!
heh - doesn't compare to yesterday in Cashmir where the Islamofascists burned down the oldest library and one of the earliest copies (10th C.) of the Koran.
Shiite Happens...
Any response from CAIR yet?
Let me guess- this guy saw pictures from Iraq (you know the ones I'm talking about) and decided to adopt them to his own - because it sure sounds like the same story - with the bag and the nudity and the woman present...
Can these guys not even show some sort of originality or creativity when making up a lie....???
I don't know what to make of this.
They've certainly learned to play the game haven't they?
Where is a good "bomb / islamocrap" sniffing pig when ya need one?
LVM
I pulled your post #1 because there is no way for us to know what it means.
If you can document that it is within FR guidelines, I'll restore it
We should sic the NEA on them...they're known for immersing religious symbols in urine....
Wow, how were we to know. From now on when they want to extract information, they should just bring in a bunch of qurans and act really mean to the books until the men talk....
You, you don't mean, wrap them in ......panties!
Oh the humanity!
Hmph. I take it that this poor man still has his head attached to his shoulders.
PUH-LEASE! Spare me!
How are you going to feel when an American fighting woman knees you in the little thingy and makes you kiss her high heel combat boots? Wuss. Time to leave your 6th century superstitions behind and get with the times, this is American Hegemony 101. Sometimes in America, totally strange women will expose their mokohilachongas to you, you not up for that? Pitiful. My dog has probably seen better mokos than you have, sad but just another fact of life. Oh and when you die, my dog will be there waiting for you and she doesn't like you, just one of the little things Mohammed forgot to pass along.
Gee. What a shame. Now he's gotta kill her, like a good Muslim. To protect the family name, you know.
And no panties. I think I am going to sell my stock in lingerie. It appears to have fallen out of favor.
Becki
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