They beat me, they hid everything and then they refused to take any notes, they crack my finger and they beat my head
Nabil al-Marabh
Posted on 08/24/2002 7:09:07 AM PDT by Oldeconomybuyer
A man who was arrested as a major terrorism suspect after the 11 September attacks and has been held in custody ever since has told the BBC that he was beaten and held for months without legal representation.
Nabil al-Marabh was one of hundreds of men swept up in the nationwide terrorism investigation.
They beat me, they hid everything and then they refused to take any notes, they crack my finger and they beat my head |
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Nabil al-Marabh
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After 11 months of exhaustive investigations, no evidence of any involvement in terrorism has been presented to the courts.
The 35-year-old, born in Kuwait, was the subject of an FBI manhunt.
He is due to be sentenced any day on a relatively minor border violation.
He pleaded guilty in July to trying to cross the US border illegally.
As he awaits likely deportation and separation from his family, Mr al-Marabh has decided to speak about his time in detention.
'Worse than hell'
For the first eight months Mr al-Marabh was held in a special unit at New York's Metropolitan Detention Centre, along with, he said, 40 other detainees.
 No evidence against al-Marabh has been presented in court
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Speaking from custody elsewhere in the state, he told me he was held in isolation and went on hunger strike in protest against his confinement in a tiny cell.
"It was like nothing worse than hell and I did five times hunger strikes, asking for a lawyer, for a judge," said Mr al-Marabh.
He says that he was punished for his hunger strikes, forced to sleep on a urine soaked mattress for 10 days, without enough water to wash himself.
He also alleged that he was beaten twice.
The first incident, he said, was last November.
"On 7 November they beat me, they hid everything and then they refused to take any notes, they crack my finger and they beat my head.
"It's been too hard, I've been taking medication. My brain is not functioning any more, I forget a lot and I get shocks at night because they used to bang the door and they never let us sleep."
'Terror links'
Nabil al-Marabh was just one of about 1,200 people arrested in the aftermath of 11 September.
But unlike most of the others, Mr al-Marabh was suspected of having major terrorist connections.
 Al-Marabh is said to have links to convicted bomber Raed Hijazi
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Prosecutors believed they had identified a mass of evidence.
For instance, they say Mr al-Marabh had been in Afghanistan, that he had lived at many addresses in America and that he had amassed an array of forged documents.
But perhaps most crucially, they say he had links to a man, Raed Hijazi, now convicted of plotting to bomb a tourist hotel in Jordan.
Prosecutors claimed Hijazi was linked to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network.
Mr al-Marabh told me he knew Hijazi but had no idea about his background.
As for Afghanistan, he said: "I was in Afghanistan working with the Muslim World League. I was working in the humanity agency to go and help homelessness and refugees.
"I never killed anyone, I'm just regular normal person, I'm innocent. I got nothing to do with any terrorist activities."
The Justice Department said they could not give us any details about Mr al-Marabh's case.
The FBI would not comment either.
Human rights
None of the detainees, it's believed, has so far been charged with any terrorism offences.
It is clear that for the authorities, harbouring suspicions is very different from being able to prove them.
 US police have arrested hundreds of terror suspects
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Nabil Mr al-Marabh's case has come to symbolise the tensions between America's need to protect itself and respect for human rights.
The human rights group Amnesty International has been investigating allegations from a number of detainees.
It found that many individuals had been held in prolonged solitary confinement with little legal representation.
The Justice Department's Inspector General is also investigating the treatment of the so-called 11 September detainees.
As for Nabil Mr al-Marabh, a spokesman for the Metropolitan Detention Centre said that all the inmates were treated in a fair, impartial and consistent manner, and that any allegations were taken seriously.
Mr al-Marabh will have spent more time in custody than most of the other suspects, but there are still believed to be 146 other detainees waiting to hear their fate.
If they gave him a new mattress the first day after he peed on it, he would continue to do so. He has now been cured of bedwetting and should thank Uncle Sam.
Boy howdy, that's a real shame. I may not sleep tonight.
Omygod! OMYGOD! An innocent man!
Pure innocence is so rare these days.
I'm talking about the reporter, of course;-)
Me neither. Maybe we should hold a candlelight vigil for him. Or just hold lit candles to his testicles.
Only to hated infidels. The Koran and Hadith condones such action, along with deceiving, looting from, cheating, extorting, ambushing, raping, enslaving and killing the unbelievers wherever "good" Muslims may find them. Ain't the "religion of peace" grand?
That should have sent red flags flying in any thinking person. Does the London Times have a dossier on this 'reporter'?
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