Former detainee makes abuse claims

FULL details of a catalogue of abuse and degrading treatment allegedly suffered by a former British Guantanamo Bay detainee emerged yesterday.

Tarek Dergoul, 26, a former care worker from east London, said he was forced to look at pornographic magazines and subjected to “very loud” American music during interrogations at the American base.

He alleged that American officials threatened he would be sent to Morocco or Egypt to be tortured, and that he suffered repeated strip searches and sleep deprivation. During cell searches by the guards wearing riot gear “poked their fingers in my eyes, banged my head on the floor and kicked and punched me and tied me up like a beast... they often forced my head into the toilet.”

Mr Dergoul, who was released without charge in March, claimed he had been chained to a metal ring on the floor of a cell for up to 10 hours without access to a toilet at Camp Delta, in Cuba.

Claims of mistreatment have been reported since five of the nine Britons held at the base were released, including an outline of Mr Dergoul’s claims against the American authorities.

However, this was the first time a detailed report of his allegations had been published.

Mr Dergoul’s statement said he spent 15 months in Guantanamo’s isolation block for talking to other inmates and translating without permission, out of a total of 22 months in detention.

In the report, he also alleged interrogators ridiculed the Muslim religion, its traditions and the Koran.

In the statement’s conclusion, Mr Dergoul alleged that before his flight back to Britain he was asked sign a form saying “we were being released on the basis that we agreed we were al-Qaida and Taliban and had been detained on the battlefield.

“I refused to sign it even though I was warned that might mean I would not be released,” he said.

Solicitor Louise Christian said: “The picture which emerged from Tarek Dergoul’s signed witness statement is one of a systematic regime of abuses directed and ordered by the top command and aimed at forcing detainees to make false statements in interrogations.”

A letter from British Foreign Office minister Baroness Symons, released by Ms Christian, said the British government took allegations of abuse seriously.

However, she said, during the welfare visits by British officials, none of the detainees alleged the type of treatment which was now being claimed.

“I might add that none of the men has approached the Government about the issue since their release.”