'Shocking catalogue of abuses' against Guantanamo inmates

Three Britons who were held at Guantanamo Bay for more than two years have accused the US and Britain of a shocking catalogue of abuses in a report due out later today.

Rhuhel Ahmed, Shafiq Rasul and Asif Iqbal said in a dossier obtained by the Guardian that they were beaten, shackled, and deprived of sleep during their detention at the prison camp in Cuba, and in Afghanistan.

Mr Ahmed claimed that after his capture in Afghanistan in November 2001, he was interrogated by a man who identified himself as an SAS officer, while an American guard pointed a gun at his head threatening to shoot.

The men – who were freed from Guantanamo in March this year and later released without charge by British police – said their complaints to British Foreign Office officials went ignored.

One American guard at Guantanamo Bay told the inmates: “The world does not know you’re here – we would kill you and no-one would know,” according to the report.

Mr Rasul said an MI5 officer told him during an interrogation that he would be detained in Guantanamo for life.

The report, entitled Detention in Afghanistan and Guantanamo, was complied by lawyers for the men and is being released in the United States.

Mr Iqbal said that on his arrival at Guantanamo, one of the soldiers told him: “You killed my family in the towers and now it’s time to get you back.”

They said they were punched, kicked and slapped. They were hooded and forced to strip naked, the report claims.

“I could hear dogs barking nearby and soldiers shouting ’get ’em boy’,” said Mr Rasul.

The men claim that conditions at the camp got tougher when Major General Geoffrey Miller took over the camp. He left in April to run prisons in Iraq.

When Mr Miller was in charge, new practices began, including the shaving of beards, shackling detainees in squatting positions, playing loud music and putting prisoners naked in cells, the report alleges.

“Before, when people would be put into blocks for isolation they would seem to stay for not more than a month. After he (Gen Miller) came, people would be kept there for months and months and months,” Mr Rasul added.

Mr Ahmed said British Foreign Office officials “did not seem to care or even ask him about the conditions”.

The report states: “It was very clear to all three that MI5 was content to benefit from the effect of the isolation, sleep deprivation and other forms of acutely painful and degrading treatment, including short shackling.

“There was never any suggestion on the part of the British interrogators that this treatment was wrong.”

The men made stark comparisons between their treatment and that of detainees at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad, from where photographs of Iraqi prisoners being abused recently emerged.

They claim they were photographed naked and subjected to body cavity searches.

The report also raised fears for the well-being of Briton Moazzam Begg and Jordanian Jamil el-Banna, who had been living in London as a refugee before he was detained.

The men said a guard told them Mr Begg was “in a very bad way”. El-Banna was said to be so traumatised that “mentally, basically, he’s finished”.

The report claims that there may have been several hundred suicide attempts at Guantanamo Bay – far more than has ever been admitted to by the US authorities.

The three men said they eventually wrongfully confessed to appearing in a video with al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden and Mohammed Atta, one of the September 11 hijackers.

Mr Rasul was actually working in a Curry’s electronics store in the West Midlands at the time the video was filmed, the report said.

The men said they witnessed the beating of mentally ill inmates. They claimed that another man was left brain damaged after a beating by soldiers, who were punishing him for attempting suicide.

The report leaves questions for the British Foreign Office, which said that no British detainees at Guantanamo Bay had complained about their treatment.

All three men said they had made either written or verbal complaints to British embassy officials while they were being held.

A spokesman for the Ministry of Defence said: “The British army follows the rules laid out in the Geneva Convention and soldiers are told to follow that.

“It is not permissible to point guns at people’s heads during interrogation. We would investigate if any allegation of that nature is made.”

No-one could be immediately reached at the Pentagon for comment.