ALLADHAND DHERAY, Pakistan, 20 May 2003 — A Pakistani released from the United States’ secretive prison on Guantanamo Bay, Cuba said yesterday that most of the 600-plus prisoners still held there on suspicion of Al-Qaeda links had become mentally disturbed.
“The majority of prisoners in Camp X-Ray are not even familiar with the name Al-Qaeda,” Shah Muhammad, 23, said in his home village of Alladhand Dheray in Dir district, some 20 km (12.4 miles) from the border with Afghanistan in Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province.
“Most of them are in a critical condition mentally and have become mentally deranged.” Muhammad was released earlier this month from Camp X-Ray, the US naval base prison in Cuba, with two other Pakistanis, Jehan Wali and Sahibzada Usman Ali, and handed over to Pakistani authorities on May 8. He returned home on Friday. “Jehan Wali has not talked to anyone for the past eight months,” Muhammad said of his fellow detainee.
A former baker, Muhammad was one of an estimated 6,000 Pakistanis who followed the urgings of firebrand preachers and crossed over the border into Afghanistan to defend the Taleban against the US-led military onslaught in October 2001.
He said he was captured in the northern Afghan city of Mazar-e-Sharif by the anti-Taleban Northern Alliance in November 2001 and was handed over to US troops, who flew them to Guantanamo Bay.
“Before boarding the plane, our hands and feet were tied and duct tape was stuck across our mouths, black visors were placed on our eyes and devices were shoved into ears. Our hair and beards were shaved off,” Muhammad said.
“After an 18-hour journey in this condition we were shoved like animals into cages.” For the first month, the prisoners were not allowed to talk to each other and adan (the Muslim call to prayer) was banned, he recalled. However he was not prevented from offering prayers.
He said that US guards tortured the detainees.
“For several months prisoners were tortured frequently. Later, after the Red Cross intervened, the torture was limited to interrogation sessions and the bans on adan and talking to each other were lifted.
“After investigations were completed and we were found innocent, we were treated well and given good food and other concessions.”
Muhammad is considering suing the US government. “The American government without any proof or justification kept me imprisoned for 18 months. The US should compensate me for this loss of my freedom,” he said. Another 54 Pakistanis are among some 650 prisoners from 40 countries still in detention at the open-air, maximum security base. The majority of prisoners are Saudis.
