LONDON, 15 May 2004 — Two British Muslims released from Guantanamo Bay were subjected to the same kinds of torture at the US detention camp that Iraqis have suffered at the hands of US troops, their lawyer said yesterday.
Shafiq Rasul and Asif Iqbal, from Tipton, near Birmingham in England’s West Midlands, have written to US President George W. Bush to detail a string of abuses which, they claim, were inflicted upon them by US interrogators.
The alleged abuses at the US holding center in Cuba for terrorism suspects included being shackled for hours, being made to stand naked, being subjected to snarling dogs and being forced to endure shivering temperatures.
Their claims emerged as the Bush administration was rocked by undisputed evidence that US troops abused and tortured Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad.
Barbara Olshansky, a US lawyer representing Rasul and Iqbal, told BBC radio the two men have written to Bush to make clear that their experience in Guantanamo Bay “didn’t happen in a vacuum”.
“This is very much part of the policy of the American military in handling all these various situations around the world,” said Olshansky, of the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights.
“They were very clear that they were shackled for hours on end, and made to stand in stressed positions when being questioned by the military interrogators,” she said.
“They were subjected to threatening dogs, freezing cold temperatures, being made to stand naked — the same type of humiliation and stress techniques that were used in Iraq,” she added.
Rasul, Iqbal, and a third man from Tipton, Ruhal Ahmed, were among five British nationals released from Guantanamo Bay last March. Four others are still there, facing possible military trial for alleged connections with Osama Bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda network.
In a March 13 interview with the Observer newspaper, the “Tipton Three” said they were regularly beaten at Guantanamo Bay, backing similar allegations by the other two freed Britons.
Rasul and Iqbal are also petitioners in a US Supreme Court case, initiated by the Center for Constitutional Rights, to determine if US courts have jurisdiction to hear cases from Guantanamo detainees.
The Bush administration contends that Guantanamo Bay and its 650-odd detainees are beyond the reach of any court in the world.
Relatives and supporters yesterday demanded answers to the charges, saying the United States should now allow independent inspections of the camp.
“Whilst the world’s attention has been focused on Abu Ghraib prison we can lose sight of the fact these prisons separated by thousands of miles are two of a kind. They are experimenting in interrogation with the use of torture,” actor Corin Redgrave, founder of the Guantanamo Human Rights Commission, said.
The British government said it had not been told about the latest allegations, adding officials regularly visited the prison to check on the Britons there.
