KUWAIT, 11 September 2004 — Four Kuwaitis charged with plotting to attack foreign forces in Iraq and Kuwait said yesterday that confessions they had made were extracted under physical and mental duress. “We demand that our interrogation be repeated since we were forced to say what did not happen and things that we had nothing to do with,” Hamad Al-Harbi, Mohammad Al-Asfour, Ahmad Al-Utaibi and Bader Al-Utaibi said in a joint statement in Kuwait City.
The four men were arrested in August, part of a group of extremists held on suspicion of being Al-Qaeda supporters and running a local network of young people who want to fight US forces in Iraq and Kuwait.
The men, released earlier this month pending trial, told a news conference in the capital that after being arrested, they were handed over to state security officials and “most of us were subjected to beatings, torture and continuous insults.”
“In this particular case, they asked a person to confess to incriminate himself and others he may not even know beforehand.” Most were ordered to repeat their fabricated confessions at the Public Prosecutor’s office under threat of being mistreated if they did not, the men said. They were held in isolation in prison and went on hunger strike for three days in protest, but were ordered to stop or face further abuse, they said.
