LONDON, 2 October 2004 — One of four Britons still held by the United States at the Guantanamo Bay naval base in Cuba claims in a letter released by lawyers yesterday that he has been subjected to “vindictive torture” and death threats.
Moazzam Begg, from Birmingham, in the English Midlands, also claimed in a handwritten letter — which somehow passed censorship — that he had witnessed the deaths of two fellow detainees “at the hands of US military personnel”.
Begg, 36, who has been detained for more than two years, insisted he was a law-abiding British citizen, that he had never met Osama Bin Laden, and was not a member of Al-Qaeda or any other paramilitary organization. His four-page letter, made public in London by his lawyers, marked the first time that any communication from a serving Guantanamo detainee has been made public, the attorneys said.
“During several interviews, particularly — though unexclusively — in Afghanistan, I was subjected to pernicious threats of torture, actual vindictive torture and death threats — amongst other coercively employed interrogation techniques,” Begg wrote.
He added: “In this atmosphere of severe antipathy towards detainees was the compounded use of racially and religiously prejudiced taunts,” he said.
“This culminated, in my opinion, with the deaths of two fellow detainees at the hands of US military personnel, to which I myself was partially witness,” he alleged. Begg, who was arrested in Pakistan in February 2002, was among nine Britons known to have been detained at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, of whom four were released last March, then released upon their arrival home without charge. Three of them have since alleged in a dossier published in July that they had been abused while in US captivity.
