- One of the four Britons released from Guantanamo Bay
last month said he was tortured by the Americans at a separate holding
camp and spent many hours trussed like an animal with a bag over his head.
-
- Moazzam Begg, 37, who was released by the Metropolitan
Police without charge and reunited with his wife and four children after
three years' imprisonment, also accuses his American captors of beating
two detainees to death at the Bagram air base near Kabul in Afghanistan.
In his first interview since his release, he told Channel 4 News he "witnessed
two people get beaten so badly I believe it caused their deaths".
-
- In February 2003, Mr Begg was transferred from Bagram
to Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. The former law student and bookshop owner from
Birmingham joined hundreds of other "unlawful combatants", shackled
and dressed in orange jumpsuits, then held without charge, trial or access
to lawyers. For much of his detention he was in solitary confinement, often
exposed to extreme weather and deprived of basic necessities. Last night
he said he was interviewed at Guantanomo by US security officers who asked
him to identify the guards in the alleged beatings.
-
- He told Channel 4: "I saw one body actually being
carried away and the other one, I wasn't sure whether he had been killed
but the photographs the American intelligence officers had brought confirmed
this person had been killed."
-
- Mr Begg called his detention at Guantanamo "tortuous"
[sic] but made express allegations of torture only about his treatment
at Bagram. In one particularly harsh interrogation, he said, he faced two
FBI agents who ordered punishments which included being "hog-tied".
-
- Mr Begg described this as "having your hands tied
behind your back and then simultaneously having them tied to your legs
and your ankles and shackled from behind; left on a floor with a bag over
my head, and kicked and punched and left there for several hours, only
to be interrogated again".
-
- He said he was threatened with being sent to Egypt, "to
be tortured, to face electric shocks, to have my fingers broken, to be
sexually abused, and the like". Mr Begg admitted visiting training
camps in Afghanistan in 1993 and 1998. He said the first was run by the
anti-Taliban Northern Alliance.
-
- Mr Begg said he stayed for two weeks and saw people being
trained in small-arms. But he made it clear he did no training. He visited
a second camp in 1998 near Jalalabad, he said, for a day and a half. Mr
Begg claimed it was run by Kurds fighting Saddam Hussein, not by al-Qa'ida.
-
- When the 11 September attacks happened, Mr Begg said
he was still in Afghanistan and phoned a friend who told him "there
could be imminent attacks on Afghanistan, that they're blaming al-Qa'ida
that's based around Kandahar for being responsible". Mr Begg, Feroz
Abbasi, 24, Richard Belmar, 25, and Martin Mubanga, 32, were questioned
and released by police last month and are staying in safe-houses. Mr Begg
was arrested in Pakistan by US security officers who raided his flat in
Islamabad.
-
- BEGG'S VIEW
-
- On being a "threat":
-
- "It's incomprehensible for me to think how they
would come to the conclusion that I am a threat to Britain. Britain is
my home, I'm as British as anybody else."
-
- On his seizure in Islamabad:
-
- "There was a knock, about 12 o'clock at night. I
answered the door ... a gun was put to my head and I was ... made to kneel.
A black hood was put on my head, my hands were tied behind my back and
my legs were shackled and I was carried into a vehicle ... and driven off.
Never got a chance to say goodbye or a word to my wife or my children."
-
- On his release:
-
- "A major came along and he said I am here to inform
you that the American government has decided to release you to the British
authorities and any supposed charges have been dropped. Simple as that.
Of course I was in a state of utter disbelief."
-
- On coming back:
-
- "I don't think I can ever be back to normality and
I'm still trying to work out what normality is. But what's kept me going
is my faith and the thoughts of my children."
-
- ©2005 Independent News & Media (UK) Ltd.
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- http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/legal/story.jsp?story=614556
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