CUBA: SWEDISH MAN MEDHI MUHAMMED GHEZALI HELD BY UNITED STATES FORCES AT GUANTANAMO BAY GIVES DETAILS OF HIS DETENTION
Record ID:
338239
CUBA: SWEDISH MAN MEDHI MUHAMMED GHEZALI HELD BY UNITED STATES FORCES AT GUANTANAMO BAY GIVES DETAILS OF HIS DETENTION
- Title: CUBA: SWEDISH MAN MEDHI MUHAMMED GHEZALI HELD BY UNITED STATES FORCES AT GUANTANAMO BAY GIVES DETAILS OF HIS DETENTION
- Date: 18th July 2004
- Summary: (EU) ORBERO, SWEDEN (JULY 16, 2004) (REUTERS) 1. MV MEDHI MUHAMMED GHEZALI ARRIVING AT A NEWS CONFERENCE 0.18 2. (SOUNDBITE) (English) MEDHI MUHAMMED GHEZALI SAYING: "My purpose to go to Pakistan was to study in university in Islamabad and I didn't have any contact with Al-Qaeda or Taliban." 0.40 3. WIDE OF NEWS CONFERENCE 0.43 4. (SOUNDBITE) (English) GHEZALI, SAYING: "This is some months ago, in April they start taking me to the interrogation room, I was there maybe 12-14 hours and they have air-conditioning, in 56 Fahrenheit, when I looked at the air-conditioning it said 56 degrees. And they sometimes shackled me to the floor with my hands, if you want I can show you how." 1.15 5. SCU GHEZALI DEMONSTRATING POSITION 1.33 6. (SOUNDBITE) (English) GHEZALI, SAYING: "And I always tried to meet a doctor and they are always refusing me, they didn't want to see me. And it's many detainees now, they are very sick, they have problems with their stomach and other disease but its not the U.S. navy who decide who will get the medicine, it's the interrogators who decide who is going to get medicine." 2.06 7. GHEZALI AT A NEWS CONFERENCE 2.11 8. SOUNDBITE (ENGLISH) GHEZALI SAYING:"What is happening the torture inside the interrogation room, nobody can hear what is going on there because you cannot see it's isolated but sometimes you can hear people screaming, like that, but you can never see what's going on inside there. But they have always cameras inside there, and know what is happening." 2.36 9. MEDIA AROUND GHEZALI 2.39 (EU)GUANTANAMO BAY, CUBA (FILE) (REUTERS) 10. VARIOUS PRISONERS WALKING AROUND THE DETENTION CAMP ESCORTED BY U.S TROOPS 2.48 (EU)GUANTANAMO BAY, CUBA (FILE) (REUTERS) (MUTE) 11. SCU STILL PHOTOGRAPHS OF PRISONERS IN GUANTANAMO BAY (3 SHOTS) 3.11 Initials Script is copyright Reuters Limited. All rights reserved
- Embargoed: 2nd August 2004 13:00
- Keywords:
- Location: ORBERO,SWEDEN/GUANTANAMO BAY,CUBA
- Country: Cuba
- Reuters ID: LVAABDKDT5OR4XT0B1PZGYDV1D8N
- Story Text: A swedish man held by U.S forces at Guantanamo Bay
gives details about his detention.
A Swede released from the U.S. naval base at
Guantanamo Bay last week said he had been tortured by
exposure to freezing cold, noise and bright lights and
chained during his 2 1/2-year imprisonment. Mehdi Ghezali,
the son of an Algerian-born immigrant who was arrested in
Pakistan where he says he was studying Islam, told a news
conference on Friday (July 16) that he was subjected to
long interrogations.
"This is some months ago, in April they started taking
me to the interrogation room, I was there maybe 12-14
hours.... when I looked at the air-conditioning it said 56
degrees. And they sometimes shacked me to the floor with my
hands," Ghezali said.
Washington dismissed the allegations of mistreatment.
The 25-year-old man was released on July 8 after pressure
from Sweden including a meeting in Washington between Prime
Minister Goran Persson and President George W. Bush.
Ghezali told the news conference that he knew about
torture during other inmates' interrogations.
"Nobody can hear what is going on there because you
cannot see it's isolated, but sometimes you can hear people
screaming, like that, but you can never see what's going on
inside there. But they have always cameras inside there and
know what is happening," he said.
In interviews published by the Swedish media earlier
this week Ghezali said that in April this year the military
stepped up the pressure on him. "They put me in the
interrogation room and used it as a refrigerator. They set
the temperature to minus degrees so it was terribly cold
and one had to freeze there for many hours - 12-14 hours
one had to sit there, chained," he said, adding that he had
partially lost the feeling in one foot since then.
Some of these torture methods have also been used by
the U.S. military on Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison
in a scandal which has embarrassed the U.S. government this
year.
U.S. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher told
reporters in Washington earlier this week: "The government
of Sweden representatives have visited Guantanamo on
multiple occasions and they have not expressed allegations
of mistreatment to us."
Ghezali said he went Pakistan to study Islam in August
2001, before the September 11 attacks which triggered
President George W. Bush's war on terrorism and the
invasion of Afghanistan. He said he was visiting a friend
in the Afghan town of Jalalabad near the Pakistani border
when the U.S. attack started and decided to return to
Pakistan when he heard that villagers were selling
foreigners to the U.S. forces. But he was captured by
Pakistani villagers while crossing the border from
Afghanistan and sold to Pakistani police, who turned him
over to the U.S. military. He was flown from Pakistan to
Afghanistan and arrived in Guantanamo in January 2002.
A total of 147 Guantanamo prisoners have been released
or sent to their home countries for further imprisonment,
while about 594 prisoners remain at Guantanamo, the
Pentagon said last week. Human rights groups have called
Guantanamo a "legal black hole" where the United States
holds prisoners indefinitely and with no access to lawyers.
Rights activists also have accused the United States of
using interrogation methods that amount to torture.
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