Did Guantanamo Guards Mock Islam?

Afghanistan to Guantánamo Bay - the story of three British detainees

Today the Guardian publishes extracts from a 115-page report based on lengthy interviews the 'Tipton three' gave about their treatment by US and UK officials and military.

Tania Branigan and Vikram Dodd
Wednesday August 4, 2004
The Guardian

The Britons Rhuhel Ahmed, Asif Iqbal and Shafiq Rasul were detained in northern Afghanistan on November 28 2001 by forces loyal to the warlord General Abdul Rashid Dostum. The three, from Tipton in the Midlands, were handed over to US forces before being sent to Guantánamo Bay as suspected terrorists.

The "Tipton three" were released from Guantánamo in March this year, and after being flown back to Britain they were released without charge.

Today the Guardian publishes extracts from a 115-page report based on lengthy interviews they gave about their treatment by US and UK officials and military.

When released, they took payment from the media for interviews in which they alleged ill treatment. Their accounts were dismissed in some quarters, but since the revelations about the abuses at Abu Ghraib jail in Iraq, there has been renewed questioning about how far the US is willing to go in the "war on terror".

The report, Detention in Afghanistan and Guantánamo, has been compiled by the three men's lawyers, and is being released in the US today. It makes new allegations and gives extensive details about the treatment they suffered, which led them to make false confessions about their involvement in terrorism.

The Guardian paid no money to the three men or any of their representatives to publish these extracts from the report.

Arriving at Guantánamo
The terror, despair and anxiety of prisoners is laid bare by the released Britons, who describe their fear "that we might be killed at any minute" after their detention by US forces.

Their two-and-a-half-year ordeal has also left them with serious physical problems including knee and back pain - because of the positions in which they were shackled - and, in the case of Rhuhel Ahmed, permanent eye damage.

Their capture by the Northern Alliance was followed by a gruelling journey through Afghanistan in lorry containers, which only 20 of the 200 captives survived. It left all three suffering from "cold, dehydration, hunger and uncertainty" as well as dysentery and injuries.

US forces allegedly kicked and beat prisoners following the handover.

"One of [the soldiers] said 'you killed my family in the towers, and now it's time to get you back'," said Mr Iqbal.

"They kept calling us 'motherfuckers', and I think over three or four hours ... I must have been punched, kicked, slapped or struck with a rifle butt at least 30 or 40 times," he said.

Two weeks later Mr Iqbal and Mr Rasul were flown from Kandahar to Cuba, to be followed a month later by Mr Ahmed. Before their removal, they were hooded and forced to strip, then left naked.

"I could hear dogs barking nearby and soldiers shouting, 'get 'em boy'," said Mr Rasul. "I was taken ... for a so-called cavity search ... told to bend over and then felt something shoved up my anus. I don't know what it was but it was very painful."

The men alleged that the forced cavity searches were used to degrade and humiliate them, that they were systematically deprived of sleep and that they were kept on a restricted diet to weaken them.

Despite slightly better physical conditions in Cuba, they remained "at a high level of fear" throughout their detention.

"When we first got there the level was sky-high. We were terrified we might be killed at any minute. The guards would say, 'Nobody knows you're here, all they know is that you're missing and we could kill you and no one would know,'" they allege.

"After time passed, that level of fear came down somewhat but never vanished ... Not only could they do anything to any of us, but we could see them doing it to other detainees. We thought that we would never get out."

Mr Iqbal, who believes he suffered a breakdown after spending months in isolation and on a block with non-English-speaking detainees, believes that authorities deliberately fostered mental anguish - "they had thought carefully about the best way to punish me and break me."

Conditions in the camp
The treatment of prisoners worsened dramatically after the arrival of the US commander Major General Geoffrey Miller, the report alleges. Gen Miller ran Guantánamo for 18 months until last April, then going on to manage prisons in Iraq.

The report paints a disturbing picture of the rat, snake and scorpion-infested cages in which the men lived, exposed to blistering daytime temperatures, freezing nights and torrential rain.

It details alleged abuses and deliberately inhumane practices - such as sleep deprivation, shackling in painful positions and sexual humiliation - implying that these were deliberately used to encourage detainees to cooperate.

"We had the impression that at the beginning things were not carefully planned, but a point came at which you could notice things changing. That appeared to be after Gen Miller [arrived] around the end of 2002," said Mr Rasul.

"That is when short-shackling [when detainees are chained into a squatting position] started, loud music playing in interrogation, shaving beards and hair, putting people in cells naked, taking away people's 'comfort' items [eg towels] ... moving some people every two hours, depriving them of sleep, the use of a/c [air-conditioned, cold] air.

"Before, when people would be put into blocks for isolation, they would seem to stay for not more than a month. After he came, people would be kept there for months and months and months.

"Although sexual provocation, molestation did not happen to us, we are sure it happened to others ... One detainee came back from an interrogation crying and confided in another what had happened. That detainee told others and then other detainees revealed that it had happened to them."

This year, the camp's original commander, Brigadier General Rick Baccus, told the Guardian that military interrogators were angered by the conditions he granted to prisoners. After his departure, the defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, gave military intelligence control over all aspects of Guantánamo.

The Washington Post reported that under Gen Miller a system was instituted which allowed hooding or keeping prisoners naked for more than 30 days, threatening by dogs, and extreme temperatures.

After Gen Miller took control of Iraqi prisons in the wake of the Abu Ghraib scandal, he banned some practices, such as hooding, while defending others such as sleep deprivation.

But General Janis Karpinski, whom he replaced, claimed that he had earlier told her: "This place [Abu Ghraib] must be Gitmo-ised ... [prisoners] are like dogs." The US military refers to Guantánamo Bay as Gitmo. Gen Miller has denied the allegation.

Interrogations
Detainees cracked and gave false confessions under pressure from interrogators who did everything from showing them photographs of Donald Duck to beating them and holding guns to their heads, the men allege.

After months of questioning in coercive conditions, Mr Rasul admitted meeting Osama bin Laden and Mohammed Atta, one of the September 11 hijackers, in Afghanistan in 2000. In fact, he was working in a Currys store in the West Midlands.

"Eventually I just gave in and said, 'OK, it's me' ... because of the previous five or six weeks of being held in isolation and being taken to interrogation for hours on end, short shackled and being treated in that way," he said.

"I was going out of my mind and didn't know what was going on. I was desperate for it to end." He was cleared when M15 produced evidence showing the three were all in England at the time.

The report describes the extraordinary techniques employed by military interrogators. Mr Iqbal described US soldiers holding a gun to his head and beating him during interrogations in Afghanistan.

He added: "An American ... shouted at me, telling me I was al-Qaida. I said I was not involved in al-Qaida and did not support them. At this he started to punch me violently and then when he knocked me to the floor started to kick me around my back and in my stomach."

Interrogations at Guantánamo Bay were less violent but frequently involved physical stress - often in intense heat or cold, with detainees chained into painful squatting positions. On one occasion, Mr Iqbal recalled, "I was left in a room and strobe lighting was put on and very loud music. It was a dance version of Eminem played repeatedly."

Mr Rasul described being shown "photographs of Donald Duck, Mickey Mouse, Tom and Jerry, Rugrats, Abraham Lincoln, Michael Jackson, Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, Osama bin Laden and famous people from different countries."

At other interviews, he was asked: "If I wanted to get surface-to-air missiles from someone in Tipton, who would I go to?"

Role of British officials
The report suggests British officials made repeated visits to Guantánamo to question Britons who had been subjected to alleged ill-treatment by the US.

Consular officials, who visited at least six times, were supposed to ensure the welfare of the Britons, yet were always accompanied by MI5 officers.

Mr Iqbal claims that the embassy official once acted like "a third interrogator", asking him not about his welfare, but about other matters.

Mr Ahmed says he was interrogated in Kandahar by both a Foreign Office official and an MI5 officer, who told him the other two Britons had gone home because they cooperated. In fact they were on their way to Guantánamo.

During an interview with Foreign Office staff and with an MI5 officer present, Mr Ahmed says he confessed to every allegation put to him, including going to Afghanistan to fight jihad at the expense of the al-Muhajiroun group.

He had eaten next to no food for weeks and was suffering from sleep deprivation and extreme cold. He said the British officials "did not seem to care or even ask him about the conditions."

British officials saw all three men within three days of their arrival in Cuba. Mr Rasul says he was interviewed under armed guard by someone who said he was from the British embassy in Washington and someone from MI5.

He said: "The MI5 officer told me in no uncertain terms that if I did not cooperate they could make life very difficult for me."

He was told if he admitted going to Afghanistan for jihad, he could return to England. Mr Rasul says he was interviewed twice by MI5 in Camp X-ray, and Mr Ahmed once. Mr Iqbal says British intelligence questioned him four times over three months. His first interrogation by MI5 lasted between six and eight hours.

One MI5 interrogator told Mr Rasul that he would stay in Guantánamo for the rest of his life. During one interview, he says, he noticed that he was being filmed.

During his fourth interview, Mr Iqbal says he refused to answer questions put to him by US and UK interrogators. Both left the room and then a British embassy official entered. He said Mr Iqbal should tell him about his grievances. Mr Iqbal stayed silent until he was shown letters from his family and told if could only have them if he cooperated.

"I was desperate to get some letters from my family, so I started to speak," Mr Iqbal said.

He "remembers clearly" that the official wrote down his list of grievances for the first time.

These included infections he was suffering from untreated wounds caused by iron leg shackles; being led naked to and from the showers; poor food; disrespect shown to their religion; and sleep deprivation. The complaint ran to two pages. Mr Rasul says he complained to a British embassy official called Martin, telling him that he had been kept in isolation for three months. Again, nothing seemed to happen.

The report concludes: "It was very clear to all three that MI5 was content to benefit from the effect of the isolation, sleep deprivation and other forms of acutely painful and degrading treatment, including short shackling."

The men expressed considerable anger that "there was never any suggestion on the part of the British interrogators that this treatment was wrong".

Prisoners' mental illness
There have been "several hundred" suicide attempts, many more than suggested in official accounts, according to the report.

Camp authorities recorded around 32 attempts by prisoners to kill themselves before they stopped counting them and created a new category of "manipulative self-injurious behaviour", for which figures are not disclosed.

But the report suggests that attempted suicides are just the tip of the iceberg. It describes in vivid detail the deteriorating mental health of prisoners, including Britons, and alleges that guards have assaulted men who have serious health problems.

The men said that a high percentage of detainees were on anti-depressants and that at least 100 were observably mentally ill, as distinct from being depressed about their situation.

They added: "For at least 50 of those their behaviour is so disturbed as to show that they are no longer capable of rational thought or behaviour ...

"It is something that only a small child or animal might behave like ... These people were obviously seriously ill and yet we understand [from the military police] that they still get interrogated, and if they say someone is from al-Qaida then that information is used."

The men claimed to have witnessed the beating of one man who suffered from mental illness - Jumah al-Dousari from Bahrain - for impersonating a female soldier.

Eight soldiers repeatedly punched Mr Dousari, smashed his face into the concrete floor until his nose was broken, and kicked him in the stomach.

"When they took him out they hosed the cell down and the water ran red with blood," Mr Rasul said in the report.

In another incident, a Saudi Arabian prisoner allegedly suffered irreversible brain damage when guards beat him up after he tried to kill himself.

The account raises particular concerns about the mental state of British residents and citizens, in particular Jamil el-Banna, a Jordanian refugee who lived in London.

"Mentally, basically he's finished," Mr Rasul said.

"They told him he was going to be sent back to Jordan and he was extremely scared ... [it] meant to him the end of his life. He knew that he would be tortured or killed there."

The report also says that Feroz Abbasi, from Croydon, "was getting a very hard time" and that guards reported Moazzam Begg, from Birmingham, to be "in a very bad way".