Amnesty International has released accounts alleging new prisoner torture and abuse in Guantanamo Bay and Kandahar, Afghanistan to RAW STORY Tuesday.
Bahraini national Jumah al-Dossari was among the detainees. In testimony written in Guantanamo Bay, July 2005, he alleges numerous instances of physical and psychological abuse by U.S. personnel and Pakistani authorities. Read his full, graphic testimony here. As a warning, the uncensored graphic testimony includes allegations of specific sexual humiliation.
Below are some excerpts, as released by Amnesty International:
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Arrest and treatment by Pakistani authorities
"I passed through several small jails where there was a lot of abuse.
I had previously met several people when I was on the border, they were of
different nationalities. They had left Afghanistan and the Pakistani army
abused us and gave us the worst and most nasty kind of food. They put me in
a cell which was 4m x 4m in which there were 59 prisoners without
mattresses, blankets or a bathroom; there was only one bucket in the cell
for everyone to relieve themselves in without a screen."
"They stole many passports from the prisoners who were of many
nationalities and we were abused. They abused me personally and beat me
several times during investigations. The worst tribulation for us was when
they transported us from one place to another: they would tie us up in the
most savage way, so much so that some of us got gangrenous fingers and our
hands and feet swelled and turned blue. They would tie us up for long
periods of time in military trucks, sometimes from daybreak until night, in
addition to the hours that they spent transporting us in trucks."
US custody in Afghanistan
"When we were all in the plane - there were approximately 30 of us –
they closed the plane door which from behind said "designed to carry
machinery". After they closed the door, the soldiers started shouting,
screaming and insulting us with the most vulgar insults and nasty curses.
They started beating us and took pictures of us on a camera; I could see
the flash. I had a violent pain in my stomach – I had had an operation on
my stomach and there was a piece of metal in it; when I complained about
the severity of the pain, a soldier came and started kicking me in my
stomach with his military boot until I vomited blood. I do not know how
many hours I was in that state as we went from the base in Kohat to
Kandahar Airport where there is an American military base."
"During that time, I was moved to the camp clinic because of the
terrible state of my health. They would take me for investigations which
were mostly held at night; they would beat me severely and tell me to
confess that I was a terrorist!! Once, from the excessive and severe
beatings, one of my foot shackles broke. Once, they poured boiling hot
liquid on my head and the investigator stubbed his cigarette out on my
foot. I said to him, "why are you treating me like this?" He then took a
cigarette and stubbed it out on my right wrist and said, "in the name of
Christ and the Cross I am doing this". Once, they had beaten me so severely
that my clothes were ripped and my genitals were exposed. I tried to cover
myself up but they started kicking me with their boots."
Transfer to Guantánamo Bay, Cuba
"It was then that my suffering started. If we wanted to go to the
outside toilet, a portaloo, the soldiers would take us violently and would
look at our genitals; even the female soldiers did that. They would stand
outside the door which was open while we relieved ourselves."
Torture and ill-treatment in Guantánamo Bay
"During investigations, I was threatened with rape, attacks on my
family in Saudi Arabia, my daughter being kidnapped, and my murder –
assassination – by their spies in the Middle East if I went back to Saudi
Arabia.
"They went to a detainee and put his head in the toilet. The toilets
in Camp Delta are iron, Turkish-style toilets and then they flushed his
head down the toilet until he almost died. They went to a detainee and
started beating his head against the toilet rim until he lost consciousness
and he could not see for more than 10 hours."
"One detainee, called Abdul Aziz Al-Masri, was ill and was asleep in
the hospital. These soldiers went and beat him very badly in the hospital
in front of the doctors and nurses. His injuries were excessive and caused
his spine to break. He is now hemiplegic. They are now trying to operate on
him but he is refusing out of fear that they will play with his back and
make it worse rather than make it better as their operations often do.
These kinds of incidents happen often. They would make sending them to the
detainees an excuse for incidents in which we would suffer extensive
injuries, severe disfiguration and fractures as there was no one monitoring
or following up their actions. Rather, their officers and officials gave
them the orders."