US Detainee 'Mentally Tortured'

Taken from The BBC, 15.10.2007

Pakistani-born US resident detained at Guantanamo Bay has said he was "mentally tortured" there, according to a transcript released by the Pentagon.

Majid Khan, who has been accused of planning to blow up petrol stations in the US, also described how he tried to commit suicide by chewing on an artery.

Mr Khan presented a Statement of Torture to the US military tribunal reviewing his "enemy combatant" status.

He was among 14 "high-value" detainees moved to Guantanamo Bay in September.

The men were previously held in secret CIA prisons but are now being detained in a maximum security wing at the base in Cuba.

Mr Khan moved to the US in the late 1990s, where he went to high school in Baltimore.

The US government says that, on his return to Pakistan, family members introduced him to senior al-Qaeda leader Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

He is also accused of having links with fellow Guantanamo detainee Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali, and of passing money to the Islamist militant group, Jemaah Islamiah (JI).

'Extensive torture'
At the tribunal at Guantanamo Bay on 15 April, Mr Khan denied he had any connection with Islamist militant groups such as al-Qaeda.

"I am not an enemy combatant," he asserted.

"I am not an extremist."

"I have never been to Afghanistan and I have never met Osama bin Laden."

Afterwards, Mr Khan's personal representative read out a written statement, in which he alleged psychological torture.

"I swear to God this place in some sense worst than CIA jails. I am being mentally torture here," he said.

"There is extensive torture even for the smallest of infractions."

Mr Khan complained about how US guards had taken away pictures of his daughter, given him new glasses with the wrong prescription, shaved his beard off, forcibly fed him when he went on hunger strike, and denied him the opportunity for recreation.

This led him to attempt to chew through his artery twice, Mr Khan said.

Later, Mr Khan produced a list of further examples of psychological torture, which included the provision of "cheap, branded, unscented soap", the prison newsletter, noisy fans and half-inflated balls in the recreation room that "hardly bounce".