CUBA: A Pakistani released from the US prison on Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, said yesterday that most of the 600-plus prisoners still held there on suspicion of al-Qaeda links had become mentally disturbed.
"The majority of prisoners in Camp X-Ray are not even familiar with the name al-Qaeda," Mr Shah Muhammad (23) said.
"Most of them are in a critical condition mentally and have become mentally deranged."
Mr Muhammad was released earlier this month from Camp X-Ray, along with two other Pakistanis, Mr Jehan Wali and Mr Sahibzada Usman Ali, and handed over to Pakistani authorities on May 8th.
A former baker, he was one of an estimated 6,000 Pakistanis who followed the urgings of firebrand preachers and flowed over the border into Afghanistan to defend the Taliban against the US-led military onslaught in October 2001.
The American military is using long sessions of heavy metal music and children's songs to help break the spirit of some Iraqi prisoners of war, it was reported yesterday.
"Trust me," one US operative told MSNBC News. "It works."
Sgt Mark Hadsell said the idea is to break a subject's resistance by annoying them with what some Iraqis consider culturally offensive music.
The songs used include Bodies from the Vin Diesel XXX film soundtrack and Metallica's Enter Sandman.
"These people haven't heard heavy metal before," Sgt Hadsell explained. "They can't take it."