RENDITION: They went to Pakistan for a friend's wedding and ended up in the US Guantánamo Bay detention centre in Cuba for 2½ years. There they were tortured and interrogated before being freed without charge in March 2004.
Shafiq Rasul (28) and Rhuhel Ahmed (24) were not even practising Muslims (they are now) when they set off with their friend Asif Iqbal (24) from Tipton, near Birmingham in Britain, in September 2001 for Asif's marriage. It had been arranged by his parents. Rhuhel was to be best man.
One evening in October 2001 they attended a meeting at a mosque in Karachi, where they heard appeals for humanitarian aid for the people of Afghanistan.
"We were young. You do stupid things, I was 18," Rhuhel recalled in Dublin yesterday. "And there was the adventure," said Shafiq. Both were in Ireland to promote a film of their story The Road to Guantánamo, screened at the Irish Film Institute last night. It was recently shown on Channel 4 television.
In Afghanistan what money they had was used to buy food and medical supplies for the people. However, they stood out as strangers and ended up as prisoners of Northern Alliance forces. They survived a massacre outside Shebargan prison and appalling conditions. "We were covered with lice," Rhuhel said. He bled from scratching himself and lost a lot of weight.
At the end of December 2001 they were handed over to US special forces, who beat them and tied them up before flying them to the US detention centre in Kandahar. "If your head wasn't touching the floor or you let it rise up a little they put their boots on the back of your neck," recalled Shafiq. They were kept like that for hours. They were also questioned on their knees while in chains and always at gunpoint.
In mid-January (Shafiq) and February (Rhuhel) 2002 they were flown to Guantánamo Bay. They were shaved, body searched, put into orange jump suits and dressed in a "three-piece suit". This was a body belt with a metal chain connected to leg-irons with hand-shackles attached. They would wear it until released in 2004.
They endured brutal interrogations and torture which extended from beatings, some especially severe, stress-inducing loud noise, being tied with their heads touching the ground "for six or seven hours" - as Rhuhel recalled it - and solitary confinement which could extend for three or four months.
There were 48 men detained in each cell block, of 46 nationalities, both men said, not one of whom they believed had any involvement in terrorist activity.
The two men are hoping to be allowed into the US to promote the film, but are anxious about going there. "The American people have never spoken to anyone who was held in Guantánamo," said Shafiq. But he worried about being arrested. He remembered comments of Americans in the Guantánamo Bay detention centre: "You are in the US now. We can do what we want [to you]."
It is understood there are currently 500 men held in the Guantánamo centre, none of whom has faced charges.
