MIAMI – A young Guantánamo prisoner from Chad was given permission to telephone a relative but instead called the al-Jazeera television network and said he was being beaten and abused at the US detention camp.
Transcripts of the recorded interview with Guantánamo captive Mohammad el-Gharani were posted on the Qatar-based television network’s English-language website on Tuesday.
It was the first known interview with a captive held behind the razor-wire encampments at Guantánamo, which journalists are allowed to visit only if they sign an agreement not to speak to any prisoners. It was not immediately clear when the call was made.
Mr Gharani, now 21, has been held at Guantánamo for seven years. He was ordered to be freed by a US district judge in Washington in January, a week before US president Barack Obama took office and ordered the prison operation shut down within a year.
The camp was opened by the Bush administration in 2002 to hold and interrogate suspected al- Qaeda and Taliban members after the September 11th attacks. Critics have condemned the facility as a symbol of abuse in Washington’s war on terrorism.
Mr Gharani lives with other detainees the courts have ordered freed in a group housing compound under fewer restrictions than most of the 240 Guantánamo captives.
He told al-Jazeera he had been beaten with batons and teargassed by a group of six soldiers wearing protective gear and helmets after refusing to leave his cell.
“This treatment started about 20 days before Obama came into power, and since then I’ve been subjected to it almost every day,” he told al-Jazeera.
“Since Obama took charge he has not shown us that anything will change.”
The US military has said detainees are treated humanely.
A spokesman at Guantánamo, Lieut Cmdr Brook DeWalt, said some of those cleared for release were allowed weekly telephone calls to relatives, but he did not know whether Mr Gharani had dialled the call himself, which would have violated policy.
Another government official who asked not to be identified said Mr Gharani phoned al-Jazeera under the guise of calling an uncle. He did not know how Mr Gharani obtained the television network’s phone number.
Mr Gharani was captured in Pakistan in late 2001 and taken to Guantánamo Bay in early 2002. The US government said the then-14-year-old had stayed at an al-Qaeda-affiliated guest house in Afghanistan, fought in the battle of Tora Bora in 2001, served as a courier for senior al-Qaeda operatives and was part of a London-based al-Qaeda cell.
But US district Judge Richard Leon said the “mosaic of allegations” came from two other Guantánamo captives whose reliability and credibility were questionable, and ruled that the government had failed to show evidence that he was part of or supported al-Qaeda or the Taliban.
He ordered that Mr Gharani be sent either to Saudi Arabia, where he was raised and his family lives, or to Chad.
The Obama administration is studying how to carry out those orders and what to do with the other prisoners.
– (Reuters)