Briton held as terror suspect says CIA threatened torture

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A British businessman arrested as a suspected terrorist has told the Guardian that US agents threatened him with beatings and rape in an attempt to break him.

Wahab al-Rawi, 38, was denied a lawyer, held incommunicado for four weeks in Gambia, and repeatedly questioned by CIA agents before being released without charge. His account is the first from any Briton about their treatment by the US while held as a suspect in the two year "war on terror".

The account also challenges US denials of the use of torture or the threat of torture on terrorist suspects, thousands of whom have been detained and interrogated across the world.

The Guardian revealed in July that Mr Rawi's business partners, including his brother, Bisher, and Jamil al-Banna, who were arrested with him, have been incarcerated in the US camp at Guantanamo Bay without charge.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/terrorism/story/0,12780,1055663,00.html

(snip) Mr Rawi's family fled to London from the Saddam regime in Iraq. "I have been loyal to Britain," he says; but of the CIA agents, he adds: "To me, they're no different to Saddam Hussein."
(snip)

What a legacy _Bush is creating for future generations.

After reading the article, you may find yourself wondering.

just shown on the BBC, and available at
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/panorama/3122416.stm
Required viewing. Judge Richard Goldstone, possibly the most eminent war crimes judge in the world, says he considers the treatment, by Americans, of prisoners (oops, sorry, 'detained personnel') at Bagram air base in Afghanistan as torture, by a strict legal definition. Prisoners (damn, detained personnel) at Guantanamo include those arrested in Pakistan, the Gambia, and Bosnia. The youngest pris-ahem, detained person is 13. Prisoners were kidnapped by the Americans from these countries, bypassing their courts.
The only possible right of appeal of anyone convicted by the military courts is to Bush. He's already said he's certain of one thing: they're all bad people.

So much for habeus corpus, presumed innocence, and international law. Bush has rolled back 800 years of Anglo-Saxon law, to arrest taxi-drivers.