Binyam Mohamed: I will fight for other prisoners

Source: UK Independent

Former Guantanamo Bay inmate explains the legacy of his incarceration

Binyam Mohamed, the former Guantanamo detainee, has reversed a decision to stay out of the public eye by signalling his determination to campaign for justice for prisoners at the American detention camp and highlight the lifelong effects of torture he suffered at the hands of his interrogators.

Six months after emerging as a frail and ghostly figure from the plane which brought him back to Britain from the US military prison in Cuba, Mr Mohamed last night used his first public speech since his release to explain the legacy of his seven years in detention, which he says included his "extraordinary rendition" to a prison in Morocco where his penis was repeatedly cut with a scalpel to force him to confess as an al-Qai'da terrorist.

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Mohamed said he was constantly re-visited by memories of his ordeal, in particular at the so-called "Dark Prison" – a CIA facility in Afghanistan where detainees were kept in darkness and bombarded with loud pop music. For 10 months, Mr Mohammed said he was kept chained in a room in the prison as an Eminem CD played on a loop. "You have to live it to explain it. It's very hard. If I enter a room and the light turns off for some reason, I wonder if I'm back in the dark prison."

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What followed, he insists, was a catalogue of encounters with foreign intelligence agents in Pakistan and later Morocco while being subjected to tortures that included being chained to a gate for 22 hours and being cut on his genitals 20 or 30 times during interrogation sessions over two years.

Last month, it emerged in a High Court judgment that an MI5 officer visited Morocco three times during the time Mr Mohamed was being held there. MI5 insists it was unaware of his rendition to Morocco in 2002.

Read more: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/politics/binyam-mohamed-i-will-fight-for-other-prisoners-1779633.html