Tales of torture

Questioned at gunpoint, shackled, forced to pose naked. British detainees tell their stories of Guantanamo Bay.

By Vikram Dodd and Tania Branigan

Britain and the US last night faced fresh allegations of abuses after a British terror suspect said an SAS soldier had interrogated him for three hours while an American colleague pointed a gun at him and threatened to shoot him.

The allegation is contained in a new dossier detailing repeated beatings and humiliation suffered by three Britons who were captured in Afghanistan, then held in Guantánamo Bay for two years, before being released in March without charge.

Rhuhel Ahmed, one of the “Tipton Three,” claims in the 115-page dossier that shortly after his capture in November 2001 he was interviewed in Afghanistan by a British interrogator who said he was from the SAS. Mr Ahmed alleges he was taken by US guards to be interrogated by the British officer in a tent. “One of the US soldiers had a gun to his head and he was told if he moved they would shoot him,” the report says. The SAS officer pressed him to admit he had gone to Afghanistan to fight a holy war. Last night the Ministry of Defence said it would investigate the allegation.

A spokesman said: “The British army follows the rules laid out in the Geneva convention and soldiers are told to follow that. It is not permissible to point guns at people’s heads during interrogation. We would investigate if any allegation of that nature is made.”

The dossier, based on two months of interviews by the men’s lawyers, provides the first full account by the three Britons of their ordeal as terror suspects.

Details of the experiences of Shafiq Rasul, Asif Iqbal and Rhuhel Ahmed, all from the same small Midlands town, are revealed today by the Guardian, and will be formally released this afternoon in the US. The three Britons allege they were repeatedly beaten, shackled in painful positions during interrogations and subjected to sleep deprivation. On one occasion, Mr Iqbal recalled: “I was left in a room and strobe lighting was put on and very loud music. It was a dance version of Eminem played repeatedly.”

Mr Rasul said he was asked: “If I wanted to get surface-to-air missiles from someone in Tipton, who would I go to?”

In an echo of the abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib jail in Baghdad which shamed Washington, the three Britons, held as illegal enemy combatants by the US, say they were photographed naked and subjected to anal searches unnecessarily, after being shackled for hours.

The three claim their interrogators, from a phalanx of US intelligence agencies including the CIA, accused them of being in a video shot in 2000 alongside Osama bin Laden, the al-Qaida leader, and Mohamed Atta, the leader of the September 11 attack. At the time one of the three was working in a Currys electrical store in the Midlands and two others were in trouble with the British police. Despite this, all three say the pain they were in and ill treatment led them confess to being in the video.

The dossier also alleges complicity by Britain in their treatment. The three challenge a claim by the Foreign Office junior minister, Chris Mullin, who in the Commons said no Briton had complained of their treatment in Guantanamo. Mr Iqbal says a British embassy official took down a two-page list of alleged abuses, while the two others say they made their complaints orally. Mr Rasul says he was interrogated by British personnel up to seven times, with MI5 officers questioning the Britons repeatedly.

On June 4 last year Tony Blair told the Commons: “Information is still coming from people detained there … that information is important.”

In the dossier the Britons say the level of mental illness among detainees is higher than admitted by the US. The Tipton Three say guards told them that a fellow British detainee, Moazzam Begg, still imprisoned in Guantánamo, had been kept in isolation and “was in a very bad way.” They say that Jamil el-Banna, of London, was so traumatised that “mentally, basically, he’s finished.”

Mr Banna is a Jordanian citizen with refugee status in Britain, but the government refuses to represent him. It also refuses to represent another Londoner, Bisher al-Rawi, originally from Iraq, who lived in Kingston, south-west London.

Lawyer Gareth Peirce said the report showed Britain’s complicity in the human rights abuses at Guantánamo: “The [British government] attitude displayed the hypocrisy of the public face in the UK saying we’re doing all we can and the private face there in Guantánamo involved up to their elbows in the oppression.”

Nine Britons were imprisoned in Guantánamo without charge or access to a lawyer. The Tipton Three were among five released in March, who were questioned on arrival in Britain before being released. Four Britons remain in Guantánamo, as well as four British residents.

: More Vikram Dodd

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British authorities weigh free-speech issues in deciding whether to charge reggae star Beenie Man with inciting violence against gays.

By Tania Branigan

Police, the Crown Prosecution Service and a leading barrister were meeting yesterday to discuss whether charges could be brought against Jamaican reggae star Beenie Man over lyrics that allegedly incite the murder of gay men and lesbians. The move coincides with attempts by leading companies to dissociate themselves from the homophobic lyrics of the singer and fellow dancehall artists including Buju Banton.

J-Flag, a Jamaican gay rights group, believes that violent lyrics have contributed to attacks upon and even murders of gay men and lesbians in Britain. Campaigners across Europe and the United States say their protests against the controversial stars are now bearing fruit.

Puma, the sportswear company, last week announced that it would not support singers who performed songs with antigay lyrics or made “hate statements of any sort,” following controversy over Buju Banton’s appearance at an Olympics show it was sponsoring.

Last week tobacco giant R.J. Reynolds dropped Beenie Man from a tour it had organized in the U.S., saying it did not “tolerate this or any form of discrimination based on sexual orientation.”

Peter Tatchell, a spokesman for the gay rights group Outrage!, said yesterday: “The campaign against murder music is escalating across the U.S. and Europe. We’re teaching these singers that inciting homophobic violence does not pay. It is costing them dear in lost revenue and income.”

But a prosecution over the lyrics would be contentious, with complicating factors including arguments over free speech, varying translations of the patois Beenie Man uses and the question of who should face charges for which offenses. The director of public prosecutions, Ken Macdonald, has taken personal responsibility for the case, an indication of its sensitivity.

Chief Superintendent Clive Driscoll, the officer leading the Metropolitan Police inquiry, said: “It’s a difficult investigation. I have no wish to stop someone’s freedom of speech. But by the same token, I would not want offenses to be missed.” He added: “We will be looking at whether there are grounds for prosecution and if the answer is yes, then who will be liable to prosecution. That’s where the complications will come in.”

A CPS spokeswoman said: “An offense of incitement can be committed through a performance of written material or its distribution or broadcast. It doesn’t just cover the writing itself.”

Beenie Man’s new album was released yesterday on Virgin Records. But a spokeswoman for the label’s owners, EMI, stressed that none of the controversial lyrics appear on tracks issued by Virgin. She declined to comment on the label’s decision to sign the singer. The songs that allegedly incite violence have been released on smaller labels, most if not all of which are based in Jamaica.

They include lyrics such as “Hang chi chi gal wid a long piece of rope” (“Hang lesbians with a long piece of rope”) and “Tek a bazooka and kill batty-fucker” (“Take a bazooka and kill gay men).

Outrage! hopes that last year’s prosecution of extremist Muslim cleric Abdullah el-Faisal for soliciting the murder of Jews, Hindus and other non-Muslims has set a precedent for bringing a charge of incitement to murder.

It might also be possible to bring charges under the Public Order Act, such as using threatening, abusive or insulting words or behavior. However, that would require someone to have been put in fear of immediate unlawful violence. A defense lawyer would be likely to argue that a singer could not expect those individuals to be put in fear when he recorded a track.

There is no offense of inciting homophobic hatred as there is in the case of racial hatred. Ben Summerskill, chief executive of Stonewall, said: “It’s absolutely appropriate that there should be legislation [protecting the gay community] that matches incitement to hatred in relation to race. In a civilized society the right to free speech does have constraints, and one of those is that you shouldn’t incite violence against other people.”

Earlier this month Virgin Records issued a statement from Beenie Man, which offered his “sincerest apologies to those who might have been offended, threatened or hurt by my songs.” But the following day the head of his management company in Jamaica said that the statement was “not an apology” and that the singer reserved his right to criticize “the homosexual lifestyle.”