Guantanamo prisoner tells of dark Afghan prison

LONDON (AP) - A former prisoner at Guantanamo Bay says his worst months in custody were spent in a dark prison in Afghanistan, where he says he was shackled in uncomfortable positions for days on end and blasted with constant loud music which made sleep impossible.

Binyam Mohamed, a British resident who was freed from the U.S. prison in Cuba on Feb. 23 after seven years in U.S. custody, described his time in Afghanistan in an interview published in The Mail on Sunday newspaper.

"That was when I came close to insanity," the newspaper quoted him as saying. "It seems like a miracle my brain is still intact."

Allegations of abuse in the "dark prison" surfaced in 2005 in a report by Human Rights Watch, based on accounts provided by lawyers for Mohamed and seven other prisoners at Guantanamo Bay.

Mohamed, 30, an Ethiopian who came to Britain as a teenager, was accused of plotting al-Qaida attacks in the United States, but war crimes charges against him were dropped last year.

He was arrested in Pakistan on April 10, 2002 while trying to leave the country on a false passport.

Britain's High Court, ruling in a case brought by Mohamed's lawyers last year, said there was no evidence of where he was held until May 2004, when he was transferred to Bagram in Afghanistan.

The British government accepted, however, that Mohamed had established an arguable case that he was "detained unlawfully and incommunicado at the 'dark prison' near Kabul where he was subject to torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment by or on behalf of the United States."

Mohamed says he was taken to Morocco on a secret CIA rendition flight in July, 2002. He claims he was tortured during 18 months in Morocco, including having his penis cut.

In January 2004, he says, he was taken to the prison in Afghanistan, where he says he saw light only when guards carrying flashlights brought trays of food - food that often made him ill and caused him to lose weight rapidly, he says.

"The toilet in the cell was a bucket. Without light, you either find the bucket or you go on your bed," the newspaper quoted him as saying.

"There were loudspeakers in the cell, pumping out what felt like about 160 watts, a deafening volume, nonstop, 24 hours a day. They played the same CD for a month, 'The Eminem Show.' It's got about 20 songs on it and when it was finished it went back to the beginning and started again.

"While that was happening, a lot of the time, for hour after hour, they had me shackled. Sometimes it was in a standing position, with my wrists chained to the top of the door frame. Sometimes they were chained in the middle, at waist level, and sometimes they were chained at the bottom, on the floor.

"The longest was when they chained me for eight days on end, in a position that meant I couldn't stand straight nor sit. I couldn't sleep. I had no idea whether it was day or night."

He said he was given one shower a week, "with your arms chained above you, stripped naked, in the dark, with someone else washing you."

"The water was salty and afterwards you felt dirtier than when you went in. It wasn't a shower for washing: it was for humiliation," he said.

"The floor was made of cement dust. Whatever movement you made, the air would be full of cement and I started getting breathing problems," he added.

Mohamed was moved out of the dark prison to another prison at Bagram air base in May 2004. In September, he was transferred to Guantanamo.
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