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Binyam Mohamed Released From Guantanamo Bay

Posted by Jon King on Feb 23, 2009

Tagged with: binyam mohamed, cia, conspiracy, guantanamo bay, mi5, new world politics, terrorists, torture, war on terror

Binyam Mohamed arrived back in the UK last night having finally been released from Guantanamo Bay, where he had spent the past several weeks on hunger strike.

He was said to be emaciated but “grateful to be back in Britain” as he shuffled off the aircraft at RAF Northolt in Middlesex.

Mohamed was accused by America of having spent time in Al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan, a charge he has always denied. He was arrested as part of the CIA’s so-called ‘extraordinary rendition’ program and sent to Guantanamo Bay.

Known by its critics as ‘torture by proxy’, the rendition program saw countless alleged ‘terrorists’ secretly transferred by the CIA to countries known to use brutal interrogation techniques, often amounting to torture.

Binyam Mohamed was one of these ‘terrorists’. And what’s more, his detention and torture were carried out in the full knowledge of MI5 and the British government, it has emerged.

According to recent Whitehall leaks, MI5 was fully complicit, if not hands-on involved, in the torture of at least 10 known terrorist suspects following the 911 World Trade Center attacks. The methods of torture employed were nothing short of barbaric.

Mohamed says that following his arrest at Karachi airport in April 2002, he was detained in prisons in Pakistan, Morocco and Afghanistan. In Morocco, he says, his chest and penis were repeatedly slashed with scalpels and razor blades.

Finally, in September 2004, he was transferred to Guantanamo Bay.

But he did not remain there. In December 2005, he claims he was secretly transported back to Afghanistan, to the notorious ‘dark prison’ near Kabul. There, he says, he and other prisoners were subjected to further bouts of torture, including being permanently chained to the wall in constant darkness and subjected to continuous loud noise, often in the form of rap or heavy metal music.

While being held at the dark prison, Mohamed further claims that he was regularly injected with heroin so that his enforced addiction could be used against him.

He arrived back in Britain last night, on February 23rd, 2009, after 5 years in detention. A spokesperson confirmed that the Ethiopian national intended to settle in Britain.

We’ll keep you updated…

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image source: BBC