Prisoner’s treatment labeled torture
SEATTLE – A man accused of belonging to al Qaeda felt such isolation at a U.S. military prison that experts said it amounted to torture and war crimes, declassified federal court documents said.
According to the documents, unsealed Thursday at the request of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and others, 34-year-old Salim Ahmed Hamdan complained that he was “going crazy” during eight months of solitary confinement in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
“I have not been permitted to see the sun or hear other people outside … or talk with other people. I am alone except for a guard,” Hamdan said last February in a court affidavit that was first sealed, then made classified in a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Seattle.
“One month is like a year here, and I have considered pleading guilty in order to get out of here,” Hamdan said after two months in solitary.
Before his transfer to Guantanamo, Hamdan was held for six months in U.S. custody in Afghanistan. There, he said he was beaten, forced to lie still for days, dressed only in overalls in freezing temperatures, and shown a gun while being threatened with death, torture and imprisonment.
The court documents came in a lawsuit challenging Hamdan’s detention and the conditions of detention.
Though he was first put in U.S. custody in fall 2001, Hamdan was charged only last month. The charges include conspiracy to attack civilians, murder and commit terrorism.
Hamdan has said he once chauffeured Osama bin Laden at an Afghan farm but was never an al Qaeda member, fighter or terrorist and has never taken up arms against the United States.
On Friday, Maj. Michael Shavers, a Pentagon spokesman, said the military was aware of the unsealed documents but declined to comment on Hamdan’s claims.
“Any allegations that he has to make will be addressed in his hearing,” Shavers said.
Some international law experts said the military’s alleged behavior, if true, would violate the International Convention Against Torture and U.S. law, which can carry penalties of up to life in prison or death.
“The threatening with death would clearly constitute torture under the conventions,” said Seattle University professor Ronald Slye, who once worked for South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission and was associate director of the Center of International Human Rights at Yale Law School.
“There are cases that say solitary confinement for a long period of time can constitute torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. Eight months is clearly cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment,” Slye said.