Ex-Guantanamo Bay detainee alleges torture, Koran desecration News
Ex-Guantanamo Bay detainee alleges torture, Koran desecration

[JURIST] Mubarak Hussain bin Abul Hasim, a Bangladeshi who had been detained for five-years at Guantanamo Bay [JURIST news archive], told AFP following his release from Bangladeshi detention last Thursday that interrogators at Guantanamo Bay gave electric shocks and subjected the detainees to low temperature cells, where Mubarak spent "two days straight without food and without any clothes." Mubarak also alleges that the guards desecrated the Koran [HRW backgrounder] by kicking and throwing it into the toilet. Mubarak, who was repatriated to Bangladesh from Guantanamo [DOD press release] in December 2006, is out on bail on charges that he failed to produce a passport on his return to Bangladesh.

Last November, former detainee Murat Kurnaz [Amnesty profile; JURIST news archive] alleged that he was subjected to systematic torture [JURIST report], including electric shocks, having his head submerged in water and being shackled to the ceiling for days at a time. Kurnaz also alleged that guards sometimes refused to feed him, once for 20 days. In June 2006, Guantanamo detainees alleged that guards instigated [JURIST report] an violent clash [JURIST report] when the guards attempted to search the detainees' Korans. The US military denied the allegations [JURIST report] and said that the guards were lured into a trap by staged suicide attempts. The US currently holds approximately 385 detainees under the label of "enemy combatants" [JURIST news archive]. AFP has more.

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