MPs yesterday demanded a judicial inquiry into a former Guantanamo Bay prisoner’s claims that MI5 was complicit in his torture.
In a ‘Mail on Sunday’ interview, UK resident Binyam Mohamed claims MI5 fed his US captors questions, at a time he said he was being tortured in Morocco.
Mohamed has claimed that while in US custody in 2002, he was rendered to Morocco for interrogation and torture, which led to him making a false confession.
He said of his Moroccan interrogators ‘it was obvious the British were feeding them questions about people in London.
‘When I realised that the British were cooperating with the people torturing me, I felt completely naked. They sold me out.’
Now he has released two telegrams sent from British intelligence to the CIA in November 2002 that were shown to him in Guantanamo Bay by his US military lawyer Lieutenant Colonel Yvonne Bradley.
In the first, the writer asks for a name to be put to him and then for him to be questioned further about that person.
The second telegram says: ‘We note that we have also requested that briefs be put to Binyam Mohamed and would appreciate a guide from you as to the likely timescale for these too.
‘We fully appreciate that this can be a long-winded process but the urgent nature of these enquiries will be obvious to you.’
Mohamed said the worst part of this captivity was in a Kabul ‘dark prison’: ‘The toilet in the cell was a bucket. There were loudspeakers in the cell, pumping out what felt like about 160 watts, a deafening volume, non-stop, 24 hours a day.’
He added: ‘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.’
Conditions at Guantanamo Bay have worsened since President Barack Obama was elected, he warned.
Mohamed said: ‘Since the election it’s got harsher. The guards would say, “yes, this place is going to close down,” but it was like they wanted to take their last revenge.’
About conditions at Bagram prison n Afghanistan, Mohamed said the food was also contaminated, and he often suffered from sickness and diarrhoea: ‘The weight just dropped off me.
‘The floor was made of cement dust. Whatever movement you made, the air would be full of cement and I started getting breathing problems.
‘My bed was a thin mattress on the floor, surrounded by that dust.’
Much later, at Guantanamo Bay, Mohamed and a fellow inmate discussed the time both had spent at the dark prison in Kabul.
Mohamed recalled: ‘They had just opened Oscar Block, a new Guantanamo punishment wing, and he’d been in it.
‘I was worried, I wanted to know what it was like. He told me, “Binyam, it’s not even a twentieth as bad as Kabul. A hundred nights in Oscar Block is the equivalent of one night in the dark prison”.’
Mohamed added: ‘In Kabul I lost my head. It felt like it was never going to end and that I had ceased to exist.’
President Obama, while he has pledged to close Guantanamo Bay, will still keep Bagram open.
