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I confessed to escape Guantanamo torture
By JASON LEWIS
02/19/06 "Mail
on Sunday" -- -- A British student secretly
released after more than two years in America's notorious
Guantanamo Bay terror suspect prison told last night how he had
been barred from returning to the UK.
And, as Jamal "Tony" Kiyemba spoke of the systematic torture he
suffered at the hands of his captors, The Mail on Sunday has
learned that Home Secretary Charles Clarke personally intervened
to keep him out of Britain on "national security grounds".
The 25-year-old Londoner has been returned to his country of
birth, Uganda, where he is now in custody. Kiyemba was freed
without warning last week as international pressure mounted on
America to close the detention camp after a highly critical UN
report on the treatment of prisoners there.
Last night his lawyer, Clive Stafford Smith, who specialises in
human rights cases, handed this newspaper a dossier detailing
the abuses his client alleges he suffered.
Kiyemba claims the Americans forced him, under torture, to
confess to terrorist activities, and that MI5 interrogated him
repeatedly, quizzing him about British terror suspects and the
jailed clerics Abu Hamza and Abu Qatada.
The Government is refusing to reveal why Kiyemba, a Leicester
University pharmacy student who grew up in London and whose
mother, four brothers and sister all live in Britain, has been
excluded from the country. But his lawyer believes something he
was tortured into saying may hold the clue.
Kiyemba was granted indefinite leave to remain in the UK when he
left Uganda following the death of his father in 1993. He didn't
apply for British citizenship and this meant that at Guantanamo
Bay he was not entitled to representation by the Foreign Office
nor, on his release, to automatic rights to return to his
family.
"I may not be British according to some bit of paper but in
reality I am a Brit and always will be," he told his lawyer. "My
doctor, my local mosque, my teens, my education, employment,
friends, taxes, home and above all else my family - it is all in
Britain."
Kiyemba was arrested in Pakistan in March 2002. He had gone
there, he claims, to study Arabic and the Koran because it was
"very cheap". He says he was held there for two months, beaten
by Pakistani intelligence officers, threatened with torture and,
finally, blindfolded and gagged, put on an American plane and
flown to the US prison at Bagram in Afghanistan.
There, he claims, he was subjected to systematic torture. He
told his lawyer that he would be "hung on the door for two hours
and then allowed to sit for half an hour but never allowed to
sleep. This would go on for 48 hours in a row".
After this, he claims, he would be taken for interrogation for
two hours at a time. "I had to kneel on the cold concrete
throughout the interrogations with my cuffed hands above my
head," he said. "The only way out, I was told, was to confess. I
heard and saw other torture - banging, screaming, cries, barking
dogs and a dead guy who had tried to escape. One of the MPs
[military police] said: 'Who's next?' So I confessed to be left
alone."
Kiyemba's lawyer says his client was then interviewed by MI5
officers. 'They showed him many pictures of supposed terrorists
in the UK and told him that he could only get them to help if he
helped them.
"But he did not know any of them - he recognised Abu Hamza and
Abu Qatada from television but had never seen them in person."
In October 2002 Kiyemba was transferred to Guantanamo Bay. He
recalls how on the journey he was forced to wear "the tightest
cuffs to date, with chains, taped goggles, ear muffs, nose masks
and taped gloves to prevent finger movement". He added: "Any
movement meant you got hit by the nearest soldier."
At Guantanamo, Kiyemba says he had three more visits from MI5
who asked him if he wished to make any changes to his previous
statements. He says when he said no, "they left in what seemed
like an angry mood".
He added: "The American interrogators did not believe my story.
Soon they had me standing up for sleep deprivation. They swore
that if I did not admit to having planned jihad in Afghanistan,
then what lay ahead for me would be far worse.
"The Americans promised to send me to "our Egyptian friends who
are renowned for torturing and they will do the dirty work for
us". In the end I just gave up resisting and told them what they
wanted to hear so that they would leave me alone."
But, he says, the torture did not let up. On one occasion
Kiyemba claims he was forced to the ground by guards, bound and
soaked with pepper spray.
"They then sprayed it on a towel until it was soaked and rubbed
the towel in his eyes," his lawyer noted. "He did not know what
to do about the pain. He asked a medic, who told him to wash his
eyes out with cold water - this made it worse."
A letter from a senior Foreign Office staffer was the first
official word Kiyemba's family got of his release. It said: "You
should be aware that the Home Secretary has personally directed
that he should be excluded from the UK on grounds of national
security."
Last night Mr Stafford Smith, director of the human rights group
Reprieve, called on the Home Secretary to reconsider his
client's plight.
He said: "Jamal Kiyemba has lived his whole life in Britain
since he was a boy. His mother and family all live here. Charles
Clarke refused to lift a finger to help him when he was being
abused in Guantanamo Bay. Now he has barred him from his home
and his mother based on allegations he won't reveal but which
were almost certainly based on what Jamal said under torture."
©2006 Associated Newspapers Ltd
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