LONDON — A British resident who spent seven years in U.S. captivity and allegedly was tortured under questioning became the first prisoner to be released from Guantanamo Bay by the Obama administration.
Binyam Mohamed, 30, returned to Britain on Monday and resumed life as a free man after what he described as an ordeal he had never dreamed of in his “darkest nightmares,” one in which he was “abducted, hauled from one country to the next and tortured in medieval ways — all orchestrated by the United States government.”
His case has been a lightning rod for criticism of the detention center at Guantanamo, the allegedly brutal treatment meted out by American security forces and the secrecy with which the United States and other countries have shrouded policies on controversial practices such as “extraordinary rendition.”
Mohamed spent four years in Guantanamo after initially being picked up in Pakistan in 2002 and interrogated in Morocco. U.S. authorities accused him of training in al-Qaeda camps and plotting with others to set off a “dirty bomb” in the United States.
But in October 2008, the Pentagon dropped all charges against Mohamed, despite earlier avowals that he had confessed to helping plan attacks on U.S. cities. Mohamed maintains that those confessions were extracted by security agents who beat him, deprived him of sleep and used a scalpel to slash his genitals.
“He is a victim who has suffered more than any human being should ever suffer,” said Clive Stafford Smith, one of Mohamed’s lawyers.
His return to Britain came after a diplomatic tussle between the United States and its closest ally in the war on terrorism. The British government has pressed for Mohamed’s release and joined other European countries in urging Washington to shut down its detention center in southern Cuba.
