Guantánamo: Lives torn apart (Rustam Akhmiarov)

Amnesty International
Document Index: AMR 51/007/2006
October 7, 2006

Muhammad Saad al-Madni does not have a lawyer representing him, and there is little information available regarding his current situation. However Amnesty International has spoken to one former Guantánamo detainee, Russian national Rustam Akhmiarov, who was held in a cell next to a man whom he named as ‘Saad’ who had been arrested in Indonesia and was detained with Mamdouh Habib in Egypt. Because of the similar case information, Amnesty International believes this man may be Muhammad Saad al-Madni who remains held in Guantánamo.

According to Rustam Akhmiarov, ‘Saad’ was in a particularly bad mental and physical situation at Guantánamo and at the time of Rustam Akhmiarov’s release in March 2004, was passing blood in his faeces. Rustam Akhmiarov also told Amnesty International that ‘Saad’ had spoken of his time in an underground cell in Egypt, where he never saw the sun and where he was tortured until he confessed to working with Osama bin Laden. ‘Saad’ had also reportedly recalled how he was interrogated by both Egyptian and US agents in Egypt and that he was blindfolded, tortured with electric shocks, beaten and hung from the ceiling. Rustam Akhmiarov also recalls hearing US officials tell ‘Saad’, during his Guantánamo detention that ‘we will let you go if you tell the world everything was fine here."