Freed Bahraini Describes Ordeal at Guantanamo

Arab News
Agence France Press
August 11, 2007

MANAMA, 11 August 2007 — The last Bahraini to return home from the US detention camp at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba said yesterday he was tortured there but has no plans to sue the US government.

“I was subjected to torture on a daily basis at one point and intermittently after that,” Issa Al-Morbati told reporters. “They used to leave me alone in the interrogation room and release chemical materials which still affect me... At other times, they put on loud music and loud noise... and I was kept in solitary confinement for long periods,” Morbati said.

The last of six Bahraini nationals to be repatriated from Guantanamo, Morbati arrived in Bahrain on Thursday. “I am not thinking of (seeking) compensation or suing the US government... Almighty God will compensate me,” he said.

Islamist MP Mohammad Khaled, who headed a popular committee to defend the Bahrainis detained in Guantanamo, meanwhile urged the government to set up a rehabilitation program for the former detainees and compensate them financially. “The psychological and physical suffering they endured, and being away from their families and country for years, makes it necessary to rehabilitate them,” Khaled said.

The controversial camp was established after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States to house prisoners captured in Afghanistan and elsewhere. Some 800 detainees have passed through the camp since it opened, and several hundred are still being held there.

Meanwhile, Bahrain’s public prosecutor said yesterday that a man detained on suspicion of plotting attacks in the country had received military training from an unnamed outlawed organization abroad.

The suspect “was trained in the use of weapons and explosives by a banned group outside Bahrain,” Wael Bouallay said in a statement, using official terminology for groups accused of terrorism.

“Investigations showed that some Bahrainis helped him travel to join this group by giving him financial assistance,” Bouallay said without specifying where the training took place.

Bouallay said a number of people believed to be associated with the suspect had been detained, but he did not give more details. The Al-Wasat newspaper reported on Thursday that security forces had arrested three suspects in Muharraq, east of Manama, saying they were believed to be part of a terrorist cell and “hostile to the Americans.”

It said one of those held was a student of Islamic law in his 20s who had been studying in the United Arab Emirates and was detained for a month there for distributing pro-Palestinian leaflets and later deported.

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