Guantanamo captive phones TV office, claims abuse

The U.S. military has said detainees are treated humanely.

By Jane Sutton
MIAMI (Reuters) - A young Guantanamo prisoner from Chad was given permission to telephone a relative but instead called the al Jazeera television network and said he was being beaten and abused at the U.S. detention camp.
Transcripts of the recorded interview with Guantanamo captive Mohammad el Gharani were posted on the Qatar-based television network's English-language website on Tuesday.
It was the first known interview with a captive held behind the razor-wire encampments at Guantanamo, which journalists are allowed to visit only if they sign an agreement not speak to any prisoners. It was not immediately clear when the call was made.
Gharani, now 21, has been held at Guantanamo for seven years. He was ordered freed by a U.S. district judge in Washington in January, a week before U.S. President Barack Obama took office and ordered the prison operation shut down within a year.
The camp was opened by the Bush administration in 2002 to hold and interrogate suspected al Qaeda and Taliban members after the September 11 attacks. Critics have condemned the facility as a symbol of abuses in Washington's war on terrorism.
Gharani lives with other detainees the courts have ordered freed, in a group housing compound under fewer restrictions than most of the 240 Guantanamo captives.
He told al Jazeera he had been beaten with batons and teargassed by a group of six soldiers wearing protective gear and helmets after refusing to leave his cell.
"This treatment started about 20 days before Obama came into power, and since then I've been subjected to it almost every day," he told Al Jazeera.
"Since Obama took charge he has not shown us that anything will change." LinkHere