Ex-Gitmo says was tortured – ‘I was sold for $5,000’

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KUWAIT CITY, Jan 28: The former Kuwaiti detainee at Guantanamo Fawzi Al-Oudah recently visited Al-Rai daily to narrate his 14-year ordeal at the Guantanamo Bay prison. He said he like any other Arab who was found on the border of countries neighboring Afghanistan following the Sept 11 attack on US soil was ‘sold’ for $5,000 according to a clandestine deal between America and those countries. He pointed out the Americans treated him as an enemy.

He said he was subjected to severe beatings and insults. He said he left Kuwait in August 2001 to work for a charity organization on the Afghanistan-Pakistan borders. He denied he at any time went to Afghanistan for any reason. He stated he was working along the Pakistani border.

Al-Oudah said he was employed by the Zakat House in Kuwait for six months and taught at the Holy Quran house before traveling to Pakistan. He added he turned himself over to the security authorities in Pakistan with a request to send him back to Kuwait, but the authorities there instead handed him over to the Americans “although they were fully aware of my innocence.” He pointed out, he remained in the Pakistani military jail for about one month, following which he was interrogated by the US investigators who then took him to the US base in Afghanistan and then to Guantanamo.

Al-Oudah said he went to Pakistan by himself because he wanted to explore the nature to charity work and denied crossing into Afghanistan. Al-Oudah said he was subjected to physical and psychological harm, particularly insults to religious sanctities, exposure to obscene words. “There were arbitrary charges by the Americans against Kuwaiti detainees accusing them of supporting terrorism and threatening US security. These accusations he called nonsense and pure rubbish.

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