Ruhal Ahmed (TIPTON 3) Speaks ....

Life at Guantánamo Bay





Ahmed was stripped down, given body and cavity searches and had his head and beard shaved. He was then dressed in goggles, a woolen cap, a jacket and what jailers called a "three piece suit": a chain that wraps around the waist, connecting handcuffs to shackles. He was on his way to Guantánamo.

There, abuse continued as "the rule, not the exception," Ahmed recalls. Interrogations would be as often as twice a day, or as lengthy as twelve hours, he adds.

A change in leadership, he says, changed detainee life for the worse.

"The treatment got really, really bad when [Major General] Miller came," Ahmed avers. "That's when it all started. That's when the torture and interrogation with dogs, hot and cold environment -- stuff like that started happening."

When asked what other forms of abuse he personally experienced, Ahmed says quickly and gravely, "sexual abuse." A strange silence follows. When asked for specifics, he says simply, "I don't really want to go into details."

THE CONFESSION!

"After going through five months of torture, being interrogated twice a day, left in isolation," Ahmed says, "they broke me."

He and his friends admitted to appearing in a propaganda video with Osama bin Laden and 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta, both of whom he claims to have never met.

But the confession was contradicted by evidence already known to UK authorities: that Ahmed was working, on probation, and serving community service in Tipton at the time the tape was filmed.

Ahmed admits to having been arrested for a number of petty offenses, including theft, lying to police, and handling stolen goods. Though none of the crimes linked him to militant Islam, they provided investigators with a public record of his whereabouts at the time the tape was filmed.

"They had no idea what they were doing," he adds. "They just wanted scapegoats. They just want people to believe that Guantánamo Bay is right."

Ahmed believes that Guantánamo interrogators were "obviously" aware that they were extracting false information from detainees. "By torturing people, you cannot make them confess the truth," he explains. "You can make them say what you want, but you can't get what you don't [already] know. Torture doesn't work."

"It shouldn't be allowed in any country, whatsoever," he adds. "Even if a tortured person is a terrorist, you've just become a terrorist by torturing them. You've actually come to his level, and that's the last thing you want."

BACK INTO THE WORLD !!!

"One day," Ahmed continues, "they just told us we were coming home. We were handed over to the British government, the British police and [then] to Paddington in London."

After two days of questioning at Paddington Station, he explains, "They open the doors and said, 'you can go home.'"

The release of Ahmed, Iqbal and Rasul in March 2004 came four months after the US Supreme Court agreed to hear the detainees' legal challenge to their indefinite imprisonment without charges, and less than three months before the court sided in their favor.

"I think that was one of the reasons why we were released," Ahmed says. "It's not the reason, but it's probably one of the reasons. There was a lot of pressure on Tony Blair by the British MPs."

Ahmed is now married, with a family. Dogs and children are frequent interruptions in an otherwise sober interview.