 KUWAIT CITY - Kuwait's first Guantanamo returnee, who was injured during the US-led war on the former Taleban regime in Afghanistan, claimed Wednesday he was subjected to psychological torture at the US detention camp in Cuba. "It was more of a psychological than physical torture. In the beginning, they prevented us from sleeping. They gave us little food and they charged me with being a member of Al Qaeda," Nasser Najr al-Mutairi told AFP outside a Kuwaiti court.
| "... and then they laughed at my doinker. It was brutal, I tell you, brutal!" |
| Right. An Arab in Afghanistan, lugging a gun around — now, why would they think he might be al-Qaeda? |
Looking frail and weak, Mutairi still has his left foot and ankle in bandage because of wounds he received during US raids on northern Afghanistan in late 2001. "Fighters loyal to (Afghan warlord Abdulrasheed) Dustum shot at us randomly while US warplanes pounded us... I was hit in the back, on my left foot and lost a toe in the attack," he said.
| In 2001? Must be a slow healer. |
| Isn't that awful when they shoot at you randomly while US warplanes pound you, and all you were trying to do was defend Konduz? |
Mutairi, who was repatriated in January, was released on a 680-dollar bail by Kuwait's criminal court on April 13 and was banned from leaving the emirate. On Wednesday, the court allowed Mutairi's lawyer to take photocopies of reports of the investigations conducted by US interrogators in Guantanamo Bay and set the next hearing for June 15. Mutairi is charged with working for a foreign country and committing an act of aggression against a foreign nation, thus endangering Kuwait's relations, and training in the use of arms. He has denied the charges and claimed that he went to Afghanistan as a relief worker and that he does not know how to use arms.
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