Guantanamo Detainee Gives Torture Details at Tribunal Proceeding
President Bush says the United States does not torture. He denies that we outsource detainees to countries known for torture. Today, at a military tribunal proceeding at Guantanamo, a detainee, backed by his lawyer, said differently:
Mohammad, as he said he prefers to be called, has proclaimed his innocence and has stated in court documents that he made false confessions after being extrajudicially transferred to a Moroccan prison where he was beaten, strung up by his arms and cut on the chest and penis with scalpels.
"This is four years of interrogation, highly intensive ... torture, and you still don't have the right name," he told the tribunal's presiding officer, Marine Col. Ralph Kohlmann. "The man you are looking for is not here."
The defendant compared Kohlmann to Adolf Hitler and prosecutors to vampire slayers. He calmly criticized the tribunals as "crap" that set a bad example for the world and poked fun at their formal name, commissions. "This is not a commission. It's a con mission. It's a mission to con the world," he said.
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