LONDON, Aug 3: Guards at the United States's Guantanamo Bay prison mocked and cursed Islam, made jokes about the holy Quran and neglected to call prisoners to prayer, a freed British detainee alleged on Tuesday.
In a lengthy statement released through his lawyer, Tarek Dergoul, 26, a former care worker from London, also said that guards beat him and forced him to look at pornographic magazines.
Dergoul was one of five Britons released in March from the naval base in Cuba used to incarcerate hundreds of suspected Al Qaeda and Taliban supporters without charge. Along with other freed Britons, Dergoul had previously alleged that prison guards beat and mistreated him, but Tuesday's statement went into far greater detail, notably with regards to claims of religious mockery.
"The guards would swear at Muslims and curse Allah and the Holy Prophet (PBUH)," Dergoul said, adding that on several occasions he joined other inmates on hunger strike to protest at the treatment of the Quran.
Although a loudspeaker system was set up to broadcast the Azan, this was also abused, Dergoul, the son of a Moroccan baker, said in the statement. "They would make it play five times a day, or sometimes they would not play it," he said.
"They played it at the wrong time, at times they spoke over the tannoy and mocked it with their own voices, saying 'Allah Akbar'. Sometimes they would not play it for a week."
He also spoke of having spent 15 of the 22 months he was in Guantanamo inside an isolation block for talking to other inmates and translating from Arabic to English without permission. Also alleging beatings, including one in which he was knocked unconscious, Dergoul said interrogators routinely used intimidation. -AFP
