KUWAIT CITY, June 1: Kuwait’s first Guantanamo returnee, who was injured during the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, alleged on Wednesday he was subjected to psychological torture at the US detention camp in Cuba. “It was more of 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 said outside a Kuwaiti court.
Looking frail and weak, Nasser 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 Abdul Rashid) Dostum 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.
Mr Mutairi, who was repatriated in January after three years in Guantanamo, was released on a 680-dollar bail by Kuwait’s criminal court on April 13 and banned from leaving the emirate.
On Wednesday, the court allowed Mr 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.
Mr Mutairi, 28, is charged with working for a foreign government 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 he went to Afghanistan as a relief worker and that he does not know how to use arms. His lawyer has said that Mr Mutairi, who was released under an agreement between Washington and Kuwait, was not involved in fighting when he was in Afghanistan, but was involved in relief work. He said he went to Afghanistan ‘well before the US war’.—AFP
