http://english.pravda.ru/accidents/21/96/383/15718_vakhitov.html
Russian Guantanamo prisoner sues USA
06/28/2005 21:30
A Russian formerly held at Guantanamo prison camp filed a suit against
the US government
Airat Vakhitov, a native of Tatarstan region, is one of seven Russians
who were returned to Russia in March 2004. Now he demands the compensation from
his former jailers for the inflicted suffering. The Gazeta Daily published on
Tuesday the detailed interview with him where he recounted his ordeal.
Vakhitov, 27 years old, received Muslim religious education and became an
imam in 1997. In 1999, after the he fell under suspicion of belonging to an
Islamic radical group, as he headed a mosque of the Wahhabi persuasion and
visited in 1998 "his friends" in Chechnya (he claims that he had been taken
prisoner by the terrorists and severely beaten there before he managed to
escape).
After a search in his apartment he decided to leave Russia for
Tajikistan. While being in Pamir Mountains he was abducted to Afghanistan by
the militants of the Islamic movement of Uzbekistan. Having found himself in
Afghanistan, he was accused of belonging to the Russian special services and
imprisoned. The interrogators tortured him and used psychotropic agents, trying
to force Vakhitov to recognize that he was a Russian intelligence worker.
"Since I had nothing to tell them, the tortures lingered on". He spent in
this prison one year and during 7 months he was tortured. Once he was stretched
on a rack during 8 days, deprived of sleep. This prison most probably belonged
to Usama bin-Laden. Finally one of its prisoners escaped and reached Mullah
Omar, the Taliban leader.
Mullah Omar ordered to stop tortures and put the Russian prisoners on
Shariah court. "If they are proved guilty, to punish them; if not, to release."
After this order the prisoners were released, but Vakhitov was transferred to
another prison, in Kandahar. Though there was no torture anymore, Vakhitov
suffered from starvation. Then came September 11 and the US-led invasion of
Afghanistan; the regime change brought temporary liberation to Vakhitov.
The US special services, says Vakhitov, paid $ 5,000 for each foreign
prisoner. A new Kandahar governor invited the CIA and FBI officers for
interrogating the former prisoners. Vakhitov was arrested again, this time by
Americans, and sent to a concentration camp in Kandahar airport. During an
interrogation Vakhitov was asked about the whereabouts of bin-Laden and replied
that he had seen him just the day before.
"I told them: give me some food and let me warm myself up (it was the
winter of 2002) and then I will tell you about bin-Laden". He was immediately
served with a cup of coffee, a slice of pizza and two blankets; then he told
his interrogators that he"d seen bin-Laden on the front page of the Time
magazine.
"It was the first and the last time I saw bin-Laden. I didn"t lie, an
Australian journalist had brought a pile of these magazines shortly before." A
punch in the face followed immediately. Vakhitov spent in this concentration
camp half a year more. He saw some people beaten to death.
"They were covered by blankets not to shout and were beaten". He was
asked by Americans about bin-Laden and Chechnya only during the first
interrogation. Later he was asked only about the Russian secret services,
politics and economy. "It sounded as if the USA was preparing the war with
Russia, and I was interrogated as a prisoner of war." He couldn"t know at that
time that Russia and USA were officially "allies in the war on terror."
In the summer of 2002 Vakhitov was taken to Guantanamo Bay, where he was
kept until February 2004. According to him, the flight from Afghanistan to
Guantanamo was the most terrible ordeal for the prisoners, all of them were
blindfolded and chained, which left scars on their limbs. "Many people fainted
due to a lack of oxygen [and] some went crazy during the flight," asserts
Vakhitov.
In the notorious Guantanamo camp prisoners were kept in small cells with
a toilet and plank bed and regularly tortured, said Vakhitov on his
press-conference, cited by RIA Novosti. The prisoners were allowed to take
showers and go for walks twice a week. "The food was more or less tolerable,
though we doubted its quality," Vakhitov said. The most popular form of torture
was deprivation of sleep.
"We would be made to be in a special investigative room where we would be
handcuffed to the floor and then would be prevented from falling asleep by the
playing of loud music, shining bright lights and so on. There was one program
in which we would be moved from one cell to another every 15 minutes
continually over a period of three or four months," he said, cited by AP.
The guards also used psychological torture: "The Quran was thrown in a
toilet in our presence. Such provocations took place regularly to arouse
protests among the prisoners," he said. This caused the prisoners to grow
indignant, mass revolts and disorder, Vakhitov said. Three hundred people went
on a hunger strike in the summer of 2003, he said, according to RIA Novosti.
He also claimed that forces used unspecified gas and one time allowed
dogs to attack the prisoners.
After returning home Vakhitov and the six others former Guantanamo
detainees were held in a Russian prison for three months and were acquitted
last June.
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