Associated Press  --  Arab News

DUBAI, 26 May 2004 — Five Saudis who were detained at Guantanamo Bay say they were tortured at the American military installation, a Saudi lawyer said amid an international furor over US soldiers’ mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners.

The Saudi allegations follow those by Britons released from Guantanamo that they were abused there. Images of US soldiers brutalizing and humiliating Iraqi prisoners at the infamous Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad have focused new attention on US treatment of terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and raised concerns among families of detainees.

US officials have denied any major instances of abuse at Guantanamo.

The International Committee of the Red Cross, the only international entity allowed access to the Guantanamo prisoners, has said it will inspect the facility and interview detainees there later this month.

Five Saudis who were released from Guantanamo and returned home in May 2003 “confirmed they were subjected to torture and mistreatment when they were first incarcerated in Afghanistan, and later during questioning at Guantanamo,” Kateb Al-Shemmari, a lawyer who once represented the five, told The Associated Press during a series of phone and fax interviews over the past week.

Al-Shemmari said the five offered few details, but said that one reported being forced to look at naked women. The treatment improved after a Saudi delegation visited the detainees, Al-Shemmari said.

According to official Saudi estimates, 124 Saudis remain detained in Guantanamo out of about 600 confined there. Four other Saudis were sent from Guantanamo to Saudi detention last year under a US-Saudi agreement.

“Even before the photos from Abu Ghraib emerged we were worried that they were being mistreated,” Abdel Rahim Al-Dabbah, whose 23-year-old son Abdul Aziz is among the Saudis still being held at Guantanamo, told AP in a telephone interview.

“The photos from Iraq only confirmed our doubts,” he said.

The elder Al-Dabbah said his son has not directly complained about abuse in letters he sent, “but then again these letters are 100 percent written under American supervision and for sure the men were not free to say all they wanted.”

Al-Dabbah said he had not received mail from his son since September.

Al-Shemmari, the lawyer, said the majority of the Saudi families now are complaining that for over eight months they have not been receiving letters from their loved ones in Guantanamo. Several letters sent to the detainees have been returned for unknown reasons, he said.