By IANS,
Islamabad : Qari Saeed Iqbal, who spent seven years in the Guantanamo Bay prison run by the US military, has claimed that prisoners there were “tortured and mistreated”, Pakistan’s Online news agency reported Monday.
While addressing a press conference Sunday, Iqbal said that a total of 260 prisoners, including six Pakistanis, are at Guantanamo Bay, which is located on the southeastern corner of Cuba.
He demanded that the government take measures for the release of the rest of the Pakistanis in Guantanamo Bay.
He said that six Pakistanis still there were Khalid Sheikh, Majid Khan, Ejaz, Abdul Rahim Rabbani, Ghulam Rabbani and Saifullah Paracha.
Iqbal said that he was arrested in January 2002 at Indonesia’s Jakarta Airport when he was going to meet his stepmother.
“I was taken to the US. Later on they shifted me to Egypt where I was tortured and mistreated.
“The Egyptian intelligence chief, who is the son of President Hosni Mubarak, kept me under his supervision,” Iqbal said.
The report quoting Iqbal said: “I was taken to Islamabad after 92 days from where I was taken to (Afghanistan’s) Bagram Airbase. I could hear cries and screams of hundreds of prisoners including women and children.”
Iqbal maintained that he was shifted to Guantanamo Bay from Bagram Airbase “where I was kept in a 4×6 cell”.
“After six months I was shifted to another cell where I was passed through psychological and corporal torture and horrendous abuse. Sick inmates have no facility for treatment.”
He said that he was released Aug 31, 2008 and brought to Islamabad where he was interrogated for 23 days by Pakistani agencies.
He claimed that he has “no links with any terrorist organisation nor was he was involved in any terrorist activity”.