Gitmo detainee says he was subjected to torture

DOHA (AFP) - A detainee at the US prison facility of Guantanamo Bay said he was beaten almost daily and that nothing has changed since Barack Obama took over as US president, Al-Jazeera reported on Wednesday.
Muhammad al-Qurani from Chad said in a telephone call to the Doha-based television that tear gas was used on him for refusing to leave his cell and he had a front tooth broken, according to remarks carried on Al-Jazeeras website. The alleged ill-treatment started about 20 days before Obama became president in November and since then Ive been subjected to it almost every day, he said.
The channel said that after being transferred to a different part of the prison for those awaiting release, Muhammad al-Qurani was allowed to make phone calls and called Sami al-Hajj, an Al-Jazeera cameraman who spent six years in Guantanamo.
Muhammad al-Qurani said he had refused to leave his cell because they were not granting me my rights, such as being able to walk around or have normal food. A group of six soldiers wearing protective gear and helmets entered his cell, along with a soldier carrying a camera and another with tear gas, Al-Jazeera quoted him as saying. They had a thick rubber or plastic baton they beat me with. They emptied out about two canisters of tear gas on me, he said.
After I stopped talking, and tears were flowing from my eyes, I could hardly see or breathe, he added.
They then beat me again to the ground, one of them held my head and beat it against the ground. The bloody scenes were not filmed, he said.
Muhammad al-Qurani added that one of his front teeth was broken: I started screaming to his senior 'See what hes doing, see what hes doing. His senior started laughing and said, 'Hes doing his job.
Reacting to the detainees allegations, the Pentagon said: We treat detainees humanely.
According to a US government official, since the arrival of the Obama administration, efforts have been made to increase the quality of life of detainees.
As part of this effort, the 20 men still detained on the US naval base who have been cleared of terrorism charges now have the right to make one phone call per week to relatives, the official explained.
The detainee said he wanted to call his uncle and called Al-Jazeera instead, he said. He took advantage of the humanitarian phone call for other purposes.
The incident was kind of embarrassing.
The approximately 240 detainees remaining at Guantanamo, some of them held without charge for more than seven years, launched appeals in the US District Court in Washington last summer.
Obama has established a multi-agency review of the case against each of the remaining detainees. He has vowed by January 2010 to shut down the camp, set up as part of former president George W Bushs war on terror to combat the militants in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. But the fate of each individual remains uncertain.