Mohammed Bin Ahmad Mizouz - April 2005 Interview

April 2005 Interview

During an interview on April 11, 2005 in the La Gazette du Maroc Mizouz described his capture, and the conditions of his detention and interrogation. According to Mizouz he had gone to Pakistan to get married. He was arrested in Pakistan, by Pakistani authorities, on August 26, 2001 while walking with his brother-in-law in Karachi.

He said he hadn't heard from his wife since his capture, and didn't know what had happened to her.

Mizouz described cruel treatment in Pakistani custody. He described being transferred to American custody in the Kandahar detention facility.

I underwent every form of torture from the Pakistani authorities, without the police having laid any charge against me. I was tortured and I did not even know for what reason I was arrested. Nobody told me the reason for my presence in this horrible prison. We were beaten, trampled underfoot, kept without food, without water, being unable to wash ourselves, being unable to cut our beard and hair, agglutinated the ones on the others, under inhuman conditions. The most important thing to raise here is that all of us were put in chains of iron using a steel stick which bound our feet to our belt. This literally paralyzed us. It was if we had a stake, stuck in our body. We ate with it, we relieved our natural needs with it and that lasted for several weeks. They removed these iron bars on the last day before the transfer to Kandahar.

According to Mizouz his transfer to American custody was in December 2001. Prior to his transfer he was visited by some Americans who said they were from Amnesty International, who he was sure were actually American counter-terrorism analysts.

Mizouz expressed dissatisfaction with efforts of the International Committee of the Red Cross on their behalf, and expressing suspicion that the Red Cross was assisting the American effort:

"But I want to underline a point that your readers and the public opinion must know. The Red Cross did not do anything at all for us for all this period of detention in Afghanistan or in Guantanamo. Its presence was useless. The only thing that it did was to procure us some letters. I am even sure that they were there to serve the Americans and to bring assistance to them. In short, the Red Cross contented itself to play the role of postman and that’s all."

Mizouz described brutal beatings in Kandahar, being exposed to the freezing cold winter weather, prior to interrogations, and the use of electric shock, during his interrogations, and immersions in freezing cold water.

Mizouz was then transferred to the Bagram Collection Point. Mizouz said that after his release, when he read about the Abu Ghraib torture and abuse that occurred in 2003 he recognized that all of these techniques were techniques used when he was being held in Bagram in 2002. He also described injections with psychotropic drugs.

And Mizouz described Americans in Bagram urinating on the Koran.

Mizouz said he was transferred to Guantanamo on June 15, 2006. Beatings by the guards, mystery injections continued. He also described all the captives suffering from painful hemorrhoids from the humiliating body cavity searches, forced enemas, and the introduction of drugs via the anus.

With very few exceptions American spokesmen decline to address claims of abuse from specific Guantanamo captives. But, they have offered general assurances that American captives receive humane care and treatment.