Four prisoners released from Guantanamo Bay have filed the first lawsuit against the United States seeking US$10 million each in damages for abuse they allegedly suffered at the US military outpost in Cuba, attorneys said on Wednesday (local time). 

The suit was filed by the Center for Constitutional Rights and the Washington-based law firm of Baach Robinson and Lewis on behalf of four British citizens released from the camp in March. The men are Shafiq Rasul, 26; Asif Iqbal, 22; Rhuhel Ahmed, 22; and Jamal Al-Harith, 37.

Although the abuse allegations out of Guantanamo Bay are not as widespread as those at the US-controlled Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, there have been at least eight substantiated cases of abuse at the Cuba camp, according to a report by James R. Schlesinger, who headed a US congressional committee to investigate abuses in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo.

One case involved a guard hitting a detainee with a radio. Another sprayed a prisoner with a hose. A third was acquitted in a court martial of using pepper spray on a man. A fourth, a female interrogator, was reprimanded for taking off her uniform to expose her T-shirt -- an action deemed demeaning for many Muslim men.

Details of the four other abuse cases in the report have not been released by the US government, despite repeated press requests for more than a month.

The four Britons in the lawsuit, filed on Wednesday in Washington, D.C., were detained in northern Afghanistan on November 28, 2001, by the US-backed Northern Alliance. In March of 2004, after nearly three years at Guantanamo, they were released to British authorities.

"The law is very clear in terms of what constitutes cruel and unusual treatment or torture," said Barbara Olshansky, deputy legal director for the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights.

"Are we not still a country governed by laws, not men?"

Details of cases

Iqbal, one of the men in the lawsuit, said he gave his Guantanamo interrogator a false confession because he felt hopeless.

He said after being asked repeatedly if he was a man seen on a video tape with Osama bin Laden, he finally relented and said yes.

He said the interrogator told him detainees who had been put into isolation for a year eventually caved in and that he should make it easier on himself by talking.

The Pentagon denied the abuse allegations, saying the men were properly held in Guantanamo after being captured in Afghanistan and having fought for al-Qaeda.

"There is no basis in US law to pay claims to those captured and detained as a result of combat activities," said Major Michael Shavers, a Pentagon spokesman.

"The US policy is to treat all detainees and to conduct interrogations, wherever they may occur, is in a manner consistent with all US legal obligations."

The lawsuit alleges the four men were chained to the floor while strobe lights and loud music were played in a room chilled by air conditioning set at maximum levels. The men say they were subjected to the conditions for up to 14 hours at a time.

They say they were stripped naked and forced to watch videotapes of other prisoners who had allegedly been ordered to sodomize each other. The men also allege that some of the guards threw the prisoners' Qurans into the toilets.

Some of the men allege they were forcibly injected with unidentified drugs as part of the interrogation process and told they would get help only if they cooperated.

Medical officials at Guantanamo have said medication is voluntary.

The lawsuit seeks US$10 million in damages for each of the men. Defendants named in the case include US Secretary of Defence Donald H. Rumsfeld and Army Major General Geoffrey Miller, the general who was in charge of Guantanamo and now heads Abu Ghraib, where pictures surfaced this year of US troops forcing Iraqi detainees into sexually humiliating positions.

There are some 550 detainees being held at the camp in eastern Cuba. The men come from more than 40 different countries.

Only four of the prisoners have been charged with war crimes.

In another development, Amnesty International called on Wednesday on President George W. Bush and Democrat John Kerry -- whichever wins the US election next week -- to commit to an independent probe of prisoner abuse in Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay in Cuba and Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

In a scathing 200-page report, the London-based human rights group said the US war on terror triggered by the September 11, 2001, attacks has followed a two-faced strategy on prisoners, condemning abuses publicly while committing them behind closed doors.

(China Daily October 29, 2004)