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Former Guantánamo prisoner says abuse photos exist

 

Former British resident Binyam Mohamed, in sweater and skullcap, steps from a plane at Northolt military base in west London Monday Feb. 23, 2009 -- the first Guantánamo prisoner released since President Barack Obama took office.
Former British resident Binyam Mohamed, in sweater and skullcap, steps from a plane at Northolt military base in west London Monday Feb. 23, 2009 -- the first Guantánamo prisoner released since President Barack Obama took office.
LEWIS WHYLD / ASSOCIATED PRESS

Associated Press

A former Guantánamo Bay prisoner now living in England says the United States has photographs of him being beaten during his detention and has asked a judge to preserve the evidence.

Binyam Mohamed, 30, says guards at the U.S. facility beat him in May 2006 after he refused to come out of his cell for fingerprinting and an eye scan. He says he resisted because his lawyers had advised him not to give any samples without consulting them first.

Mohamad, an Ethiopian native and British resident, was accused of plotting to explode a ''dirty bomb'' in the United States, but the charges were eventually dropped. He was released from the U.S. military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, in February and returned to Britain.

A Pentagon spokesman, Navy Cmdr. Jeffrey D. Gordon, saidinternal reviews found no evidence that Mohamed was mistreated in U.S. custody.

Mohamed's attorneys provided a copy of an affidavit, first reported Sunday by Britain's Guardian newspaper, they say he filed along with a sealed motion to the U.S. District Court in Washington last month. In it, Mohamed says he has seen one photograph of himself that was taken after the cell extraction, in which he says five or six guards ''beat me up very badly'' and later cut off half his beard and subjected him to a ''humiliating'' anal cavity search.

He says the photo shows swelling from a hand being shoved into his nose and a mark on his forehead from being slammed into the concrete floor. He says he got a copy of the photo and turned it over to his attorney during a visit at Guantánamo and was told it would be classified.

''I believe that the world has the right to see this photograph,'' Mohamed said in the affidavit. ``The authorities have consistently denied that I have been abused, and this is physical evidence that I am telling the truth, and they are not.''

The Justice Department responded in a court filing that Mohamed's motion is unnecessary because the government is preserving detainee information.

He says he knows other photos were taken, including some of abuse while he says he was detained by in Morocco after the CIA took him there.

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