Pakistani terror suspect says he was tortured in US custody at Guantánamo Bay

New York, Jan 7 (ANI): A Pakistani terror suspect who spent more than six years in American custody, five of them at the Guantánamo Bay military prison, has said that he was subjected to torture and abuse by his US captors and plans to sue the American Government.

Muhammad Saad Iqbal, now back at home in Lahore told The New York Times that he was beaten, tightly shackled, covered with a hood, given drugs and subjected to electric shocks by Egyptian interrogators at the urging of US agents after being arrested without charges in Jakarta in 2002.

Iqbal said he was later taken to Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan, where he allegedly was held for nearly a year, deprived of sleep and kept in a small cage with other detainees.

He ended up at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, US military prison camp, where Iqbal said he tried twice to commit suicide, The Nation reported.

Iqbal said he was arrested for boasting to friends he knew how to make a shoe bomb, but denies he ever said it. No charges were ever leveled against him. US officials routinely deny they use torture in interrogating terror suspects.

Attorney Richard Cys said that he plans to sue the US Government for the unlawful detention of Iqbal.

The NYT said when Iqbal returned to Lahore in August last, he had difficulty walking, his left ear was severely infected, and he was dependent on a cocktail of antibiotics and antidepressants.

In November, a Pakistani surgeon operated on his ear, physical therapists were working on lower back problems and a psychiatrist was trying to wean him off the drugs he carried around in a white, plastic shopping bag.

The maladies, said Iqbal, 31, are the result of a gantlet of torture, imprisonment and interrogation.

Iqbal was never convicted of any crime, or even charged with one. He was quietly released from Guantánamo with a routine explanation that he was no longer considered an enemy combatant.

There was no evidence that he had ever met Osama bin Laden, or had been to Afghanistan, two senior American officials were cited as saying. (ANI)