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Lawyer tells Amnesty meeting tale of a Guantanamo detainee
By Tina Moore
Inquirer Staff Writer
10/24/05 "Philadelphia
Inquirer" -- -- His torturers in Morocco took
a razor blade to Benyam Mohammed al-Habashi's genitals and told him
to admit he had dined with top al-Qaeda officials, human rights
attorney Clive Stafford Smith told about 300 people in Philadelphia
yesterday.
But that and other abuses - some so heinous that Stafford Smith
promised not to repeat them publicly - were not the worst of what
happened to al-Habashi in Afghanistan, Stafford Smith said.
"He said none of the torture was as bad as being stuck in a dark
room for 20 days and forced to listen to [rap artist] Eminem," said
Stafford Smith, speaking at Amnesty International's 2005
Mid-Atlantic Regional Conference.
Today, al-Habashi, 27, remains among about 500 men detained at the
U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay. He is one of 40 Stafford Smith is
representing. Stafford Smith has seen formal charges against only
five of them, he said.
Born in Ethiopia, al-Habashi moved to England when he was 16.
Stafford Smith said his client went to Afghanistan to recover from a
drug habit he developed in London and to see what life under Islamic
law was like.
Returning to England just after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks,
al-Habashi was picked up at Karachi Airport in Pakistan and
questioned by the FBI, who accused him of being a top al-Qaeda
operative. Stafford Smith said al-Habashi couldn't speak Arabic.
Next, al-Habashi was flown to Morocco, where his torturers took a
blade to his penis numerous times, and then to the Americans in
Afghanistan, Stafford Smith said. Al-Habashi was flown to Guantanamo
in 2004.
"The number of prisoners in Guantanamo who are innocent is
shocking," he told the crowd.
The three-day conference also included speeches about the death
penalty; economic, social and cultural rights; lesbian, gay,
bisexual and transgender rights; refugees and asylum-seekers rights;
and gun control.
Amnesty International USA board member Ellen Dorsey told the crowd
at the Crown Plaza Center City that "each and every one of us must
see ourselves as the front line."
"Are you outraged?" Dorsey asked at the end of the three-day event.
"Are you inspired to act?"
Canadian Nissa Jetha, 21, answered her question with a resounding,
"yes."
Jetha, a student at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, said she
believed most people were ill-informed about the different types of
human rights violations taking place around the world.
"I think getting the facts out is an integral part to having the
violations... eliminated in the future," Jetha said.
Maaret Klaber, 20, agreed.
"If you have all the facts, then you absolutely have to do something
about it," said Klaber, who runs a small Amnesty International club
at McDaniel College, in Westminster, Md.
Stafford Smith, who has visited Guantanamo seven times, had planned
to return today, but will be unable to make the trip because of
Hurricane Wilma.
Currently, some inmates are on a hunger strike to protest conditions
and long confinement without trial. The government, in a release
last week, said fewer than 40 of the inmates remained on the hunger
strike. Stafford Smith put the number involved in the strike that
began last month closer to 200.
"While you're sitting here eating lunch," Stafford Smith told the
crowd. "Prisoners at Guantanamo are on a hunger strike to protest
their captors' treatment of them."
In an interview after the event, Stafford Smith - legal director
with Reprieve, a British group opposed to the death penalty - said
he had had some success and that about 12 of his clients had been
released. But, he said, their release has not come through a fair
and speedy trial.
"The only way we get people out," he said, "is through the court of
public opinion."
Contact staff writer Tina Moore at 215-854-2759 or
tmoore@phillynews.com.
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