STOCKHOLM, Sweden – A Swede detained by the United States for more than two years at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, alleged Wednesday he was tortured, adding that a female guard tried to persuade him to have sex.
The Pentagon denied the allegations that Mehdi-Muhammed Ghezali was treated improperly or tortured, but said it would investigate his claims.
“It was always mental torture, but during the last month it was more physical torture they used against me,” Ghezali, 25, told Swedish public radio in an interview.
He denied having any links with al-Qaida or the Taliban, noting that he did not believe the United States “would have released me if that had been the case.”
Ghezali said a female guard tried to persuade him to have sex with her, but he refused, citing his Muslim beliefs.
“They tried to make me lose my faith to be able to maybe use it against me so that I would cooperate with them,” he told public radio.
Pentagon spokesman Maj. Michael Shavers said that U.S. policy prohibited the mistreatment of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay.
Ghezali, who was flown home to Sweden aboard a government-chartered jet last week, said he was deprived of contact from the outside world and interrogated for hours in a room that was kept at cold temperatures.
“They dragged me to the interrogation room and used it as a refrigerator. They put it on freezing and it became tremendously cold and you had to freeze there for hours,” he said. “You had to sit there for 12 to 14 hours, in chains.”
Shavers said he was unaware of claims that prisoners were interrogated in cold rooms, but added that all allegations were being investigated.
Ghezali – born in Sweden to a Finnish mother and Algerian father – was reportedly part of a group of 156 suspected al-Qaida fighters arrested in 2001 by Pakistani authorities while fleeing Afghanistan’s Tora Bora mountains.
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