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UK terrorist suspect says he was threatened with torture by CIA

IRNA

London, Oct 4, IRNA -- An Iraqi-born British citizen arrested as a 
suspected terrorist says that US agents threatened him with 
beatings and rape in an attempt to break him, according to the 
Guardian newspaper. 
Wahab al-Rawi, a 38 year old businessman, was denied a lawyer, 
held incommunicado for four weeks in Gambia, and repeatedly 
questioned by CIA agents before being released without charge. 
His brother, Bisher, who has retained his Iraqi nationality, was 
arrested with him and is now being held with some 660 terrorist 
suspects in the US detention camp at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. 
Rawi`s account is the first from any Briton about their 
treatment by the US while held as a suspect in the two-year "war 
on terror". It was seen challenging US denials of the use of torture 
or the threat of torture on thousands terrorist suspects across the 
world. 
The Guardian reported the British businessman saying that CIA 
agents twice threatened him with torture if he did not cooperate and 
that he was subjected to sleep deprivation, with lights permanently 
kept on in his cell. 
There were also claims of the British government being complicit 
in his arrest, including material put to during his interrogation 
that was said to have come from UK intelligence interviews with an 
alleged extremist detained in London. 
Rawi said he demanded to see the British high commissioner after 
being arrested in Gambia in November 2002. A CIA agent he knew as Lee 
responded: "Why do you keep asking for the high commissioner? The 
British asked us to arrest you." 
He also said that he was threatened by his interrogators that 
they could be "just as ruthless as Saddam Hussein" when he revealed 
that he had lived through his father`s experience of being tortured 
in Iraq before fleeing to London 20 years ago. 
Ravi`s case is being taken up by his local parliamentary 
representative, Liberal Democrat MP Edward Davey, who said that the 
British government had a "moral obligation" to also help his brother 
Bisher, who has been in the UK since he was a small child. 
"It is very clear that the British government was complicit in 
the arrest of these people. It is very clear that they tipped off the 
Gambian authorities," he told BBC radio Saturday. 
"These people are businessmen, not combatants. They were 
arrested in Gambia, not Afghanistan. That puts the British 
government in the dock," Davey said. 
He also rejected claims by the Foreign Office that 
representatives on Bisher`s behalf should be made by his home 
government, pointing out that Iraq has no government but the 
country was being administered in part by the UK. 
HC/213 
End