Anger About Guantanamo

Captured either in Afghanistan or Pakistan on suspicion of fighting for the Taliban's Islamic militia when most say they were studying, visiting family or traveling, the former detainees allege they were the victims of brutal mental or physical torture in the Cuba-based camp for detainees held in the US war on terror.

However, despite US suspicions, none of the former "enemy combatants" has been successfully prosecuted in Europe, and the legal proceedings brought against them have been far from conclusive.

No successful prosecutions against former detainees

In France, six of seven men held but later released from Guantanamo were imprisoned on their return for links to terrorism, but judgment in the case, which began last September, was postponed until May this year.

In Spain, Hamed Abderrahman was sentenced to six years in prison in October 2005 for belonging to al Qaeda, but in July last year, the country's top court overturned the ruling, citing the "total absence of concrete evidence."

A Madrid tribunal specializing in terrorist cases in October 2006 also released another former Guantanamo inmate, Lahcen Ikassrien, saying there was no proof that he belonged to a Spanish al Qaeda cell.

Nine British citizens were arrested upon their return from Cuba but not charged with any offense. No proceedings were brought against a Turk living in Germany, nor against a Swede and a Dane with dual Algerian nationality.

"The reason there's been no successful prosecution is because the overwhelming majority of people haven't committed a crime," lawyer Clive Stafford-Smith, who has represented several Guantanamo detainees, told the AFP news agency. "It's indicative of the fact that a lot of innocent people were swept up in the net."

Catalogue of horrors

All the men's gave similar accounts of what happened to them in Guantanamo.

"There was always psychological torture, but the last month they used more physical torture," Mehdi Ghezali told Swedish radio a month after his return to Sweden in July 2004.

German-born Turk Murat Kurnaz -- who spent four years in Guantanamo between 2002 and 2006 -- said he would be given electric shocks on his feet if he refused to admit he was a member of al Qaeda.

"Our treatment at Guantanamo was worse than animals," Slimane Hadj Abderahamane said on his 2004 return to Denmark.

French detainees described being kicked, punched and insulted, chained to the floor by their hands and threatened with dogs or shotguns during interrogation.

Ikassrien, who said he spent three months with his hands and feet shackled, recounted how he was asked, but refused, to sign an agreement to allow his gangrenous arm to be amputated. In one instance, he said he spent three days in a container with rats, naked and without food or water.

Writing to deal with the past

The former detainees have dealt with the aftermath of their imprisonment in different ways, some preferring silence, others using their position to speak out against Guantanamo.

Shafiq Rasul, Ruhal Ahmed and Asif Iqbal -- known as the "Tipton Taliban" after their hometown in England's West Midlands -- and Jamal Al-Harith, from Manchester, England, have sought damages in the US courts.

Two of the former French prisoners have also taken the legal route, bringing action for "arbitrary detention, kidnap and illegal confinement"; a third wants damages for "kidnap, illegal confinement" and "acts of torture and cruelty."

The Tipton three have actively campaigned with Amnesty International for the camp's closure and were the subject of a docu-drama, "The Road to Guantanamo," directed by Michael Winterbottom.

Another of the nine Britons held, Moazzam Begg, has been equally vocal and wrote a book -- "Enemy Combatant: A British Muslim's Journey to Guantanamo and Back" -- about his experiences. Ghezali -- "the Cuban Swede" -- did the same in "Prisoner at Guantanamo," published in 2005.