Freed Guantanamo inmate sues
A Pakistani freed from Guantanamo Bay after a year-long detention is suing the United States for $10. 4 million.
Court officials in Islamabad on Tuesday said Muhammad Saghir, 53, has filed a petition seeking compensation from the US for his “illegal detention, torture and humiliation.”
Saghir has named the US Secretary of State Colin Powell and the Pakistani interior minister as the respondents.
Ikram Chaudhury, Saghir’s lawyer, said the judge would allow the petition to be heard, probably sometime later this month.
Saghir, who hails from the northwestern area of Kohistan near the Afghan border, was released in November after having been held for an year. Saghir says he had been arrested by loyalists of Afghan commander Abd al-Rashid Dostum and then handed over to the US.
Suffering
His lawyer claims that “due to illegal arrest and unlawful detention, he suffered mental shock, financial loss, physical victimisation, estrangement and religious victimisation for about one year”.
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Saghir will further argue that his family, comprising a wife and nine children, had also undergone physical and mental torture because of his detention.
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Though three other Pakistanis apart from Saghir have been freed from Guantanamo, another 43 Pakistani nationals continue to languish in the high-security prison.
Nearly 600 detainees of various nationalities are being held in Guantanamo without trial. Human rights groups and various governments have criticised their detention as illegal and a violation of their human rights.
The Americans say they are holding suspects linked to the Taliban and al-Qaida.