Asif Iqbal (Guantanamo detainee 87)
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There are other individuals named Asif Iqbal -- see the disambiguation page.
Asif Iqbal (born April 24, 1981) is a British citizen who was held, in extrajudicial detention, as a terror suspect in the United States Guantanamo Bay detainment camps, in Cuba. Iqbal's Guantanamo detainee ID number is 87. The Department of Defense reports that Iqbal was born on April 24, 1981, in West Bromwich, United Kingdom.
Iqbal, and four other Britons, were released on March 9, 2004.[1] Iqbal, had traveled with, was captured with, and was released with two friends of his, Ruhal Ahmed and Shafiq Rasul, from his home town of Tipton, United Kingdom.
In August 2004 Iqbal, Ahmed and Rasul released a report on their abuse and humilation while in US custody.[2] In it, according to the BBC, the three describe significant abuse, including:
- They were repeatedly punched, kicked, slapped, forcibly injected with drugs, deprived of sleep, hooded, photographed naked and subjected to body cavity searches and sexual and religious humiliations.
- The American guard told the inmates: "The world does not know you're here - we would kill you and no-one would know".
- Mr Iqbal said when he arrived at Guantanamo, one of the soldiers told him: "You killed my family in the towers and now it's time to get you back".
- Mr Rasul said an MI5 officer had told him during an interrogation that he would be detained in Guantanamo for life.
- The men said they saw the beating of mentally ill inmates.
- Another man was left brain damaged after a beating by soldiers as punishment for attempting suicide.
- The Britons said an inmate told them he was shown a video of hooded men - apparently inmates - being forced to sodomise one another.
- Guards threw prisoners' Korans into toilets and tried to force them to give up their religion
The appointment of General Geoffrey Miller coincided with the alleged introduction of new, harsher, treatment, including short shackling and the forced shaving off of beards.
In the report they allege that those who represented themselves as from MI5, or the British Foreign Office, seemed unconcerned with their welfare.
In the end the abusive interrogation lead the three to falsely confess to being the three previously unidentified faces in a video that showed a meeting between Osama bin Laden and Mohammed Atta, although Rasul was in the UK during the time period when the video was created.[3]
The 2006 film, The Road to Guantánamo is a docu-drama depicting the story of their detention.
