Guantanamo detainee Moazzam Begg tells C4 news what he saw

I saw this interview on channel 4 last night, it's probably one of the most credible news sources around, fox news should take some tips.

http://www.channel4.com/news/



http://www.channel4.com/news/2005/02.../24_begg3.html




Former Guantanamo detainee Moazzam Begg, freed last month after nearly three years in captivity, has accused his American captors of torturing him and other detainees arrested in Afghanistan and Pakistan



Mr Begg, in his first broadcast interview since his release, has told Channel 4 News that he â??witnessed two people get beaten so badly that I believe it caused their deathsâ?�.



The deaths occurred at Bagram in Afghanistan, where Mr Begg was held before being transported to Guantanamo Bay in February 2003. He says he was subsequently asked to identify the perpetrators when investigators from American intelligence interviewed him in Guantanamo.



Questions posed by Jon Snow are marked with a Q. Use of any of the extracts must be credited to Channel 4 news.



MOAZZAM BEGG: I witnessed two people get beaten so badly that I believe it caused their deaths. And one of those deaths was later investigated and those investigators turned up to Guantanamo Bay and asked me if I would be willing to point out the perpetrators of that, those beatings, of what I witnessed.



Q: But you are convinced two, two of your fellow inmates, effectively were killed by the guards.

BEGG: Yes. I saw one body actually being carried away and the other one, I wasnâ??t sure whether he had been killed but the photographs that the American intelligence officers had brought confirmed that this person had been killed.



Mr Begg claims he was tortured himself at Bagram, though not in Guantanamo.



Q: People have talked about torture in Guantanamo, would you say you had been tortured?

BEGG: I would say the conditions were torturous, but myself I donâ??t think I was, I was tortured in Guantanamo.



Q: Would you say you were tortured in Bagram?

BEGG: Yes. Yes. A particularly harsh interrogation took place in May, in which I faced two members of the FBI, one CIA, one major, and one other unknown chap, and I believe itâ??s those, amongst them that date, particularly the FBI and the CIA, which had ordered my punishment or harsh treatment, which included me being hog-tied, left in a room with a bag put over my head, even though I suffered from asthma.



Q: What does hog-tied mean?

BEGG: It means having your hands tied behind your back and then simultaneously having them tied to your legs and your ankles and shackled from behind; left on a floor with a bag over my head, and kicked and punched and left there for several hours, only to be interrogated again. And, after which they threatened to have me sent to Egypt, to be tortured, to face electric shocks, to have my fingers broken, to be sexually abused, and, and the like.



Born in Birmingham with dual Pakistani nationality, it was on a family holiday there that the process of a political awakening begins in 1993. Moazzam Begg went across the border to near the city of Khost in Afghanistan in 1993 - there he says he met various groups of nationalist and Islamic rebels - many backed by America - fighting against the occupying Soviet forces.



The Guantanamo detainee admits visiting two training camps in Afghanistan in 1993 and 1998. He says the first, in 1993, was run by the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance. Mr Begg says he stayed there for two weeks. People at the camp were being trained in small arms, including, he thinks, Kalashnikovs and small hand guns. Mr Begg says he didnâ??t train himself.



He visited a second camp in 1998 near Jalalabad, he says, for a day and a half. Mr Begg claims it was run by Kurds who had been fighting against Saddam Hussein, not by Al Qaeda.



He says he was in Afghanistan when the 9/11 attacks happened.



BEGG: Iâ??d, a friend of mine, Iâ??d phoned him and he told me that there could be imminent attacks on Afghanistan, that theyâ??re blaming al-Qaeda thatâ??s based in around Kandahar for being responsible. And I remember saying to him quite clearly that I hope that the perpetrators of 9/11 are brought to justice but I really hope that they don't bring everybody else and try to blame everybody else for the responsibility of this attack. You know itâ??s a, I don't believe in any attacks against any civilians around the world, wherever they are, itâ??s nothing Iâ??ve been brought up to believe, nothing that I believe now, whether it's aeroplanes flying into buildings or whether itâ??s bombs being dropped from 30,000 feet, indiscriminately bombing women and children or others that are not involved.



Moazzam Begg admits heâ??d visited Bosnia in the early 1990s and was â??terribly affected by some of the stories that Iâ??d heard of the atrocities taking place thereâ??. But he denies he took up arms there, although he says he was tempted.



BEGG: Iâ??d thought about it but to take up arms against some â?¦ the, the war in Bosnia had started and finished, and what was taking place in Chechnya I supported foreign fighters and through financial support but I never took up arms myself.

Moazzam Begg went across the border to near the city of Khost in Afghanistan in 1993 - there he says he met various groups of nationalist and Islamic rebels - many backed by America - fighting against the occupying Soviet forces.





Q. This was a training camp.

Begg: Yes.



Q. Training in what?

Begg: They were training in small arms. I think they used kalashnikovs and small hand guns.



Q. Did you train?

Begg: No. No I didn't, I stayed there for about two weeks, had to get back to work, literally.



Q. So what were you doing there if you weren't training?

Begg: Just literally looking at what they do and how they live and speaking to them first hand about all that they'd suffered. I spoke to several people who had, I spoke to one person who had his house broken into and his wife was raped in front of him and that was just one of many different stories that I come across from these people. If Britain were invaded by another country what would we do? We would fight for our survival. That's literally what's happening in a lot of these places.



But it was a Muslim cause in Europe that acted as the ideological breakthrough for Begg - since leaving school he had attempted various jobs - often with his businessman father - and dropped out of a part-time law course - he was struggling to give his life some purpose.



Begg: I'd come to another point in my life which was almost the point of no return.



Q. What was that?

Begg: That was the conflict in the former Bosnia, Yugoslavia, Bosnia and Herzegovina. What took place there were events I think that affected me so much that caused a, a turnabout in my life, that I think may have been instrumental in what was to happen in the next 10 years. Some refugees had turned up, both Muslims and Croat, orthodox - sorry - Catholics - who turned up to the Birmingham mosque and I went, like a shot, to go and see them. I took some food and medicines and blankets and tried to talk to them and trying to find out what's really taking place over there. And I was terribly affected by some of the stories that I'd heard of the atrocities taking place there.



Q. So by the end of this experience, in Bosnia-Herzegovina, the son of this conservative bank manager had been radicalised.

Begg: I would say to a degree, not radicalised in the sense, and of course it is very important to understand that when we talk about radicalisation, it wasn't that I believed in the concept of what they claimed Osama Bin Laden is stating or al-Qaeda or anything like that at all. I just believed in the right of these people to defend themselves. I believed in the right, if somebody is getting raped, if a child is getting his throat cut just because somebody doesn't want to waste a bullet on him, then he has to be protected somehow. If the world community is not doing it, then it's the people of the country have to be helped in defending themselves.



Q. Did you take up arms?

Begg: No



Q. Did you feel tempted to?

Begg: Yes, I did feel tempted to but I had no experience in helping refugees in which way I could.



He sets up a bookshop in Birmingham's Ladypool Road. It attracted like-minded Muslims. At this time Begg is arrested but not charged over benefit fraud - and in a court document relating to one detainee currently being held at Belmarsh, an uncorroborated intelligence source refers to weapons being found at Begg's house at this time. Police raided the shop in 2000. Moazzam Begg was arrested under anti-terrorism laws but released without charge.



Q. This was an Islamic bookshop?

Begg: That's correct, yes. Yes.



Q. At which, which became a kind of little community centre or what did it sell besides books?

Begg: It sold sort of Islamic products; clothing, honey and all sorts of Islamic-related products.



Q. Tapes?

Begg: It sold cassettes, video tapes, oils and all sorts of stuff like that.



Q. Political?

Begg: To some degree - it wasn't completely. I mean if you look at the bookshop in its whole essence, it was only a small part of it that dealt with politics or anything other than religious values.



Q. Would you have sold tapes of Bin Laden?

Begg: Not that I, not whilst I was there, no.



In 1998 while on another trip to Pakistan he made a second visit to Afghanistan - this time to near Jalalabad - but now it was a land ruled by the Muslim extremists the Taliban - previously supported by America in their struggle against the Soviets.



They were now increasingly seen as a pariah regime - partly because of their association with terrorists such as Osama Bin Laden who had already struck against the US embassy in Kenya.



Begg: I visited a camp at that time, which was a -



Q. Whose camp was that?

Begg: This was a camp run by Kurds, who had been fighting against Saddam Hussein's forces in northern Iraq.



Q. But Jalalabad, you're getting quite close to kind of al-Qaeda influences.

Begg: Well again, like I said, al-Qaeda's influences could well be all round the place but in reality it's, they, I think there must have been at one point or another at least 50 or so training camps in Afghanistan, of which al-Qaeda may have had two, to say ...



Q. But you were aware of al-Qaeda in 1998.

Begg: I had come across the name, yes, I had come across the name.



Q. And Osama Bin Laden?

Begg: I didn't know of him until I think the embassy bombings, a lot afterwards.



Q. In Africa.

Begg: Yes, I think that was, I think late 98.



Q. That's when he came to your notice.

Begg: Yes, that's when I think he came to the sort of world notice really.



Q. Let me just press you again, these, these, you went to two different camps and you say so in your testimony to the Americans, it's hard to believe - well first of all it's difficult for somebody sitting in London to understand why anyone would go to a training camp if they didn't want to be trained, and you did it twice.

Begg: Right.



Q. Five years apart.

Begg: Yeah.



Q. Why did you go?

Begg: As I said the first time that I went I, I'm of Pakistani origin, I'm a dual national, national of Pakistan and Great Britain. People from Britain visit Pakistan all the time, I mean thousands and thousands I think go every month, so it really wasn't such a big deal, and Afghanistan is only literally next door, it's like popping over to France, or not even that, it's like popping over to Wales. So it really was not such a big deal.



Q. Not going to the country but going to the training camps.

Begg: Even so it was literally just over the border. I went to see, to observe something that I had never seen before.



Q. But in the intervening years, one was clearly an American-funded camp which was effectively Northern Alliance.

Begg: Uhmm.



Q. But in 1998 things had changed and therefore the camp that you would have visited would have been more closely allied to the Taliban, to al Qaeda.

Begg: Again, not necessarily, because this one that I visited was actually closed down by the Taliban and it was closed down in, I think that's the very same year, because as far as I understand it, and this is what I've been led to believe by American interrogators and so forth, is that al-Qaeda tried to sort of consolidate their control of Afghanistan and have all the camps, no matter wherever the origins were, under their umbrella.



Q. And this wasn't a man who had witnessed awful suffering in Bosnia, awful suffering in Afghanistan and who had decided, frankly, maybe my calling is to take up arms?

Begg: I'd thought about it but to take up arms against some â?¦ike the, the war in Bosnia had started and finished, and what was taking place in Chechnya I supported foreign fighters and through financial support but I never took up arms myself.



Q. Never?

Moazzam: No.





Peace

fun interview!what's the point?

The point of the interview?........... some people might wanna know about it.

or did you mean the point of posting it?....... again some people might wanna know about it, if you dont wanna know then dont click on something that says Guantanamo detainee Moazzam Begg tells C4 news what he saw. About that simple really, the choice is yours, its just I dont see anything else with an interview from a released detainee. Again dont click on it if u dont wanna know.........



Are those reasons good enough for you?



Peace

i wasn't knocking the post at all,i just don't think anything the american's or brit's did should be considered torture.water boarding?ha!and my favorite is the naked pile of terrorist's.god forbid!

and channel 4 news????aren't they the the ones who preform exorcism's??let mw tell ya,that's reliable new's!!hahah,watch out fox!

I caught a bit of that show, it wasn;t that geat, they were attempting to monitor the changes that occur in the brain whilst exocism is carried out. It was baisically looking at how religious experience affects the brains behaviour, it wasn;t on channel 4 news either. More to do with science than anything.

http://www.channel4.com/science/micr.../exorcism.html



Peace

since our election,the gitmo stuff is pretty much over here.it was just an opposition talking point ya know.i do think w needs to lay out some clear cut guidlines so people will stop complaining about "torture"

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i do think w needs to lay out some clear cut guidlines so people will stop complaining about "torture"

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yeah that would be useful, at least we would know exactly what the government stance is

TRUE!

wow, it's amazing to hear people reduce the 'torture' to naked piles of people...i even heard rush limbaugh say they were blowing off some steam. i guess when our guys are tortured, they're just blowing off some stream, right.

read the army's own 40+ report on it...we're doing basically what the nazis did in the 30's...as far as destroying entire towns through shows of power, and torture...that stuff comes home eventually.

it takes a certain kind of sick individual to do these kinds of things to other people.

http://www.infowars.com/print/iraq/newer_photos.htm

there's an even more updated one than that, with more torture stuff.

plus, can you really trust what someone says when they've been tortured.

i'd say i was al qaeda and i was planning some attack just to stop being tortured, which from reports, is more than piling them on top of each other. it's a lot worse, and goes beyond gitmo and abu ghraib.

there are more prisons in iraq like that one. this issue was brought out, barely covered, and now it's old news, it was meant to be brought up as no big deal, nothing really big, move along now...even as more and more and more news of it comes out daily...but let's not bother talking about it anymore, it's old news.

and when you watch NYPD blue, or CSI, or 24 or threat matrix, they're always torturing someone to get answers, and guns are illegal and bad, and give up your rights, and no constitution, and magical science...it's brainwashing people. i can't even watch 1 minute of any of those shows. it's total martial law propaganda.

or someone's getting a chip in their hand so they can leave their wallet at home and get access to VIP rooms, and homeschoolers are bad...those shows receive federal funding, they get story ideas from the feds, and it's 100% propaganda.

sorry for the rant, i'm just really high.

not a big deal??during the election that was all people talked about for about a month?everywhere you looked that's all you saw.i don't what planet you live but i think you missed the boat brother?

can you please tell me what town we destroyed?if you say fallujah your nuts.can you name a single one?and seriously ,if you truly think we are doing what the nazi's did you need to read a history book.im sorry for sounding angered but that is the most ignorant thing i have ever heard.better yet,have you ever spoken to a holocaust survivor?i would guess not.spoiled.untraveled.uninformed.

i have read tons of books on the actions of the nazis in wars and at home, and the destruction of the weimar republic and the propaganda used to get people to accept absolute despotism while giving up their rights...it's not pretty.

i've seen interviews with survivors who weren't even aware there were camps at the time or had only heard rumors, when they were just conspiracy theories. i've seen the nazi propaganda films to get people to accept hating and killing disabled people, and jews, and to accept "relocation" as helpful and loving.

smedley buter, someone you've probably never heard of, blew the whistle on a group in the US in the 30's that was planning on bringing that same system here. operation paperclip, the eugenics programs in the US, prescott bush and others funding nazis and funneling nazi money through their banks and corporations. assets were seized even after WWII...heard of the mccormack dickstein committee?

i go beyond the history taught in schools and even college...even though i know history majors that know all this, to older encyclopedias and library of congress and a whole lot more.

http://www.nhgazette.com/cgi-bin/NHG...NN_Bush_Nazi_2

did you read the 47 page army memo on torture?

i wouldn't even call how the mainstream covered the torture a real attempt at informing us of what happened. it was more of a whitewash.

you are going to base something on a conspiracy theory?you know as well as i do that if any of the eugenics programs were factual and proven so w wouldn't be president correct,wich bring's us back to the fact that is was NOTHING more than a conspiracy THEORY.I DID READ THE ARMY memo and didn't see anything disturbing about it at all?the kid that shot the iraqi in the mosque just had his chrges dropped with the help of the league of nations(united nations)investigations.and about the propaganda,i think you are making a mighty giant leap if you are trying to connect that to the united states.i find it odd that while blogging with people who ,ya know, LIVE IN BAGHDAD and around iraq,they aren't near as upset as the critic's in america.to me it's wierd talking to people in iraq who speak of nothing but hope and gratitude,and then a few people here who speak of nothing but conspiracies,contempt,and fright.i tell the iraqi's all these thing's and they chuckle,really.again with the nazi stuff,too funny.honestly ,it's idea's like that gave president bush and republicans such a huge victory across america on november 2.i guess i should say,thank you.

wow, so smedley butler's a conspiracy theory? he didn't really exist? the mccormack dickstein committee was just a theory too, it might not have happened...

it was in newspapers man, in the 40's...real newspapers, do a google search, you'll find it. bush's companies were seized under the trading with the enemy act, and more were seized after WWII when he continued his nazi dealings...it's not a big surprise our government was working with the nazis, in many ways...well, to those who know nothing about it and pass it off a 'theory'...i guess it is.

but that makes it easier for you, you can never look into it.

i'd hardly call bush, the UNESCO loving, open border and amnesty loving, giant government and biggest federal budget in our history...a republican. he's certainly nothing like republicans of 50+ years ago...he's more like a 'democrat'... but then again, you're stuck in this false left/right paradigm that you'll never get out of.

i'd hardly call bush, the UNESCO loving



Unesco? What the fuck could you have against world heritige sites?

i suggest you look up unesco, because that's now all it is.

it's something clinton wouldn't dare sign us back onto...but bush can do it with full 'republican' support...it takes education even further away from where it should be, from locally controlled...to federally controlled, to world control.

the feds aren't doing enough to make us stupid as it is apparently.

it gives the education of kids away to the global government, so they can learn how good it is to live in a third world socialist/dictatorship state being watched by cameras and UN troops 'peacekeeping' with taxation over 80%, while the elite wall themselves off with armies and live in luxury.

but i do have something against the so called 'world heritage sites'...we'll save that for another day.

even the UN charter says you don't have any rights, and the loving UN can take them away if they feel like it, or they don't like what you say about them. i could go into this for hours, so i'll spare you.

it gives the education of kids away to the global government, so they can learn how good it is to live in a third world socialist/dictatorship state being watched by cameras and UN troops 'peacekeeping' with taxation over 80%, while the elite wall themselves off with armies and live in luxury.



UN peacekeepers do a good job. Socialism is good. You have a nice chunk of the 3rd world in every ghetto. I think you are nutbar

a nutbar i meant

I like the UN i think they do good work.


"it's something clinton wouldn't dare sign us back onto...but bush can do it with full 'republican' support...it takes education even further away from where it should be, from locally controlled...to federally controlled, to world control. "




I dont trust the yokels. You need to be told by educated cultured socialists what to do, or else you would start drilling for oil in your national parks. Unesco just means the site is so great it belongs to the world. Get more international man, the UN doesnt hurt your sovernty(sp). I hear you loons saying the UN building in new york somehow is selling out american soil to outsiders, i think thats nuts. The Un isnt some force for evil. Its got its faults, but you live in crazy land if you think its some evil plot to take over the world.

i'd hardly call bush, the UNESCO loving, open border and amnesty loving



Open borders? amnesty? Are you an indian or something? To them you are an illegal too. All borders are bad. The world should be one big country

that's a real smart idea!

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Originally Posted by pisshead

the UNESCO loving, open border

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You usually back up your arguments with good facts, but this is very puzzling. Have you tried to cross the American border from Canada or through an airport recently? I don't think so...

i was referring to the southern border, where thousands and thousands come across daily...where there are border incursions with mexican military firing at citizens and police and border patrol...

i've heard and read lots of stories, i know some border patrol...look up congressman tom tancredo, he discusses this stuff too.

here's an interview alex jones did with him:
http://www.prisonplanet.com/121903tancredo.html

an illegal alien can get a fake id and get a social security number and open a bank account with less hassle than a citizen could, and police in houston and austin, i know for a fact, are told not to arrest illegal aliens. they are allowed to live many to an apartment where a US citizen in the same situation would be evicted , and the big apartment management companies under patriot act compliance are told to allow it, but to go after citizens.

i could go on forever, but then i'd get off topic and start rambling...

i'm from houston.you?incorrect.