Boston lawyers sue over alleged abuse at Guantanamo Bay

BOSTON -- Lawyers for six men arrested in Bosnia and detained at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp sued the U.S. government Wednesday, leveling new allegations of abuse and torture by U.S. forces there.

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The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Boston, asks a judge to force the Department of Justice and Department of Defense to release information that would allegedly prove the torture of prisoners by American forces at the U.S. Navy base in Cuba.

Lawyers for the six men -- all Algerians, four of whom have Bosnian citizenship -- allege that repeated requests to release the information under the Freedom of Information Act have been ignored by the federal government.

The items requested include the plaintiffs' medical records and military videos shot at Guantanamo Bay that purportedly show prisoners being abused.

"We've had not a single document come through," attorney Robert C. Kirsch said.

One of the Bosnian detainees, Mustafa Ait Idir, claims in the lawsuit that he was severely beaten while his hands were tied behind his back and that he later suffered a mild stroke.

"The guards picked him up and slammed his body and his head into the steel bunk in his cell," the lawsuit says. "They then threw him on the floor and continued to pound his body and bang his head into the floor."

The guards then held his face in the toilet "and repeatedly pressed the flush button," according to the lawsuit.

Idir allegedly suffered the most severe abuse among the six, according to Kirsch, but all were subjected to sleep deprivation and were kept nearly naked in frigid rooms "sometimes 36 hours at a time."

"We cannot comment on the lawsuit as we have not received the complaint," Department of Defense spokesman Maj. Michael Shavers said in an e-mailed statement. "However, with regard to allegations of detainee abuse, U.S. policy requires that all detainees be treated humanely."

A spokesman for the Department of Justice declined to comment.

Shavers said claims of abuse are standard operating procedure for some terror suspects.

"It is important to note that al-Qaida training manuals emphasize the tactic of making false abuse allegations," he said.

But Michael Ratner, president of the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights, said there's evidence that Guantanamo prisoners were subject to religious and sexual humiliation, and physical abuse.

"It's a system of coercion, abuse and torture that seems to be routine at Guantanamo," he said. "The government has not really owned up to it."

The six plaintiffs were arrested in October 2001 after U.S. intelligence indicated they were planning attacks on U.S. and British embassies in Sarajevo, and on a U.S. military base in the Bosnian city of Tuzla. Bosnian authorities handed the group over to U.S. authorities in 2002, ignoring a ruling by the country's highest court that the six be released.

"They are the only six men in Guantanamo who were actually the subject of a court proceeding in another country," said Kirsch, who visited his clients in December and February.

There are 540 prisoners from some 40 countries who are being held at Guantanamo Bay. Most are accused of having links to Afghanistan's ousted Taliban regime or the al-Qaida terror network.

In February, a secret U.S. military report obtained by The Associated Press said there were videotapes of riot squads subduing Guantanamo detainees by punching some of them, tying one to a gurney for questioning and forcing a dozen to strip from the waist down.

The plaintiffs' lawyers believe one of the videotapes shows Idir being abused, Kirsch said.

Human rights groups and defense lawyers have long charged that some information used as the basis for incarceration at Guantanamo Bay resulted from abuse or torture.

The government has denied using torture, but multiple investigations into abuse at detention camps in Afghanistan and Guantanamo are under way.

A Bosnian investigation in 2001 produced no evidence of "activity you might associate with terrorism," Kirsch said. "They executed the Bosnian equivalent of search warrants. They got into their homes, they took, books, records, photographs, computers."

Kirsch also has filed a habeas corpus lawsuit, a claim with its roots in ancient English law, in Washington. In modern times, such an appeal amounts to a demand that the government justify someone's continued imprisonment.