British Muslim tells of torture in Pakistan as US officials stood by

A British Muslim arrested in Pakistan during an investigation into an alleged al-Qaida bomb plot was beaten and threatened while US intelligence officials watched, according to testimony given to the British High Court on Nov. 28. Salahuddin Amin told the jury that he was slapped around the head by his Pakistani jailers, threatened with a whip and told he was to be sent to Guantánamo Bay in dozens of interviews during which the US officials were present. The US officials also threatened to skin him alive if he did not cooperate, he said. He did not complain of his treatment to British security officials who also interviewed him, because he believed they were colluding with his torturers. "I assumed my treatment was tolerated by the British at a very high level," he said. Amin is accused of being a member of a gang of young Britons alleged to have links with al-Qaida. He is said to have given a co-defendant, Omar Khyam, the formula needed to mix a 1,300-pound fertilizer bomb, which was to have been used in an attack on a London nightclub, a shopping center or gas pipelines. He denies conspiring to cause an explosion likely to endanger life or injure property between Jan. 1, 2003 and March 31, 2004. Amin said recently that he had been beaten repeatedly during his 10 months' detention in Pakistan, lashed with whips made out of rubber tires and once was menaced with an electric drill which his jailers threatened to push into his buttocks. Amin, 31, at first confessed to being involved in the plot. He insists, however, that he made the confession only because of the way he had been treated. He said his mistreatment included "bad language, profanities against my family, threats to rape me with the wooden handle of the lash and a lot of swear words. They would say you will not see the sun again, you will not breathe the fresh air." Amin said he confessed to attempting to acquire a so-called dirty bomb after being hung up by his wrists and beaten. "They took my chemise off and took my pajamas down and tied my hands with a leather strap against the wall," he told the jury. "They pulled me up so much, my feet were lifted off the floor and the major started hitting me on my back and my things with the lashes. They threatened to insert the handle of the lash. They threatened to rape me with it." He said he confessed to being involved in a plot to buy an "isotope bomb" from a mafia contact in Belgium. "I was willing to admit to anything," he said. Amin also saw other detainees who had been tortured, and was forced to listen to their screams as they were being abused, he said. He added that he was interviewed by British intelligence officials around 11 times during his detention. Sometimes he would be questioned by them after being driven to a posh building where he could see, despite a hood over his head, both Pakistani and British flags. The trial continues.