Incident: Idir

This month, Mustafa Ait Idir will be detained at Guantanamo Bay. He is suspected of plotting attacks on the US and British embassy in Sarajevo. A suit filed in the US District Court against the Bush Administration will allege that, while detained, he was subjected to the following abuses:

• his hands were secured behind his back and guards picked him up and slammed his body and his head into the steel bunk in his cell
• he was beaten
• his face was stuffed in a toilet and the toilet repeatedly flushed to the point where he feared that he would drown
• a garden hose was stuffed into his mouth and the water turned on, causing him to choke and water issue forth from his mouth and nose
• his pants were forcibly removed from him (without which, according to his beliefs, he could not pray)
• his face was sprayed with a chemical irritant
• his testicles were squeezed to the point that he fell to the ground in a fetal position
• his fingers were bent until one broke
• he was repeatedly jumped upon whilst lying prone on a bed of crushed stones
• in the aforementioned incident, his head was jumped on repeatedly with full body weight, causing him to suffer a stroke, which has left half of his face paralysed.

His face remains scarred, however the paralysis has dissipated. A lawyer for him and other men involved in the suit state that a video may exist depicting his abuse.