Former Gitmo detainee describes abuse

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A former Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, detainee says his seven years as an "enemy combatant" at the camp were a nightmare of abuse and an ugly mistake.

Lakhdar Boumediene, 43, was accepted by France as part of a U.S. effort to repatriate some of the Guantanamo detainees.

Boumediene, a former aid worker for the Red Crescent, told The New York Times in Paris Monday that he was never involved in terrorism in Bosnia, where he was swept up without charges in October 2001 on suspicions he and five other Algerians were plotting to blow up the U.S. Embassy in Sarajevo.

He says that over his seven years there was interrogated more than 120 times, mostly about the activities of Muslims in Bosnia.

"At first I thought they were honest, and when I explained they would see I was innocent and would release me," Boumediene told the Times. "But after the first two years or so, I realized they were not straight. So I stopped cooperating."

He said that during one 16-day period in February 2003 he was interrogated day and night, as questioners lifted him roughly from the chair to which he was strapped, with the shackles digging into his flesh.

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