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The Pentagon dismissed as "lies" Monday charges leveled by recently released Britons that they were beaten and maltreated in US military custody, and it said the allegations would not be investigated because they lacked credibility. The five who were released last week from a US detention center for suspected Taliban and al-Qaeda prisoners in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, made the allegations in interviews with British newspapers and in a statement issued by a lawyer for one of the five. "These allegations are fabrications. These are lies," said Major Michael Shavers, a Pentagon spokesman. "All the detainees were treated humanely and to the extent appropriate consistent with military necessity in accordance with the third Geneva Convention of 1949," he said. "Because these are lies and fabrications, they are not credible. If they were credible allegations of illegal conduct, then we would investigate," he said. Asked how the Pentagon could determine whether the allegations were lies without an investigation, the spokesman told AFP, "We do not do what they are alleging." The Britons were taken into US military custody two years ago in Afghanistan and flown to a maximum security detention center at Guantanamo along with hundreds of other suspected Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters. After deciding they no longer posed a threat, the US military on March 9 flew five British detainees to London, where they were quickly released without charges by British authorities. Four other British detainees remain at Guantanamo. In an interview with The Observer on Sunday, Asif Iqbal, Ruhal Ahmed and Shafiq Rasul, childhood friends from the town of Tipton in central England, said they were regularly mistreated from the moment they were handed over to US forces in Afghanistan in late 2001. After being taken to a US detention centre in the Afghan city of Kandahar, they were forced to kneel bent forwards for hours with their foreheads touching the ground, Rasul told The Observer. "I lifted my head up slightly because I was really in pain. The sergeant came up behind me, kicked my legs from underneath me, then knelt on my back," he said. "They took me outside and searched me while one man was sitting on me, kicking and punching," he said. Tarek Dergoul, 26, said in a statement issued through his lawyer that he had endured "botched medical treatment, interrogation at gunpoint, beatings and inhuman conditions". Another released Briton, 37-year-old website designer Jamal al-Harith, said in a newspaper interview Friday that he had experienced beatings and degrading treatment during his two years in custody at the center. All rights reserved. Copyright 2003 Agence France-Presse. Sections of the information displayed on this page (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence, you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the content of this section without the prior written consent of Agence France-Presse. Quick Links
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