MANAMA, Aug 5 (AFP) - Bahrain will ask the United States to confirm or deny reports that one of its citizens held at the US detention camp in Guantanamo Bay has been tortured, an official said Thursday.
"The foreign ministry has instructed Bahrain's embassy in Washington to send an official memorandum to the US State Department inquiring about media reports that a Bahraini citizen detained in Guantanamo has been subjected to torture and abuse," ministry undersecretary Yussef Mahmud told the state BNA news agency.
He said the allegations were based on a report by three British prisoners who have been released from the detention camp in Cuba.
The three Britons on Wednesday leveled accusations of systematic abuse in a lengthy report that civil rights groups said exposed the US military facility as "a legal black hole."
The 115-page report detailed incidents of sexual and religious humiliation, as well as brutal interrogation methods that induced false confessions.
The Bahraini daily Al-Ayyam earlier Thursday quoted interior ministry undersecretary Sheikh Duaij bin Khalifa al-Khalifa as saying that a Bahraini security team which visited the Guantanamo camp a few months ago had noticed traces of torture on the face of Jomaa al-Dossari, the Bahraini citizen who was reportedly abused.
Dossari is one of six Bahrainis who are among roughly 600 prisoners held during the US-led war in Afghanistan in late 2001 and incarcerated at Guantanamo Bay.
Bahrain, a small Gulf kingdom, is a close ally of the United States and home to the US Navy's Fifth Fleet.