MONTREAL, Feb 9 (AFP) - An 18-year-old Canadian held for three years as a terror suspect at the US naval base in Guantanamo, Cuba, was forced to urinate on the floor and his head was used to clean up the mess, his family's attorney said Wednesday.
Omar Khadr, 18, who is of Pakistani origin, has been accused of killing a US soldier in Afghanistan. He was 15 years old when he was detained.
He has since suffered several forms of torture, his family's attorney, Dennis Edney, told CBC television, basing his claims on testimony Khadr gave to an American attorney.
"He was forced to urinate on the floor, then the urine was mixed with oil and he's been dragged around by the head like he was a mop to clean up," Edney said.
"He talked about having a bag over his head and vicious dogs barking at him and threatening him," Edney said.
"He talked about being physically assaulted," he said. "He talked about Egyptian interrogators, or at least passing as Egyptians, threatening him to take him back to Egypt or to send him back to Afghanistan to be sexually abused."
The US military's Southern Command launched last month an investigation into torture at the base after the publication of e-mails from FBI agents to their superiors, in which they recalled incidents of physical abuse at Guantanamo.
Some 550 suspects of 20 different nationalities are being held at the base without charges.
Most of them were picked up by the US military on battlefields in Afghanistan, after the United States launched a war on the nation's then rulers the Taliban, following devastating September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States by the al-Qaeda terror network.
02/09/2005 20:48 GMT - AFP