Gitmo Detainee Calls al-Jazeera, Alleges Abuse

Prisoner abuse at Guantanamo Bay hasn’t gotten any better since Barack Obama took office, one detainee told al-Jazeera yesterday after using newly granted phone privileges to call the Middle Eastern news network. Mohammed al Gharani says he’s been abused “almost every day” since Obama’s term began, the Miami Herald reports. The 21-year-old described one incident in which guards beat him with a rubber baton and threw tear gas at him when he refused to leave his cell.

Gharani celled an al-Jazeera cameraman who was released from Guantanamo last year after 6 years' incarceration. Gharani had recently gained phone privileges following his transfer to a camp for detainees awaiting release. In January, a court ruled that the Chad citizen, who was nabbed in Pakistan at age 14 in 2002, should go free because the Pentagon’s “mosaic of allegations” against him wasn’t strong enough. (More Sami al-Hajj stories.)