It's pretty hard to spin this:
Binyam Mohammed was born in Ethiopia but was given leave to remain in the UK after seeking asylum in 1994. Seven years later, he travelled to Pakistan and Afghanistan where the Americans allege that he underwent training in firearms and explosives. In 2002, he was arrested by Pakistani immigration officials at Karachi airport on his way back to the UK. He says he was then taken to Morocco and tortured for 18 months, including having his penis slashed, before being sent to Guantanamo, where he still remains.
Mr Stafford-Smith added in his letter: "As you know, the only purported basis for the US holding Mr Mohammed is an allegation that he is an ('illegal') enemy combatant. Five-and-a-half years after his initial seizure, he is not currently charged in a military commission, and he has never been offered a fair trial. As you are aware, Mr Mohammed was rendered to Morocco by the CIA and tortured for 18 months in a way that was medieval.
His lawyers state that he was "rendered" to Morocco by the CIA, where he was tortured for 18 months.
They have photographic evidence of this, photos taken by the CIA themselves, which shows the agents involved, reveal their real names and their "code names" and show the man's "brutalised genitalia".
They are now urging the British government to ask the U.S. government to NOT destroy the photos. Uh ... I'm sure Bushco will be right on that.
This man is a British citizen who is NOT being released with the other Brits. He is being held in Gitmo for ... well, nobody knows how long.
"There can be no rational dispute that this is true. We have the CIA flight records which precisely match Mr Mohammed's version of events. He has nothing to do with Morocco, and he was not taken there by the CIA for a Club Med vacation."
Thanks to Dumbo, below, we also know that his plight was covered in a 2005 Guardian article aptly titled "One of them made cuts in my penis. I was in agony". In this article, quotes taken from the man's diaries describe in graphic detail how, exactly, they brutalized his genitalia. I'll leave it to you to read the gory details at the link, if you like, but I will add this quote, which shows what it was really all about:
I was in Morocco for 18 months. Once they began this, they would do it to me about once a month. One time I asked a guard: "What's the point of this? I've got nothing I can say to them. I've told them everything I possibly could."
"As far as I know, it's just to degrade you. So when you leave here, you'll have these scars and you'll never forget. So you'll always fear doing anything but what the US wants."
I think everyone who thinks that "simulated drowning" isn't torture should volunteer to have their penises slashed and see if they think that isn't torture. Maybe Bush should volunteer for the treatment, seeing as how he has told us repeatedly that the United States doesn't torture people. I'm sure he'd be happy to demonstrate how non-torturous this is.