THE SYDNEY MORNING HERALD: LONDON: A group of British Muslims who were detained and allegedly tortured last month while travelling in Yemen say their interrogators demanded detailed information about mosques in London and their associates in Britain.
The three young men and a teenage boy were held for almost five weeks after being dragged off a bus outside the capital, Sana'a, where they had enrolled in an Arabic language institute a few days earlier.
They say that while being held at a prison run by one of the Yemeni Government's intelligence agencies they were beaten, deprived of sleep and forced to watch others being tortured. They allege that they were then ordered to write a list of mosques they attended in London, told to describe those mosques and some of the people who pray there, and instructed to hand over the names and telephone numbers of some of their associates in Britain.
They were released without charge. The men are angry that the British Foreign Office has made no complaint about their alleged mistreatment to Yemeni authorities, although they reported it to Scotland Yard and Foreign Office officials.
They are also angry that the Foreign Office denies any of them had visible injuries when they were visited by a British consular official shortly before their release. >>> Ian Cobain | Tuesday, January 12, 2010
