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Who Is Binyam Mohamed? - by Andy Worthington

Who Is Binyam Mohamed? - by Andy Worthington: "Who Is Binyam Mohamed?

by Andy Worthington

As British resident Binyam Mohamed stepped off a plane at RAF Northolt on Monday Feb. 23, six years and 10 months since he was first abducted by the Pakistani authorities at Karachi airport, it was impossible not to sympathize with the words written in a statement by the tall, thin, slightly stooped 30-year-old and delivered by his lawyers at a press conference.

'I hope you will understand that after everything I have been through I am neither physically nor mentally capable of facing the media on the moment of my arrival back to Britain,' the statement read. 'Please forgive me if I make a simple statement through my lawyer. I hope to be able to do better in days to come, when I am on the road to recovery.'

For the last three and a half years, since Binyam Mohamed's lawyers at Reprieve, the legal action charity, first released his harrowing account of his torture in Morocco at the hands of the CIA's proxy torturers, the British resident's story has, understandably, had few bright episodes. As Clive Stafford Smith, Reprieve's director, explained in his book Eight O'Clock Ferry to the Windward Side, during the three days in Guantánamo that Binyam related the story of his horrendous ordeal – for 18 months in Morocco, and then for another five months"

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