US Muslim: I Was Tortured at FBI's Behest in UAE
The Associated Press
American Muslim blames the FBI, saying he was tortured at their behest in United Arab Emirates
AP
Yonas Fikre, a Portland, Oregon Muslim American talks to media at his lawyer's office in Stockholm, Sweden, April 18, 2012. After a 2010 trip to visit family in Khartoum, Sudan, Fikre claims to have been detained and tortured. Put on a FBI no-fly list, Fikre is now unable to return home to the U.S. (AP Photo / Claudio Bresciani)
By MALIN RISING and STEVEN DUBOIS Associated Press
4/18/12, 1:15 PM EDT
A Muslim American seeking asylum in Sweden claimed Wednesday he was detained at the U.S. government's request while in the United Arab Emirates last summer, tortured in custody and interrogated about the activities of a Portland, Oregon, mosque.
Yonas Fikre told a news conference Wednesday that he was held for 106 days and was beaten, threatened with death and kept in solitary confinement in a frigid cell.
The 33-year-old, a naturalized U.S. citizen born in Eritrea, says he had attended the same mosque in Portland as a man who has been charged in a plot to detonate a bomb in the northwestern U.S. city. He moved to
Sudan in 2009 and later to the United Arab Emirates. He went to Sweden, where he has relatives, after being released from detention on Sept. 15.
Fikre, who converted to Islam in 2003, is the third Muslim man from Portland to publicly say he was detained while traveling abroad and questioned about Portland's Masjid-as-Sabr mosque. Mohamed Osman Mohamud, a Somali American who is awaiting trial on a charge of plotting to set off a bomb in downtown Portland in November 2010, occasionally worshipped there. A decade ago, seven Muslims with ties to the mosque were arrested following a failed effort to enter Afghanistan and fight U.S. forces.
Fikre says he met Mohamud a handful of times, but wouldn't call him a friend or even an acquaintance.
Fikre says he was arrested on June 1 in the United Arab Emirates and taken to a prison in Abu Dhabi, where he was questioned about
Monday December 04th 2006, 8:16 pm “Robert Gates, the former CIA director and Texas A&M University president, is expected to easily win nomination as President Bush’s next defense secretary following a hearing today that is likely to focus on strategies in Iraq,” reports Express-News. Easy nomination, no matter the guy is a criminal, not to mention a blood-thirsty warmongering psychopath. Gates was at the core of the so-called Iran-Contra affair, but then it is business as usual in Washington, as the Bush administration is packed like a sardine tin with Iran-Contra criminals. Lawrence E. Walsh, the independent counsel in the Iran-Contra investigation, knew Gates was lying about his collaboration with fellow criminal, now respected Fox News talking head, Oliver North, the guy who wanted to suspend the Constitution and throw demonstrators in gulags under Rex-84. In 1984, as understudy and protégé of then CIA director-ghoul, William Casey, Gates wanted to bomb the dickens out of Nica
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