page_title: Omar Deghayes
section_title: Disruption of war
hierarchical_section_title: Omar Deghayes / Disruption of war
caption_attribution_description: Omar Deghayes speaking at an event "Resisting Empire: Global Resistance to Guantanamo and Torture" in Sheffield, United Kingdom on 2012-10-05.
context_page_description: Omar Deghayes is a Libyan citizen who had legal residency status with surviving members of his family in the United Kingdom since childhood. He was arrested in Pakistan in 2002. He was held by the United States as an enemy combatant at Guantanamo Bay detention camp from 2002 until December 18, 2007. He was released without charges and returned to Britain, where he lives.
  His Guantanamo Internment Serial Number was 727. Deghayes says he was blinded permanently in one eye, after a guard at Guantanamo gouged his eyes with his fingers. Deghayes was never charged with any crime at Guantanamo.
  When Deghayes was a child, his father, a prominent attorney and union organiser, was arrested and executed by Muammar Gaddafi's government in Libya. His mother took him and his siblings to the United Kingdom, where they had often visited for extended stays, and gained asylum as refugees. They lived in Brighton. According to the Birmingham Post, Deghayes was a "laws graduate"; he studied law at the University of Wolverhampton and later studied in Huddersfield.
context_section_description: After the United States invasion of Afghanistan in the fall of 2001, Deghayes moved temporarily to Pakistan for what he thought would be safety with his Afghan wife and child. He has said that he was arrested, along with his family, by bounty hunters in Pakistan. He was "sold" to the American forces and taken into military custody. He was first held and interrogated at the Bagram Theater Internment Facility. His wife and child were later released.
  His attorney Clive Stafford Smith said that in 2005 an investigation by BBC Newsnight discovered that, shortly before Deghaye's arrest, an anonymous informant had mistakenly identified him to Spanish authorities as appearing in a videotape including Arab mujahideen among rebels in Chechnya. They issued a warrant for his arrest and notified the Americans, who later took him into custody in Pakistan. (The person in the videotape was later correctly identified as Abu al-Walid, an insurgent leader who was killed in Chechnya by Russians in April 2004.)  Stafford Smith has said of the mis-identification: "This was typical of the whole Guantánamo experience. They said they had evidence and they wouldn't let you see it. Then when you did, it was incorrect."
  Together with many other prisoners, in 2002, Deghayes was transported to the recently constructed Guantanamo Bay detention camp and held as a suspected enemy combatant. In 2005, he claimed that Guantanamo guards held him down and sprayed pepper spray directly into his eyes.
  Deghayes said a guard also gouged his eyes. He was left permanently blind in his right eye.
  The DOD declined to comment on specific abuse claims.
  However, DOD spokesman Lieutenant Commander Flex Plexico repeated his counter-claim that al Qaeda training manuals instruct al Qaeda members to lie about abuse, if captured, to trigger international outrage. He described Guantanamo as "...a safe, humane and professional detention operation..."
  On August 10, 2007, family members released a detailed dossier listing the torture and humiliation that Deghaye claimed that he and other detainees were subjected to while in U.S. custody. The material was reported by numerous media.
  Deghayes reported that he:
  Saw a soldier shoot a captive.
  Witnessed the partial drowning of captives. (Note: A technique later known as waterboarding.)
  Saw a guard throw a Koran into a toilet.
  Saw a Moroccan/Italian named Abdulmalik beaten to death.
  Saw another captive beaten until blood was all over the floor; the detainee was left permanently brain damaged.
  Was permanently blinded when a guard stuck his finger in his eye.
  Had excrement smeared on his face.
  Suffered sexual abuse, which he said was too traumatic to be described in detail.
  Was subjected to electric shocks.
  Was kept naked in the freezing cold and had freezing water thrown on him.
  Was starved for forty-five days.
  Received repeated death threats.
caption: Omar Deghayes 2012
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