French judges, who have previously probed charges of illegal detention at Guantanamo Bay, will now investigate accusations of torture at the US camp in Cuba, legal officials said Friday. The probe follows a civil lawsuit filed by Khaled Ben Mustapha, a French citizen who spent three years in the camp, who claims he was the victim of "torture and barbaric acts" during his detention.
Investigating magistrate Sophie Clement, who is already handling a case of alleged arbitrary detention of two other former Guantanamo inmates, will lead the probe, the sources said. Mustapha was captured near the Pakistan-Afghan border in December 2001 and sent to Guantanamo two months later.
He says he was repeatedly beaten, including with a bar of soap wrapped in a towel, and that he was suspended from a ceiling by his hands. When he was returned to France in 2005, Mustapha and two other former Guantanamo detainees were convicted and jailed by a Paris court on terrorism-related charges.
But they were freed on appeal in February this year. The prosecutor's office is appealing that ruling. US President Barack Obama has promised to shut down Guantanamo by next year, but his administration has been struggling to find countries willing to accept the 226 inmates still held there.