Abou Elkassim Britel can’t sleep, or he sleeps too much; it varies. He backs out of commitments. The Islamic website he wants to publish from his Italian home remains unfinished.
“I would add,” he said through translation, “that I cannot think of the future.”
The doctors tell Britel that he has post-traumatic stress disorder, after a decade-long ordeal of imprisonment without charge or transfer and abuse. It began in 2002, when the United States packed him onto a contractor’s Gulfstream V in Pakistan and flew him to Morocco.
Britel survived what the US calls rendition, an extrajudicial process of transferring a detainee for “interrogation” in a foreign country. Allies of the US beat Britel with a cricket bat, shoved a bottle into his anus, denied him access to lawyers and Italian diplomats and unceremoniously released him in 2011, as if nothing ever happened.
“Rendition is a series of shocking events, one worse than the other,” he said.
Casualty count: Over the three days of the Eid holiday, nine Palestinians were killed—one due to...
Dozens of Israeli settlers rampaged across the occupied West Bank overnight on Saturday, torching cars and...
Up to 10 Palestinians are dying every day in Gaza due to severe Israeli restrictions that...
When an Israeli settler killed dozens of Palestinian worshippers during Ramadan at the Ibrahimi Mosque in...
