Deghayes, a Libyan whose family fled to the U.K. soon after his father, a labor organizer, had been assassinated in Gaddafi’s Libya, has been one of the more outspoken ex-detainees, detailing the alleged forms of torture deployed by U.S. soldiers at Guantanamo. (See him relate his experiences to the BBC.)He was picked up in Lahore, Pakistan, where he and his family had fled to following the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan — where Deghayes had taken up residence before. Some reports claim he had ties to militant extremists in North Africa, but the most damning charge leveled by his captors — that he had some role with a Chechen jihadist group — has been dismissed as either mistaken or simply fabricated. He was released at the end of 2007 with his right eye forever damaged, an injury Deghayes claims he sustained when a U.S. soldier deliberately stuck a finger into his pupil, pressing harder and harder and harder.
Faces of Guantanamo: Detainees Who Were Unjustly Imprisoned
Jan. 11 marks ten years since the first detainees arrived at the U.S. facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Of the 779 imprisoned there since January 2002, only a small minority had any real ties to al-Qaeda. Many were arrested wrongly or turned in by opportunistic bounty hunters. TIME looks at a few tragic tales from the many that make up the grim Guantanamo decade.