Libyan born former Guantanamo Bay detainee Omar Deghayes addresses a press conference in central London on August 17, 2009.
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.