DID THE US GOVERNMENT HAVE AN AMERICAN TEENAGER BEATEN IN KUWAIT? -TOP
By Nick Baumann, Mother Jones, 1/6/11

Gulet Mohamed, an American teenager detained in Kuwait who claims to have been brutally interrogated there, was arrested and questioned by Kuwaiti security on behalf of the US government, his lawyer and family members charged on Thursday.

Mohamed, a 19-year-old from Alexandria, Virginia, called the New York Times' Mark Mazzetti and Salon's Glenn Greenwald this week via a cell phone another inmate smuggled into the prison where he is being held. In the interviews, Mohamed recounted being severely beaten. He said he was forced to stand for hours, and that interrogators threatened to torture him with electricity and imprison his mother.

Questions that Kuwaiti interrogators asked Mohamed "indicated a level of knowledge about his family and actions" that could only have been obtained from American law enforcement, the teen's lawyer, Gadeir Abbas, told the two reporters at a sparsely attended press conference Thursday afternoon. In fact, he added, interrogators mentioned a specific, off-the-cuff conversation Mohamed had at a mosque in the US some time ago—a conversation that he claimed they could only have learned about through surveillance. Since the idea that Kuwaiti intelligence forces are spying on US mosques strains credulity, Abbas and Mohamed's family believe American officials were passing information to the Kuwaitis.

Mohamed's case is an example of "proxy detention," Abbas said. Instead of the US detaining and interrogating Mohamed, or using extraordinary rendition to send him to be tortured in Egypt or Syria, the government is "taking one step back and trying to accomplish the same goal: the unlawful torture and detention abroad of an American citizen by a country that is known to engage in human rights abuses," Abbas argued. (More)

[Note: Gadeir Abbas is a staff attorney for CAIR and is representing Gulet Mohamed in that capacity.]

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U.S. CITIZEN FROM VIRGINIA DETAINED IN KUWAIT SAYS HE HAS BEEN TORTURED BY SECURITY AGENTS - TOP
By Peter Finn, Washington Post, 1/6/11

A 19-year-old U.S. citizen from Alexandria has been detained in Kuwait and says that he was tortured by security agents who questioned him about his travels in Yemen andSomalia.

Gulet Mohamed, who moved with his family from Somalia to the United States when he was a toddler, was detained last month at an airport in Kuwait when he went there to renew his visa, said Gadeir Abbas, a staff attorney with the Council on American-Islamic Relations, who is representing Mohamed. He says that Kuwaiti officials detained Mohamed on behalf of the United States.

Abbas said that Mohamed told him that over the course of a week, he was repeatedly struck in the face while blindfolded and handcuffed and that he was beaten with a stick. Abbas said he has spoken to his client by phone. (More)

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LETTER TO DOJ FROM GULET MOHAMED'S LAWYER - TOP

Dear Mr. Treene:

As you may recall, I copied you last week on a letter sent to the government of Kuwait requesting an investigation into allegations that Kuwaiti security personnel recently detained and tortured my client, Mr. Gulet Mohamed, an American citizen whose family lives in Alexandria, Virginia. [Copies of the letter to the Kuwaiti government were also sent to the White House and the State Department.]

Read the full letter here.

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CIVIL RIGHTS GROUPS: US MUSLIMS' RIGHTS VIOLATED AT BORDER - TOP
Jerome Socolovsky, VOA News, 1/6/11

If any U.S. citizen knows his legal rights, Hassan Shibly does. A law student at the University of Buffalo in New York, he has also clerked for a judge at New York's State Supreme Court.

Last summer he took his wife and son on a pilgrimage to the Muslim holy city of Mecca inSaudi Arabia, and to visit to his family in Syria. Upon return, he says, he was taken aside for questioning at New York's John F. Kennedy airport.

Shibly says an agent asked him how many gods and prophets he believes in and whether he studies his religion full time.

"And I think one of the most offensive things was in the end," Shibly recalled, "when he was trying to wrap things up, he said: 'I hope you're not annoyed. It's just that we want to protect this country from bombs and terrorism.'" (More)