Bassam Mroue
Associated Press
BEIRUT: An American citizen convicted on terrorism charges in the United Arab Emirates said on Thursday he confessed under torture and suspected that US authorities played a role in his detention and prosecution in the Gulf country. Naji Hamdan, an American of Lebanese origin, was deported to Lebanon last week after completing his 18-month sentence in Abu Dhabi.
The Emirates’ highest court convicted Hamdan on October 12 on terrorism-related charges, including having links to an Al-Qaeda-affiliated group in Iraq, and sentenced him to 18 months in prison.
Hamdan, 43, was freed shortly afterward because the court counted time he served before his conviction.
Speaking to The Associated Press in Beirut on Thursday, Hamdan called the charges against him “fabrications” that he admitted to during harsh interrogations by the Emirates’ state security agents.
“The beating was so severe that I sometimes fainted,” he said. He said interrogators kicked him in the liver after he told them he had liver problems.
Hamdan said he asked interrogators what they wanted to hear from him to stop the beatings, and they told him to admit to membership in Al-Qaeda. He agreed, he said.
Rights groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union, have accused United States authorities of pushing Hamdan’s case in the Emirates because they lacked sufficient evidence for American courts.
The ACLU asked a United States court to press for a halt to the case, but an American judge ruled in August that there was no authority to interfere in a foreign country’s criminal prosecution.
Hamdan was arrested in the UAE in August 2008. Hamdan said that nearly two months after he was detained, Emirates authorities gave him new clothes, told him he’d be released within a week and that a US Embassy official would come meet him. He was ordered to say he had been treated well, he said.
He said that he followed their orders, but tried to indicate to the American officer with gestures that he couldn’t speak freely.
He told the AP he is “100 percent” sure UAE and US authorities cooperated in his detention. The American Embassy in the Emirates had declined to comment on the case during the trial except to say that Hamdan was given consular support.
Hamdan moved to the US as a college student. He later became a citizen and ran a successful auto-parts business near Los Angeles, where he was active in the Islamic community.
He said that the FBI began questioning him about whether he had terrorist ties in 1999, and he decided to move his family back to the Middle East in 2006.
Hamdan said Lebanese authorities had detained him for a week in the past and questioned him about links to other militant groups.
He plans to stay in Lebanon, he said, where he has three children and a family.
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