Pakistani says tortured in terror arrest

LAHORE, Pakistan, Jan. 6 (UPI) -- A one-time Pakistani terror suspect says he was subjected to more than six years of torture and abuse by U.S. captors and plans to sue the government.

The man, Muhammad Saad Iqbal, now back home in Lahore, Pakistan, told Tuesday's The New York Times he was beaten, tightly shackled, covered with a hood, given drugs and subjected to electric shocks by Egyptian interrogators at the urging of U.S. agents after being arrested without charges in Jakarta in 2002.

Iqbal said he was later taken to Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan, where he allegedly was held for nearly a year, deprived of sleep and kept in a small cage with other detainees. He ended up at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, U.S. military prison camp, where Iqbal said he tried twice to commit suicide.

Iqbal told the newspaper he was arrested for boasting to friends he knew how to make a shoe bomb, but denies he ever said it. No charges were ever leveled against him. U.S. officials deny they use torture in interrogating terror suspects.

Attorney Richard Cys told the newspaper he plans to sue the U.S. government for the unlawful detention of Iqbal.