STOCKHOLM, Sweden, Oct. 5 (UPI) -- Two Egyptians say they were tortured in their homeland after the Swedish security agency handed them over to the CIA.
In an interview with Sveriges Television or SVT, Ahmed Agiza and Mohammed Al Zery said agents of the Swedish Sapo arrested them in 2001 and took them to Bromma Airport near Stockholm. In the airport's small police station, Swedish officers watched as five U.S. agents and two Egyptians prepared them for transport, they said.
"They threw me down on the floor and pressed their knees in my back. They tore all our clothes off and put a diaper, a blindfold and transportation clothes on us," Agiza said in an interview broadcast Wednesday.
The Swedish government agreed in 2008 to pay $435,000 compensation for wrongfully deporting the men, The Local said.
Agiza and Zery said they were kept in solitary confinement in Egypt for months and questioned under torture. While the interrogations were carried out by Egyptians, they believed the United States was behind it.
They said they were shocked that Swedish police and Sapo officers did not intervene when they were undressed at the airport.
"I was surprised and shocked. I had a positive image of Sweden, of Swedish politics and democracy," Agiza told SVT.
