Topic: Abu Zubaydah

Abu Zubaydah (Arabic: ابو زبيدة‎, Abū Zubaydah; born 12 March 1971 as Zayn al-Abidin Muhammad Husayn) is a Saudi Arabian torture victim currently held in U.S. custody in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Arrested in Pakistan in March 2002, he has been in US custody for more than eight years, four-and-a-half of them spent incommunicado in solitary confinement in undisclosed locations. He was subjected to the technique of waterboarding and has allegedly been subjected to numerous other interrogation techniques. These techniques, include forced nudity, sleep deprivation, confinement in small dark boxes, deprivation of solid food, cold temperatures, stress positions, and physical assaults. Videotapes of some of his interrogations are believed to be amongst those destroyed by the CIA in 2005.

Abu Zubaydah was transferred to Guantanamo in September 2006 where he and other former CIA detainees are held in Camp 7 where conditions are the most isolating. He has never been charged, despite being accused for years by US authorities. The United States government now admits Abu Zubaydah was never a member of al Qaeda, nor involved in the 1998 African embassy bombings or the attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001.