Gitmo Prisoner's Call To Journalist Probed

Authorities are investigating a Guantanamo Bay prisoner's interview with a Middle East television network, but officials have not revoked the man's permission to make weekly phone calls to his family, a prison spokesman said Wednesday.

Mohammed el Gharani, a native of Chad, apparently used his call to speak with an Al-Jazeera network journalist and alleged that he was beaten by guards for refusing to leave his cell, the network reported on its Web site. He was interviewed by journalist Sami al-Haj, who previously was imprisoned at Guantanamo.

It was the first time a Guantanamo prisoner has given a news media interview, though many have spoken to the media after their release.

The military does not allow interviews with Guantanamo prisoners

saying to do so would violate the Geneva Conventions - but el Gharani, who has been ordered released by a U.S. judge, is one of relative few prisoners with special privileges such as weekly phone calls.

The calls are taped and authorities ensure that the numbers called are those of a family member, but the U.S. has little control over what happens at the other end, said Navy Lt. Cmdr. Brook DeWalt, a prison spokesman.

"We can't sit there and have a monitor on the other end of the line where the phone is to see who the phone is passed to," DeWalt said.

El Gharani is represented by lawyers from the British human rights group Reprieve, which declined comment on the interview.

El Gharani is one of about 20 prisoners held in Camp Iguana where prisoners live communally, instead of in the solid-walled cells used elsewhere in the prison, and have access to additional food and entertainment not permitted to the rest of the prison population. Prisoners at Camp Iguana have been approved for release and are awaiting transfer to another country.

DeWalt said el Gharani, who has been at Camp Iguana for several months, has not been moved or subjected to other punishment, but that his phone call remains under investigation.

El Gharani, who is in his early 20s, told Al-Jazeera that guards beat him with batons and sprayed him with tear gas. He did not give the date of the alleged abuse but said it occurred after the November election of President Barack Obama, who took office in January and has ordered Guantanamo closed by the end of the year.

The prisoner says he refused to leave his cell because he was not being permitted to interact with other detainees and was denied "normal food." He said a group of six soldiers in protective gear removed him from the cell and beat him, breaking one of his front teeth. DeWalt says he has no evidence to substantiate the allegations.

A U.S. judge ordered el Gharani released in January, dismissing as unreliable the military's allegations that he was part of al Qaeda and had worked for the Taliban in Afghanistan.

El Gharani was arrested in Pakistan in 2001 at a mosque by local police and turned over to U.S. forces in 2002. He was one of the first Guantanamo Bay detainees and one of the youngest.

The U.S. holds about 240 men at the U.S. base in Cuba, most on suspicion of terrorism or links to al Qaeda and the Taliban.