KUWAIT: U.S. confirms detention of American citizen who claims being beaten

A U.S. official has confirmed that an American citizen of Somali origin who claims he was beaten by security agents in Kuwait while they were interrogating him about his travels in Yemen and Somalia is being held in detention in the American-backed Arabian Peninsula country.

State Department spokesman Phillip J. Crowley offered few details about the case other than to say that the man, 18-year-old Gulet Mohamed from Virigina, was receiving U.S. consular assistance. Crowley denied that Mohamed was arrested by Kuwaiti authorities on behalf of the U.S.

"I’m not at liberty to say a great deal," he told reporters Friday. "We are aware of his detention, we have provided him consular services ... he was not detained at the behest of the United States government."

According to a report, Mohamed -- who said he was studying Arabic in Kuwait -- was taken into custody around Dec. 20 when he went to the airport there to have his Kuwaiti visa renewed. Mohamed had done the procedure every three months since he arrived in Kuwait in fall 2009, but this time he didn't get his visa stamped. Instead, he said he was hauled into a room and interrogated for hours by unknown officials before being blindfolded, handcuffed and driven to another location.

He has been held in detainment ever since and his name placed on a no-fly list, meaning he cannot return to the U.S.

Babylon & Beyond was unable to reach any Kuwaiti officials for comment.

In a published interview from his Kuwaiti detention cell a couple of days ago, Mohamed claimed he was beaten with sticks and threatened with electrical shocks if he didn't tell his interrogators what he was doing in Al Qaeda strongholds of Yemen and Somalia during his travels there in 2009.

He said he had traveled to Yemen to study Arabic and Islam and that he spent five months in Somalia living with his aunt and uncle before moving to Kuwait in August 2009 to live with family friends and study more Arabic.

But his interrogators were apparently not convinced that Mohamed was being truthful. They began grilling him about his family's clan in Somalia and whether he had been in contact with American Yemeni cleric and terror suspect Anwar Al-Awlaki while in the Yemeni capital, Sanaa, Mohamed said.

Mohamed also claimed that American Embassy officials and FBI agents who visited him in the Kuwaiti detention facility asked him whether he knew Al-Awlaki and why he had gone to Yemen and Somalia.

The American teenager denied meeting with or having ties to suspected terrorists.

"I am a good Muslim, I despise terrorism,” he was quoted as saying.

His lawyer, Gadeir Abbas of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, has written to the U.S. Justice Department demanding an investigation into his client's detention in Kuwait.

-- Alexandra Sandels in Beirut

Photo: The 18-year-old American citizen Gulet Mohamed is being held in detention in Kuwait, according to U.S. officials. Credit: via Salon.com

Comments

[Verballistic]

Not surprising that Saudi-funded radical Islamic front group CAIR is trying to blame the US for this. Numerous Somali refugees in Minnesota & Virginia have previously been recruited by, fought for & even DIED for the Al Shabbab terror group (the Somali affiliate of AL QAEDA). The US government has actually been called on by relatives to PAY to ship the remains of these dead Somali terrorists back to the US...talk about adding insult to injury.

Kuwait is a Muslim-dominated country with a very conservative Islamic justice system, so if THEY accuse this Somali man of spending time in terrorist strongholds in Yemen & Somalia, there is a very legitimate chance he did just that. Let's not be so quick to take this guy at his word...he wouldnt be the first Muslim extremist to deny being one.

As for CAIR, they rarely meet an Islamic jihadist they dont defend...the most prominent example that comes to mind is CONVICTED Islamic terrorist supporter Osama "Sami" Al-Arian, whom the closet radicals at CAIR still describe as a "political prisoner".

[Jason]

"They came first for the Communists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist.

Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.

Then they came for me
and by that time no one was left to speak up."

~ Pastor Martin Niemöller (1892–1984) about the inactivity of German intellectuals following the Nazi rise to power and the purging of their chosen targets, group after group.

[shakib]

i am a canadian, and my government has on occasions marooned, staved, and tortured its own citizens with the help of foreign governments. Almost all of them turned out to be of muslim, middle eastern or african origin. I would have taken them as isolated cases of mistaken identity had not in all the cases the canadian officials supplied the tormentors not only informations they had no way of getting but often questions which only could have originated in canada. Arar, Khader, Abdelrazek, Souad, Maktal are but a few names in an ever growing list of "no-fliers" since the twin tower landed on anybody who could be perceived of being a muslim. it is understandable that the current government often justifies its domestic terror sweeps to deflect attention from its botched overseas misadventure in afghanistan and economic imbroglio. canadians like their compatriots in the south are often pay too little attention to the unquestionable loyalty the corporate news, that watch-dog of democracy has with the government of the day. unless we adopt a more nuanced approach to the way how news is created in this country, we will fall into the trope of fascist ideology that began with stereotyping a whole community as suspect in the name of the public good.

[Somali]

Thats all it takes to be taken into custody and being beaten by foreign police?
The man is Somali for godsakes, arabic is a second language to us. So just because he wanted to Study arabic he was a suspect and he was beaten and thretenead? And where was his goverment? Where is the country that should protect its citizents? Why does his family pay taxes if not the goverment cares for its citizents.

All i can say is thank god i dont live in the US. Where a muslim is worth next to nothing. I think i appreciate Sweden even more now.