Guantanamo prison draws protests worldwide

British citizen Asif Iqbal, who spent two years in Guantanamo only to be released without charges, returned to Cuba for the protest against the camp.

Iqbal, who said he was interrogated endlessly, tortured with sleep deprivation and coerced into signing a false confession, read out letters from other former detainees.

Cuba's communist government, which has denounced the prison as a concentration camp run by its political enemy, allowed the marchers to get to the security perimeter around the base it claims was illegally occupied by the U.S. Navy a century ago.

Zohra Zewawi, a Dubai resident, said her son Omar Deghayes, 37, who has been held in the camp since his arrest in Pakistan in 2002, lost vision in one eye due to abuse. His brother Taher Deghayes said anger over the handling of prisoners at Guantanamo was helping extremists "recruit more and more wannabe terrorists."

SYMBOL OF U.S. ABUSE

In London, about 300 Amnesty International members and volunteers, many also dressed in bright orange suits, protested outside the U.S. Embassy. Some acted as American guards, ordering others to kneel, lie face down on the floor and remain silent.

Demonstrators outside the U.N. office in Rabat urged governments to press the United States to free their citizens jailed in Guantanamo, where five Moroccans are being held.

In Washington, about 100 people gathered in front of the U.S. Supreme Court, carrying signs stating, "The America I believe in would shut down Guantanamo" and "Stop the torture."

"Guantanamo must be closed. It's an embarrassment for this country," said Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, which organized the rally along with Amnesty International USA.

The International Committee of the Red Cross, in a leaked memo quoted by The New York Times in 2004, accused the U.S. military of using tactics "tantamount to torture" on inmates. Three detainees committed suicide in June.

In Melbourne, protesters gathered outside government buildings to demand that Australia's only Guantanamo detainee, David Hicks, be brought home immediately.

Hicks, 31, was arrested in Afghanistan in late 2001 and accused of fighting for al Qaeda. Charges of conspiracy, attempted murder and aiding the enemy were dropped when the U.S. Supreme Court in June rejected the military tribunal system set up by Bush to try foreign terrorism suspects.

"They've been bullying David for five years," his father Terry Hicks told TEN Network television.

(Additional reporting by Paul Tait in Sydney, Tahani Karrar in London, Jane Sutton in Miami, James Vicini and Andy Sullivan in Washington)