A Briton held at the US naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba claims he was subjected to abuse and humiliation, echoing torture accounts from other British nationals held there, the Guardian reported Saturday.

Martin Mubanga claimed he was kept shackled for so long that he urinated on himself, and then was forced to clean up the mess, that an interrogator stood on his hair and that he was subjected to extreme temperatures, according to the newspaper.

Mubanga, a 31-year-old from London, was quoted in a Foreign Office document prepared for his family, following a British official's visit to the detention center in early October.

The official said that during the hour-long visit, Mubanga was kept "shackled to the ring in the floor", —^^^-^—^^

according to the document.

The detainee, arrested in Zambia, has been held for more than two years in the US detention center. Most of the 550 detainees there arc suspected Taliban and Al-Qaeda militants rounded up during military operations in Afghanistan following the September 11 attacks in 2001.

Another British detainee, Moazzam Begg, a 36-year-old arrested in 2002 in Pakistan, claimed in October he was subjected to "vindictive torture" and death threats, and that he had witnessed the deaths of two fellow detainees "at the hands of US military person-

nel".

Four of five Britons released from Guantanamo last March have filed a lawsuit in Washington seeking damages from US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other top officials for alleged torture and abuse.

The Foreign Office said it had raised Mubanga's allegations with US authorities and that "their response is that they are without merit," the Guardian quoted a spokeswoman as saying.

"At this stage we would not propose to pursue this further," she said.