Omar Deghayes grew up a Libyan citizen. However, his mother filed for refugee status, and took herself and her children to the United Kingdom to start a life. This made Omar Deghayes a legal UK citizen.
In 2002, Deghayes was visiting Pakistan, where he was suddenly arrested and shipped to the Guantanamo Bay detention camp. He was held at the camp for over 5 years, and when he was released, he was never charged with any crime - even throughout the course of his 5 year detainment.
The reason Deghayes was arrested is because an anonymous informant told authorities that Deghayes was one of the men making terrorist threats in a video. As a result, Deghayes was arrested and tortured almost every day for over 5 years of his life. In fact, some of his torture involved a guard gauging at his eyes, which left Deghayes with one permanently blind eye.
In 2005, Omar Deghayes was one of the Guantanamo Bay prisoners that participated in a hunger strike. He thought he was going to die in Guantanamo Bay, and wrote on his cell walls "I am slowly dying in this solitary prison cell, I have no rights, no hope. So why not take my destiny into my own hands, and die for a principle?"
Omar now lives in the United Kingdom, trying to get his life back on track after the worst five years of his life. An investigation proved that Omar was NOT one of the men in a terrorist video, as the anonymous informant had claimed.
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