A BOLTON torture victim is is trying to win compensation for his nightmare ordeal in a Middle East jail. Computer programmer Yasser Al Sayegh has accused security services of degrading treatment and barbaric practices to force him to confess to owning pro-democracy leaflets while he was working in Bahrain. Mr Sayegh, a British passport owner, says he was beaten, burned with cigarettes, tied up by his wrists for long periods of time and subjected to painful form of torture known as falaqa when prisoners are hung over a stick by their knees while their feet are whipped and hit with a metal bar.

When he continued to deny being involved in political groups, he says he was thrown in a tiny cell and held in appalling conditions without access to lawyers, embassy officials or family and friends in Bahrain or Bolton.

He says a hunger strike forced his captors to allow one phone call to his son in Bolton and monthly visits by his family.

The agony only ended six months later when Lord Avebury intervened and he was freed without charge and ordered back to Britain.

Now civil rights groups, Bolton MP Ruth Kelly and over 1000 local supporters have asked Foreign Secretary Robin Cook to take up his fight.

They want the Bahraini government to officially clear Mr Sayegh's name and pay him compensation.

The 31-year-old said: "They have taken away my future. I still suffer from my injuries and have flashbacks and nightmares.

"I cannot get a job but I have to provide for my son. This is the most important thing. I want him to have a future and I do not want him to think I was in prison because I was some sort of criminal. It is difficult for him to understand because this sort of thing does not happen in Britain."

Mr Sayegh says his nightmare began when he returned to his native Bahrain to be near his sick father after 12 years living and working in Bolton. His marriage to a local girl had broken down and he had just been made redundant.

One day he was on the phone, he said, when a colleague threw a political leaflet into the bin at the Bahrain bank where he was working and he received the blame.

He says bosses sacked him and he was later picked up at his parents' home by the security forces who tortured him over five days in an effort to force a confession of political involvement.

Mr Sayegh says he always denied the charges and was freed after five days. Days later he was picked up again and told further political leaflets had been found in a cupboard in work.

The 31-year-old argued he had not been back to the bank but says he was tortured again for about two weeks and then imprisoned without trial or medical treatment for six months.

After a campaign by family, friends and civil rights campaigners in Britain, he was freed in May last year and returned to Bolton to be near his seven-year-old son.

He said: "I will never forget Lord Avebury. Without him I could have been executed or left in prison. He never lost faith in my innocence and did a great job."

A spokesman for MP Ruth Kelly, who recently handed in a 1000 name petition to Robin Cook's department, said: "She was horrified to hear about Mr Al-Sayegh's case and has written to the Foreign Office asking them to intervene.

"She has promised to do all she can to ensure that Mr Al-Sayegh receives compensation from the Bahraini authorities for his treatment."

Mr Sayegh is still receiving psychiatric and medical help to overcome the painful ordeal and blot out the memories of the atrocities he witnessed.

But he believes that without his son he would have gone completely mad, sharing a seven foot square cell with 10 other prisoners who were routinely tortured.

"If I had not had my child it would have been very different," he said. "I am here because of how much I love him.

"They would not let me have a picture of him but I kept remembering him; his face, his smile. I kept imagining him as a 15-year-old or a 19-year-old. He lifted my morale."

He says guards taunted him by saying nobody knew where he was and he would never see his son again. They even hid him in toilet block during a visit by the Red Cross because they were scared the visitors would find out he was a British passport holder, he said.

But he never gave up hope that family and friends would work hard and pray for his release and remembers the day well.

"One morning they opened the door and called out my name. They said I was being released.

"They took me to court. It was the first time I had seen the sun and I was really excited to see the sun and feel the fresh air. I begged the officer for the first cigarette since I had been in prison. He flicked a cigarette end on the floor and I picked it up and smoked it."

After his release Mr Sayegh was ordered to leave Bahrain and says, even if he was allowed, he is too scared of the oppressive regime to visit his elderly parents.

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