[3] Dergoul had held a variety of jobs in the UK, including being employed as a care worker at an old age home, and as a mini-cab driver, before traveling to Afghanistan, in 2001, where he was handed over to US forces, and ultimately transferred to Guantanamo.
[7] Dergoul sued the British government, claiming its security organizations MI5 and MI6 had been complicit in the interrogations he underwent while in US custody, that violated both the USA's and the UK's obligations under the international human rights agreement.
[8][9] Dergoul, and four other British citizens, Jamal al Harith, Ruhal Ahmed, Asif Iqbal, and Shafiq Rasul, were repatriated in March 2004.
[13][14] Other former captives had offered accounts of how the camp's riot squads, the Guantanamo Emergency Reaction Force, used brutality in an arbitrary and excessive manner.
[citation needed] At a time when the Guantanamo captives were widely described as having been "captured on the battlefield", Dergoul told Rose he had been apprehended by members of an Afghan militia.
[citation needed] Dergoul described how two Pakistani friends who had partnered with him as real estate speculation, and how this innocent enterprise leads to his wounding, capture, and ultimately, the amputation of his left arm and a big toe.
[citation needed] Rose noted that former Guantanamo commandant Geoffrey Miller, who had introduced interrogation techniques to Iraq which triggered controversy there, because the USA acknowledged that Iraqi captives were protected by the Geneva Conventions.
In particular, Dergoul had described to Rose being subjected to "short shackling", and other long confinement in "stress positions", "extremes of heat and cold", and sleep deprivation.
Dergoul described how after being left alone, shackled, all day, he would feel a mounting pressure to void his bladder or move his bowels, and would eventually be forced to soil himself.
[20] Historian Andy Worthington, the author of The Guantanamo Files, noted that Dergoul had gone on record that he had been held in cells adjacent to two of the three men, and simply could not believe they could have killed themselves.
[23] Dergoul's claim was thirteen pages long and focused on the cooperation and active involvement of two of the UK's security agencies -- MI5 and MI6—in his detention and interrogation.
Instead, he said, he was given just enough painkiller to stop the pain from being overwhelming, but not so much that he couldn't answer interrogators when they started asking questions again.Tarek Dergoul reports that he only became religious during his detention.
[25] Dergoul was repatriated prior to the United States Supreme Court ruling that the Department of Defense had to prepare a list of the allegations used to justify Guantanamo captives' continued detention.
In "American Methods: Torture And the Logic of Domination", Kristian Williams quoted Dergoul's account as an instance of an ERF squad being used to punish captives, rather than its mandated use to maintain order and protect the safety of staff and guards.
[33] Jeannine Bell, writing in the Indiana Law Journal, asserted Dergoul was lucky not to be beaten unconscious like a nearby captive while he was held in Bagram.
[35] Anthony Lewis, writing in the New York Review of Books, cites Dergoul's description of being made to soil himself as an example of the USA violating the international "Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, Degrading Treatment or Punishment".