SARAJEVO (Reuters) - An Algerian man who spent nearly seven years in Guantanamo Bay says his U.S. interrogators never questioned him on the main terrorism allegation against him.

Mustafa Ait Idir, one of three Algerians released this week from the U.S. detention centre at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, shows Reuters the documentation and letters that he had received from his family at his Sarajevo home on December 17, 2008. The trio returned to their adopted homeland of Bosnia the day before as the first prisoners released under court order from the U.S. military base, where they said they went through the worst kinds of torture. REUTERS/Danilo Krstanovic

Mustafa Ait Idir, who was freed this week and returned to his adopted homeland of Bosnia, was accused of planning to go to Afghanistan to fight against U.S. forces.

“They’ve never asked anything about charges which were brought against us. They’ve never asked about Afghanistan,” he told Reuters in an interview.

“They only questioned me about Islamic organizations working in Bosnia...I’ve spent many years in the worst place on earth for doing nothing.”

Opponents of Guantanamo -- the U.S. prison camp on Cuba which President-elect Barack Obama has vowed to close -- say hundreds of inmates have been held there for years on flimsy legal pretexts. Only 22 have been charged: one pleaded guilty, two were convicted at trial and 19 cases are still pending.

Ait Idir was one of six men arrested in Bosnia in October 2001 and sent three months later to Guantanamo -- despite having being freed by a Bosnian court for lack of evidence.

U.S. President George W. Bush said in 2002 that the group had been plotting a bomb attack on the U.S. embassy in Sarajevo. But a Justice Department attorney later dropped those accusations and said instead that the men had planned to go to Afghanistan to join the insurgency against U.S. forces.

Held as “enemy combatants,” they were never formally charged. Last month, a federal judge ruled that five of the men should be released “forthwith” because the U.S. government had failed to prove the Afghan allegation. Ait Idir and two of the others were sent back to Bosnia this week.

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TORTURE ALLEGATION

Looking frail after his years in detention, Ait Idir said he had been denied medication he needed in prison. The 38-year-old displayed a broken finger he said he had suffered there.

He said he was kept for four months, lightly dressed, in a very cold refrigerated container. For short periods of the day he was taken outside, where it was very hot. Other prisoners were subjected to long periods in total darkness or very bright light, he said.

“There was torture every minute,” Ait Idir said. “It did not matter to them if we were terrorists or not.”

A devout believer, the former inmate said the gravest offence for Muslim prisoners was when soldiers threw around Korans, swore at Allah or abused them during prayers.

A Pentagon spokesman rejected the allegations.

“We treat all detainees humanely,” said Navy Cmdr. Jeffrey Gordon. “There have been 12 major reviews conducted of detention operations over the past several years, none of which found there was any policy that ever condoned abuse.”

The official also said that an al Qaeda manual found in 2000 found that operatives were instructed to complain they had been tortured while in detention.

Set up only months into the “war on terrorism” that President George W. Bush declared after the September 11 attacks of 2001, Guantanamo has been widely condemned around the world as a stain on the United States’ human rights record.

Ait Idir, a computer science engineer who saw his son Abdulah for the first time this week as he was born after his detention, alleged he was often beaten. He said he saw instances when U.S. medical personnel advised military staff where to hit prisoners in sensitive spots.

But speaking as his three sons by his Bosnian wife played outside the room, he said he did not blame the army or hate Americans.

“They only did what they’ve been ordered to do. They did not hate us but had to obey their superiors.”