This is al-Qa'eda Rule 18...

Those who work themselves into a tizzy about alleged torture at Gitmo need a bit of education. Specifically, they need to acquaint themselves with the Al Qaeda training manual's "Rule 18": claim you were tortured. A lap dance is many things, but I've never heard it called torture before. The Boys from Brazil must be chortling into their soup about now. They knew what torture was.

The men's claim that they were tortured at Guantanamo should also be set in the context of the al-Qa'eda training manual discovered during a raid in Manchester a couple of years ago. Lesson 18 of that manual, whose authenticity has not been questioned, emphatically states, under the heading "Prison and Detention Centres", that, when arrested, members of al-Qa'eda "must insist on proving that torture was inflicted on them by state security investigators. [They must] complain to the court of mistreatment while in prison". That is not, of course, proof that the Britons were not tortured in Guantanamo. But it ought to encourage some doubts about uncritically accepting that they were – which seems to be the attitude adopted by most of the media.

The Telegraph: This is al-Qa'eda Rule 18: 'You must claim you were tortured'