Abu Ali, who yesterday was arrested for plotting to assassinate President Bush, has claimed he was detained in Saudi Arabia by American intelligence and tortured under both the watch and request of the U.S. government. United States doctors have checked out Abu Ali and have found no evidence of torture.

In papers filed in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, U.S. Attorney Paul J. McNulty said that the student, Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, saw a doctor Monday and that the physician found no evidence of harm. The prosecutor said Abu Ali was allowed to play soccer and work out while in Saudi custody and called his allegations of mistreatment “an utter fabrication.”

An attorney for Abu Ali said in court this week that his client was whipped and handcuffed while he was held in a Saudi prison from June 2003 until early this week. Saudi security sources said yesterday that officers had used physical and psychological pressure on Abu Ali to elicit information about al Qaeda cells and operations but that it stopped short of severe or prolonged torture. They said the FBI was not directly involved and compared the treatment to tactics used by U.S. military officers against suspected terrorist detainees.

“The defendant’s claims of mistreatment are an utter fabrication intended to divert attention from his criminal involvement with an al-Qaeda cell in Saudi Arabia,” McNulty said in the papers, which ask the court to keep Abu Ali incarcerated until his trial.

This is not the first time a suspected terrorist has played the torture card. Each and every time a terrorist defendent has done so the claim has achieved front-page status in world-wide newspapers. Like many other alleged cases of torture, there is no evidence of torture.

Rusty Shackleford has stayed on top of this case and has some evidence pointing to Abu Ali’s ties with terror and the Saudi Arabian government. Read this post and then read this one.