Check out this horrifying lede from a Guardian story: Girma Belay was in the wrong place at the wrong time. As he sat in a flat in Stockwell, south London, waiting for a friend to bake Ethiopian bread, he was seized at gunpoint by anti-terror police with laser-sighted weapons, forced to strip naked, punched, beaten and humiliated. With the red laser beam blinding him, he heard someone shout, "Take him out."

An excerpt from the Aug. 4 story:

Mr Belay understands police are doing a difficult job, but he wants a personal apology from the officer who beat him.

A qualified marine engineer, he has demonstrated many times outside Downing Street against Tony Blair's association with the Ethiopian prime minister, Meles Zenawi. When the July 7 bombs went off he was on his way to Gleneagles to protest against the invitation of Mr Zenawi one month after his security forces shot dead 36 people in Addis Ababa.

"Now that is no more, I am in fear; I don't want to go out," he said. "I hate those bastard terrorists as much as anyone in this country. They have ruined it for me here.

"I was tasting the sweetness of freedom in this country but those bastards acted in such a way all that sweetness and freedom was destroyed for people like me."

Alone in his flat four days ago, struggling to cope with flashbacks, Mr Belay tied a noose in a length of nylon rope and contemplated suicide.

"It keeps coming back to me suddenly in waves; it's a nightmare," he said. "I used to love this country as much as you English do. I would have given my life for it because it has done a lot for me but now that is tainted.

"I have nothing left in my life now, I have no one to turn to, there is no one helping me."

The story makes the point that 44 people have been arrested on suspicion of terrorist-related activity since the July 7 bombings in London. Sixteen of those remain in custody. "Little is heard of those innocent people caught up in the biggest anti-terrorist operation carried out in Britain."

Belay's terrifying incident took place mere hours after Jean Charles de Menezes, a Brazilian living and working in Britain, was chased down and killed on a London tube train by British police on July 22 -- one day after a second round of transit bombings in the British capital.

He was interrogated twice during his six days in custody.