KABUL, 17 March 2004 — Twenty-three Afghans held at the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay for up to two-and-a-half years were released in Kabul yesterday and some complained of being unfairly detained and treated worse than animals. They protested their innocence and accused the US of mistreating them as they prepared to travel back to their villages, many after more than two years behind bars.
The group, believed to be the largest single release of Afghans from the US military detention center in Cuba, arrived at Bagram air base Monday night where they were met by officials from the International Committee of the Red Cross.
Aged mostly between 25 and 50, they were brought to the ICRC compound in Kabul and given clothes and cash to pay for their journeys to their hometowns, most of which are in southern areas of Afghanistan still wracked by Taleban violence.
“I’m an innocent and poor man,” said bearded Muhammad Wazir, 60, from southern Helmand province. “I was in my home, unaware of Taleban and Al-Qaeda when I was caught,” he told AFP at the ICRC compound.
“If I’m a Taleban or Al-Qaeda I want to be punished, if I’m not, then they should compensate me. The two-and-a-half years that I have spent in pain and soreness - who is going to pay?”
More than 600 prisoners are still being held as “enemy combatants” at Camp Delta, a maximum security prison at a US naval base at Guantanamo. The US has come under pressure from rights groups over its treatment of prisoners there.
On Monday, the Pentagon dismissed as “lies” charges leveled by recently released Britons that they were beaten and maltreated while in custody there.
But Muhammad Osman, one of the newly freed Afghans, said: “It was a jail, not only a jail but a very bad jail.” Another former inmate, 27-year-old Muhammad, said US officials mistreated prisoners in Guantanamo Bay.
