KABUL, 22 July 2004 — A US citizen appearing in court yesterday charged with running a private “war on terror” in Afghanistan claimed he and two other Americans were working with the full knowledge of US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
Jonathan Idema, who denies charges he detained and tortured Afghan citizens without US government consent, said they were hunting terrorists under the auspices of the Pentagon and said they had been abandoned by US authorities.
“The American forces absolutely condoned what we did, they absolutely supported what we did. We have extensive evidence of that,” said Idema, who is on trial with his subordinates Brent Bennett and Edward Caraballo.
US-led coalition forces have disavowed all ties with Idema, but international peacekeeping troops said they were duped into helping Idema’s team, who wore US-style uniforms, believing they were legitimate Special Forces operatives.
Judge Abdul Baset Bakhtiari allowed the three men and four Afghan associates also on trial with them to delay their trial for up to 20 days to allow them to prepare a better defense and find adequate translators.
The adjournment came after two Afghan interpreters struggled to translate comments from the judge, prosecution and witnesses, and Idema protested that he and his associates would not be able to get a fair trial. “It is impossible for us to know what’s happening,” he said.
US and Afghan authorities allege that Idema’s freelance counterterror cell illegally jailed and tortured eight Afghan citizens without government authority. The three US men, and four Afghans face jail sentences of between 16 and 20 years if found guilty, according to prosecutor Mohammed Naeem Dawari.
Idema said that he had been running a counterterrorism operation under deep cover for some months and handed militants he had detained to US-led coalition forces for further questioning on several occasions.
The group had e-mails, faxes and recordings to prove their links with senior US Defense Department officials, he added. “We were in contact directly by fax and e-mail and phone with Donald Rumsfeld’s office,” he said.
He claimed to have handed the Taleban intelligence chief of the eastern Afghanistan city of Jalalabad to the FBI for questioning and to have foiled bomb plots and assassination attempts on senior Afghan government officials.
Although the trial was formally adjourned, three witnesses who had been held in Idema’s private torture chamber gave statements to the court. Ghulam Sakhi said he was seized while in a taxi en route to Kabul from northern Laghman province. The vehicle was searched and he was bound, hooded and taken to a private jail by Idema and his Afghan associates.
While in captivity Sakhi was scaled with boiling water, had his head repeatedly forced under water and was kicked so badly on his chest he was left with breathing problems, he told the court.
Kabul shopkeeper Sakhi said he gave his captors the name of fellow detainee Mohammed Arif Malikyar, an official at the Afghan Ministry of Education, in an attempt to stop repeated beatings after he failed to recognize any of the pictures of terror suspects Idema’s group had showed him.
Brent Bennett would “come and kick me on my stomach. He would pour hot water over me. I was screaming,” taxi driver Shir Jan told the court. US news reports said Idema was a bounty hunter who spent time in jail for fraud, formerly fought with Northern Alliance forces in Afghanistan and may have been hunting senior Al-Qaeda leaders in the hope of claiming the substantial rewards on offer.
US forces here are already under fire from rights groups for their mistreatment of detainees in Afghanistan, one of whom died while in custody.
The arrests have been a headache for foreign forces in Afghanistan, where the US military has been under scrutiny for its treatment of suspected militant prisoners. The US military has been accused by US-based Human Rights Watch of “systematic” abuse of detainees. Idema, wearing dark glasses, combat boots, khaki trousers and a shirt with a US flag on the shoulder was brought into court in handcuffs, which were removed when the trial began.
The packed court sat for about two hours with a prosecutor giving details of the charges against Idema, Caraballo and Bennett. Idema said Bennett was working with him but Caraballo was a journalist.
Idema told reporters he had broken up a plot to attack US forces with fuel-truck bombs and to assassinate Afghan officials including Education Minister Yunis Qanuni and Defense Minister Mohammad Qasim Fahim.
Meanwhile, 11 Afghans including a former district police chief were killed yesterday in an attack in the southern province of Helmand, the provincial governor said. It was not immediately clear who was responsible, he said. “In total we have 11 people killed in this ambush,” Governor Sher Mohammad Akhundzada said in Lashkar Gah, the provincial capital.
The former police chief, Qayoum Jan, and 10 of his supporters were killed when attackers fired on their vehicle with rocket-propelled grenades and rifles.
“The identity of the attackers is not known,” Akhundzada said. The south is a hotbed of Taleban insurgency but it is also a major drug-producing region and bitter tribal rivalry also leads to conflict.
