KABUL, 17 August 2004 — American vigilante Jonathan “Jack” Idema told an Afghan courtroom yesterday the US Embassy in Kabul was withholding documents that would show he was working with the US authorities at the time of his arrest. Idema, a former soldier, stands accused, along with two other Americans and four Afghans, of illegally detaining Afghan citizens, and entering Afghanistan with invalid visas.

Wearing khaki fatigues and dark glasses, and speaking through an interpreter, the bearded Idema told Judge Abdul Basit Bakhtyari that “political motives” were at play in the trial.

Idema claimed his group had been disowned by the US government because their case followed in the wake of the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal in Iraq. The co-accused Americans Brett Bennett, another former soldier, and professional cameraman Edward Caraballo, stood silently as Idema held forth from the dock. He said the US Embassy was sitting on 500 documents, 300 pictures and 200 videotapes he said related to his group’s activities in Afghanistan.

“If I had my 500 documents given back to me by the US Embassy — it doesn’t want the press to see them, that’s for damn sure. If I had those documents given back to me I could show every bit of this — I have documents from the Pentagon, back and forth with senior officials at the Pentagon, the CIA, FBI — and of everything else this court would need to know.”

He said the documents would prove that “while we were not in the United States Army we were working for the United States Army”. Idema maintained that after they were arrested his group had been disowned because an Afghan radio station had aired accusations that it had tortured prisoners.

“As soon as the word ‘torture’ hit the Afghan airwaves the American government said: ‘Whoa, don’t have anything to do with these guys’.” Idema denied accusations that detainees had been burned with cigarettes or hung upside down, saying only standard interrogation techniques had been used on the detained men.

At one point Idema read from a purported e-mail exchange with a Swedish liaison official for the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), the NATO-led peacekeeping force in Kabul, to support his claim that he was working with the authorities.

He said he still possessed three documents or e-mails. “I have this document between the Department of Defense and me. It clearly proves the ISAF is lying ... the army is lying when it says we were not working for them, and the Department of Defense is lying when they say they didn’t know we were here.”

Idema and his two American colleagues were arrested on July 5 after a brief shootout in Kabul. Along with some Afghan accomplices they had illegally detained and interrogated in a Kabul house eight people they believed to be terrorists, Afghan officials said. The three face up to 15 years in prison if found guilty of illegally taking people hostage, detaining and torturing them. Soon after the trial began, Idema burst out in frustration: “If I’m not going to be allowed to finish, give me the 15 years right now. Let’s get this over with.”

Meanwhile, at least six Taleban fighters were killed when US and Afghan troops clashed with the militants in the southern Afghan province of Kandahar, local police said yesterday. A Kandahar police official told Deutsche Presse Agentur that the fighting took place in the Mahrouf district of Kandahar on Sunday afternoon.

“The US and Afghan troops also arrested 11 Taleban fighters,” he said. Taleban spokesman Mufti Abdul Latif Hakimi also confirmed the clash but said only one Taleban had been killed and four others injured.

Hakimi also said the militants had destroyed five US and Afghan vehicles and all soldiers on board were either killed or injured. The fighting lasted for five hours, he said. He told DPA he was not aware of any arrests made by US and Afghan forces.

Hakimi also said the Taleban fighters killed five Afghan soldiers when they ambushed the troops’ vehicle in the southern province of Zabul. Afghan officials were not immediately available to comment.

In another development, more than 1,500 Afghan National Army troops accompanied by their US military trainers were deployed to western Afghanistan yesterday following the latest bout of deadly factional fighting to hit the country, officials said.

The troop buildup was prompted by protracted clashes between local warlords just eight weeks before Afghans go to the polls to choose a president.

The fighting between forces loyal to Herat Gov. Ismail Khan and his longtime rival Amanullah Khan began early Saturday at Shindand airport, some 660 kilometers west of Kabul, and spread into surrounding areas.

No official death toll from the violence has been released but at least 22 people have been killed. One Afghan official told AFP yesterday as many as 60 had died. “More than 60 people were killed,” in the two days of fighting, spokesman for Ismail Khan, Nasir Ahmad Alwai, told AFP.