KABUL, 24 July 2004 — Three US nationals, self-appointed “anti-terror agents”, apparently set up and ran a torture chamber in Kabul under the noses of the United States military, the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and the Afghan authorities.
Now the US Army has admitted having had contact with the vigilante group on at least one occasion, when they received an Afghan national suspected of terror activities from the group in early May and held him in custody for a month before releasing him.
The three, who along with four Afghan nationals are accused of running the freelance anti-terror ring, went on trial in Kabul Wednesday. Charges include torture, kidnapping and running a private jail.
Claims by group leader Jonathan “Jack” Idema, a former US Special Forces soldier, to have been in constant contact with the Pentagon, have been rubbished by US authorities.
The three, along with four Afghan nationals, are alleged to have rented a house in an upmarket Kabul neighborhood and searched the streets of Kabul looking for possible terror suspects who were then taken to the cellar of the house and “interrogated”, said an Afghan Interior Ministry spokesperson.
Some, under torture, confessed to links with the Al-Qaeda network. The group is alleged to have targeted men with long beards, worn in the traditional Afghan style.
The US administration has offered generous rewards for information leading to the arrest of terrorists, with the price on Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden recently doubled to $50 million.
Detainees in the makeshift prison spoke of sleep and food deprivation, with one saying he had been doused with boiling water. Eleven Afghans were found locked in the cellar when ISAF security forces raided the house on July 5, arresting the vigilante gang.
Just a day before the raid the US military in Afghanistan had moved to cut any perceived ties with Idema, releasing a statement saying that they neither employed the suspected bounty hunter nor supported his activities.
“We were in direct contact with Donald Rumsfeld’s office by phone, by fax and by e-mail,” Idema was reported as saying in the run-up to the trial, adding that the group was also in touch with the Pentagon and “other federal agencies”.
Idema has so far not produced any evidence — e-mails or faxes, for example — to substantiate his claims.
The US military has been embroiled in a prisoner abuse scandal since images showing abuse of detainees in Iraq’s notorious Abu Ghraib prison by US soldiers were broadcast worldwide in April.
Rumors of such abuse have also dogged coalition forces in Iraq in the wake of the Abu Ghraib scandal. A US Army report on Afghan abuse allegations was to have been published in mid-June, but has yet to see the light.
Generally accepted, however, is the fact that Idema’s apparent free hand to torture Afghan “suspects” represents a major failure on the part of international troops and security forces on the ground in Afghanistan.
The former Green Beret even had the support of ISAF troops, he claims, in three June raids on suspected terrorist safe house that were carried out using canine and explosives units. The ISAF, Idema says, believed the vigilante group to be bona fide US Special Forces troops. It remains unclear why background checks with the US Army that would have verified Idema’s identity do not appear to have been carried out.
US forces in Afghanistan also face tough questions over their acceptance in early May of a “terror suspect” picked up by Idema and his associates. The Afghan national was held for a month but later released when it transpired he was not who Idema claimed he was.
“There was a guy, that some other people handed over, and we believed from them that he was on our list of terrorists,” an army spokesperson said. “That doesn’t mean however that we knew Idema’s whole story or were aware of what other things he was doing out here.”
