KABUL, 17 January 2005 — Eighty Afghan detainees were released from US custody at Bagram Air Base near Kabul yesterday ahead of Eid Al-Adha as part of an attempt to bring moderate Taleban supporters in from the cold, officials said.
The 80 prisoners, dressed in blue and gray shalwar-kameez and unlaced blue sports shoes, arrived at the Supreme Court in two buses yesterday afternoon from the US detention facility at Bagram and were released after a hearing.
Chief Justice Fazel Hadi Shinwari told the court the prisoners had been held at Bagram, contradicting earlier reports that they had been released from Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. “The prisoners are released. They will be given clothes and money by the government and they will go home,” he added. Supreme Court spokesman Waheed Mujda told AFP: “We were initially told that they were released from Guantanamo and now they told us that they are released from Bagram. I was given the wrong information.”
Accusations of mistreatment of prisoners have dogged US military jails from Iraq, to Afghanistan and its base in Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. “I have very bad memories of the interrogation because they were torturing us,” said Abdul Manan, 35, also from Kunar. “But after the interrogation period was over, everything was all right,” he told reporters outside the Supreme Court.
US forces captured hundreds of prisoners when they toppled Afghanistan’s radical Islamist Taleban government in late 2001 for failing to surrender Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden, architect of the Sept. 11 attacks on US cities. Prisoners deemed to be the greatest security risk were taken bound and shackled to Guantanamo Bay, while others were kept at US bases across Afghanistan.
Prisoners interviewed outside the court said they had been well-treated at Bagram but some complained of torture out in the field and of false arrest. “I came out of my house to go to work and the Americans stopped me and arrested me,” said Shah Halim, 19, from Sarkano district of Kunar province. “I spent one-and-a-half months in Kunar where they poured cold water on me and tortured me. After that I was taken to Bagram: there it was good and I was not tortured there,” he added.
Others complained about being detained on the basis of false information given by fellow Afghans who held grudges against them. “Our brothers destroy their brothers. The Americans get information from Afghans who have feuds with people and give false reports,” Shinwari said.
The US military has come under fire from rights groups for its methods at detention centers in Afghanistan, where at least eight detainees have died since 2002. Around 400 Taleban and Al-Qaeda suspects are still being held by the US military in Afghanistan. The US military said the release was timed to coincide with Eid.
The release was also linked to a wider move by Afghan authorities to offer an amnesty to the foot soldiers of the ousted Taleban regime in return for their agreement to lay down their arms. “As you know, culturally Eid is a time of forgiveness” Col. David Lamm, the chief of staff for the US military in Afghanistan, told AFP. Lamm said the US had “made gestures to the Afghan government that we would participate in this kind of religious event and reciprocate by letting some detainees go.”
He said some of the detainees were not seen as high-level threats to the 18,000-strong US-led coalition forces stationed in the country. Some had been arrested because they had been at the scene of attacks on US or Afghan troops. “President (Hamid) Karzai has indicated on many occasions this notion of a national forgiveness or reconciliation. If that occurs we would suspect that many of the foot-soldier Taleban would be able to come back in and reintegrate with Afghan society and participate in the peaceful democratic political process,” Lamm said.
A government source said talks between some Taleban leaders and the government about an arms-for-amnesty deal were continuing. Karzai and US Ambassador to Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad have indicated that ordinary Taleban who are not linked to Al-Qaeda or wanted for crimes against humanity would be welcome to return home and reintegrate into society.
Assadullah Wafa, the governor of Paktia province, headed a delegation of tribal elders set to meet with Khalilzad about the issue of Taleban reconciliation. The meeting was postponed because Khalilzad was meeting US senators. “The delegation of elders came to Kabul to speak with the ambassador and hear it themselves, that if the Taleban come back there won’t be problems for them,” Wafa said. However, a man claiming to represent the Taleban said there had been no contact with the government. “There hasn’t been any contact between the Taleban and the government,” Abdul Latif Hakimi told AFP by telephone from an unknown location.
