The prison never conformed to the Geneva Conventions, which were, essentially, discarded when the Bush administration decided to hold prisoners in its “war on terror” as “illegal enemy combatants,” and have never been reinstated. Moreover, the prisoners remained beyond the law even when the Supreme Court granted habeas corpus rights to the Guantánamo prisoners in June 2004, and again in June 2008, after Congress had tried to remove these rights in the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 and the Military Commissions Act of 2006 (PDF).

In March 2009, in Washington D.C., District Judge John D. Bates briefly brought this era of secrecy and unaccountability to an end, granting the habeas corpus petitions of three foreign prisoners — Redha al-Najar, a Tunisian seized in Karachi, Pakistan in May 2002; Amin al-Bakri, a Yemeni gemstone dealer seized in Bangkok, Thailand in late 2002; and Fadi al-Maqaleh, a Yemeni seized in 2004.

Although Judge Bates ruled that the habeas corpus rights granted by the Supreme Court to the Guantánamo prisoners extended to the foreign prisoners in Bagram, because “the detainees themselves as well as the rationale for detention are essentially the same,” the Obama administration appealed, and had its appeal granted by the D.C. Circuit Court in May 2010.

This ruling failed to take into account that Judge Bates had not ruled in favor of a fourth man, Pacha Wazir (aka Haji Wazir), an Afghan, deciding that the fate of Afghan prisoners ought to involve negotiations between the US and Afghan governments. Wazir, it turned out, had been seized in the United Arab Emirates, where he ran a chain of hawala banks, in 2003, and rendered to a CIA black site prior to his arrival at Bagram, on suspicion that he was a banker for Osama bin Laden. In June 2011, former CIA interrogator Glenn Carle wrote a book, The Interrogator: An Education, in which he explained that he had established that Wazir was not bin Laden’s banker, but stated that his findings were ignored, and Wazir was not released from Bagram until February 2010.

For the other prisoners, Judge Bates also found that the review process introduced under President Bush at Bagram was both “inadequate” and “more error-prone” than the review process introduced at Guantánamo, and, also found that it “falls well short of what the Supreme Court found inadequate at Guantánamo.” In response, the Obama administration introduced a review process modeled on the review process at Guantánamo that the Supreme Court found inadequate, and this is the process that has been used ever since to decide what should happen to the 645 prisoners who were held in September 2009 (according to the first unclassified prisoner list, released in January 2010), and the thousands of prisoners held in the last two and a half years.

By January this year, the Washington Post reported that 2,600 prisoners were held in Bagram — or, more specifically, in the replacement facility, renamed the Parwan Detention Center, which opened in December 2009. In addition, as the Post described it on January 5, President Karzai “called for the United States to hand over its biggest military prison in Afghanistan within a month,” stating that “Afghan government investigators had found violations of the Afghan constitution and international human rights conventions at the prison.” He “did not provide details of the alleged violations, but he said in a statement that they constituted a ‘breach of Afghan sovereignty.’”

President Karzai was drawing on a US memorandum publicly issued two years ago, in which officials stated that they expected the Parwan facility to be transferred to Afghan control in early 2012, although US officials have pointed out that any proposed transfer is subject to “demonstrated capacity,” and the Afghan government does not have a good track record to date.

Nevertheless, in sounding out the possibilities of closing the Parwan facility, the Obama administration is finally addressing the problems presented by the foreign prisoners. A year ago, Daphne Eviatar of Human Rights First visited Parwan and discovered that 41 prisoners came from outside Afghanistan, and were still held, even though “more than a dozen” had been recommended for release. One story she heard concerned Hamidullah Khan, a Pakistani who was just 16 years old when he was seized in the summer of 2008. When he was allowed to communicate with his family, in 2010, he explained that his case had been reviewed, and he had been recommended for release, but he was still held.

Eviatar added that the foreign prisoners were “from Pakistan, Tunisia, Kuwait, Yemen and even Germany,” but could not find any explanation for why, even when cleared, they were still held. She noted that “one soldier complained about how frustrating it is to be unable to tell innocent prisoners when they’ll be going home, or what’s causing the holdup,” and that US officials in Afghanistan had only been able to state that the problem was “somewhere in Washington.”

In the Washington Post last week, Peter Finn and Julie Tate reported that Washington was finally dealing with the problem. Noting that the foreign prisoners now “number close to 50″ and “were in some cases picked up on the battlefield in Afghanistan and in others detained in third countries and taken to the prison by the CIA, according to US and foreign officials,” they wrote that, with a handover of the prison now on the cards, “American officials believe that Afghan authorities are unlikely to have any interest in either continuing to hold the foreigners or in putting them on trial.”

The officials added that, by starting the process of repatriating foreign prisoners now, they were hoping not only to successfully “negotiate transfers with the detainees’ home countries,” but also to “arrange for post-transfer monitoring, and secure diplomatic assurances that detainees will not be abused when they return home.”

They added that a “small number” of those currently held “may be deemed to pose a terrorist threat, requiring their continued detention or close supervision by their home country if released,” and also explained that some of the men are Yemeni, “complicating their possible repatriation,” because, in response to the failed airline bomb plot in December 2009 by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a Nigerian man recruited in Yemen, President Obama issued a moratorium on releasing any Yemenis, “because of concerns about the security situation in Yemen,” which still stands to this day.

As the Post described it, the Parwan prison holds “up to two dozen Arabs of various nationalities, according to administration and foreign officials,” although the rest are Pakistanis, and it was noted that the first to be released may well be one of these men, Yunus Rahmatullah.

Seized in Iraq by British Special Forces in 2004, he was subsequently handed over to US forces and rendered to Bagram by the CIA, where his detention went largely unnoticed until lawyers in the UK — at solicitors Leigh Day & Co. and the legal action charity Reprieve — succeeded in convincing the Court of Appeal to grant him a writ of habeas corpus and to order the British government to take custody of him. As the Post described it, his lawyers “argued in the British courts that the transfer violated a memorandum of understanding between the US and British militaries, and was a grave violation of the Geneva Conventions because it involved the removal of a civilian from the war theater.” The judges added that if foreign secretary William Hague and defense minister Philip Hammond failed to secure his release, the court would “be moved to commit you to prison for your contempt in not obeying the said writ.” A deadline of February 14 was set for Rahmatullah’s release.

The UK government has appealed the ruling, although ministers have asked for the Obama administration to arrange for Rahmatullah to be returned to Pakistan, which, as the Post put it, “would satisfy the court and his lawyers.” The British court also made a point of noting that, back in 2010, a review board at Bagram had cleared Rahmatullah for release.

Cori Crider, Reprieve’s legal director, said, “It would make no sense for the Obama administration to ratify this Bush-era war crime. Under the Geneva Convention, Yunus Rahmatullah is Britain’s responsibility and should never have been sent to Bagram in the first place. The man is cleared, his family are waiting, and Pakistan is apparently happy to have him — it’s high time to send him home.”

The Post noted that another Pakistani, Amanatullah Ali, who was also picked up by British forces in Iraq, is seeking his release through the US courts, and that seven Pakistanis in total, including Yunus Rahmatullah and Hamidullah Khan, are suing the Pakistani government “either for its alleged role in their capture or for failing to secure their release.”

US officials, stating that they were prepared to release Rahmatullah, nevertheless played down the role of the British court, and also “said that any transfer home has been complicated by the deterioration in relations between the United States and Pakistan.” One official said, “We will do this on our timetable.”

However, it appears that this is not entirely true, and that the days of holding prisoners at Bagram whether or not they have been cleared for release — as at Guantánamo, where 89 of the remaining 171 prisoners have been cleared, but are still held — are coming to an end. For the foreign prisoners held at Bagram without rights for up to ten years, the potential end of this long-running saga of injustice is to be welcomed.

POSTSCRIPT: At the time of publication, an Internet search revealed to me that I had missed an Associated Press story from last April in which it was reported that Amin al-Bakri, Redha al-Najar and Fadi al-Maqaleh had all been cleared for release from the Parwan prison.

The AP noted that al-Bakri, who was 42 years old, had a review board hearing in August 2010, and, in October, “was handed a paper saying he was going to be released to his home country,” but in April 2011 he was still seeking his release via the US courts. Ramzi Kassem, a law professor at the City University of New York who filed the appeal, said, ”Amin has been there for almost a decade of his life,” adding that he “should never have been there in the first place. He has never been a threat to the United States.”

The AP also reported that Redha al-Najar, who was 45 years old, had been cleared for release to Tunisia. His lawyer, Tina Foster of the International Justice Network, “said she learned through al-Najar’s family that the military planned to release him and send him to Tunisia, his country of birth, instead of Pakistan where he was picked up,” but added that he did not want to go to Tunisia. Foster also explained that Fadi al-Maqaleh had also been cleared for release but was still being held.

In addition, the AP report noted: “Also waiting to walk free is Jan Sher Khan, who has been detained for six years. He was 15 when he disappeared from his village near Kohat, Pakistan, in the spring of 2005. He never came home from classes at his high school and ended up at Bagram. According to court papers filed seeking his release, his family believes he was seized by someone seeking thousands of dollars in reward money advertised for the capture of suspected members of al-Qaida or the Taliban. On Jan. 10 [2011], the US government confirmed that Khan had been cleared for release.”

Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed (and I can also be found on Facebook, Twitter, Digg and YouTube). Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in June 2011, “The Complete Guantánamo Files,” a 70-part, million-word series drawing on files released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, and details about the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, and available on DVD here — or here for the US). Also see my definitive Guantánamo habeas list and the chronological list of all my articles, and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.

As published exclusively on the website of the Future of Freedom Foundation.

A fourth reason, less generally noticed, is that the Afghan war led to the creation of Guantánamo, a prison touted by the Bush administration as a facility for holding “the worst of the worst,” but in reality a brutal and failed experiment, which never held more than a small number of genuine terror suspects, but, which, nonetheless, has proved resistant to calls for its closure.

Around three-quarters of the 779 prisoners held at Guantánamo were seized as a result of the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan, either in Afghanistan itself, or after crossing from Afghanistan into Pakistan after the US-led invasion, where the authorities (up to and including President Pervez Musharraf) were particularly interested in the bounty payments offered by the US military for al-Qaeda and Taliban suspects. As President Musharraf admitted in his 2006 autobiography, In the Line of Fire, in return for handing over 369 terror suspects to the US, “We have earned bounty payments totaling millions of dollars.”

Because of the Bush administration’s arrogance and incompetence, which also involved a refusal to screen the prisoners to ascertain whether they were actually combatants or not, many completely innocent people ended up at Guantánamo, as did hundreds of Taliban foot soldiers — whether volunteers or conscripts — who were dressed up as part of a “terrorist threat,” deprived of their rights and subjected to abusive, arbitrary detention, even though they should have been held as prisoners of war, protected from torture and abuse by the Geneva Conventions.

171 prisoners are still held, and only a few dozen of them are actually accused of any involvement in terrorism. The breakdown of those held is as follows:

• 30 of the prisoners are still held because they are cleared for release (“approved for transfer” in Guantánamo-speak) but cannot return safely to their home countries and no other country — including the US — has been found that will take them.
• 58 of the prisoners are still held because they are Yemenis, whose transfer was approved by a Presidential Task Force, but then blocked because of fears about the security situation in Yemen.
• 46 others are held because they are regarded as a threat but the evidence against them is too compromised to be used in a trial (in other words, the alleged evidence is unreliable, and tainted by torture or abuse).
• 36 others were recommended for trial by the President’s Guantánamo Review Task Force, and three of these have been tried, and reached plea deals (one other prisoner was tried and sentenced under George W. Bush).

Ten years on from the start of the Afghan war, those held in Guantánamo have been largely forgotten, as President Obama ran up against stiff opposition in Congress over his promise to close the prison by January 2010, and then failed to stand up for himself, allowing cynical lawmakers to step in. In the last year, lawmakers have included outrageous provisions in various pieces of legislation preventing the use of funds to purchase a replacement prison on the US mainland, preventing any prisoner from being brought to the US mainland for any reason, and preventing the President from releasing anyone without Congressional scrutiny.

An end to the Afghan occupation would not bring about the immediate closure of Guantánamo. Nor would it provide a new home for its 30 refugees (in the US, if no other country can be found), or lead to the release of the Yemenis, or to the release of those held despite the lack of evidence against them. That, it seems, will only happen when there is sufficient political will, both at home and abroad, to put pressure on the President to fight back against his critics and to do what he promised on his second day on office — to close Guantánamo and bring this sordid chapter of modern American history to an end.

*****

In spite of these considerable obstacles to justice, which still present a major challenge to the American people, the end of the Afghan war would, if nothing else, erode the basis on which the 171 men still at Guantánamo are held — the Authorization for Use of Military Force. The founding document of the “war on terror,” passed by Congress the week after the 9/11 attacks, the AUMF authorized, and still authorizes the President “to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001,” or those who harbored them.

The bedrock of the occupation of Afghanistan, of warrantless wiretapping, and of the alleged right to assassinate US citizens abroad, without any kind of due process, the AUMF has also specifically been used to justify detention in the “war on terror” since June 2004, when the Supreme Court ruled, in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, that “Congress has clearly and unmistakably authorized detention” of individuals covered by the AUMF.

I have written about the AUMF extensively — most recently a month ago, in my article, “After Ten Years of the ‘War on Terror,’ It’s Time to Scrap the Authorization for Use of Military Force” — in which I noted that Rep. Barbara Lee, who was the only member of Congress to oppose the AUMF in September 2001, is opposing it again, trying to persuade her fellow lawmakers to scrap it.

That may be a lost cause, but as the 10th anniversary of the start of the Afghan war passes, and the endless cycle of news rolls on, relentlessly seeking to give us all attention deficit disorder, those of us who want to see the closure of Guantánamo — and also want the war to end — need to keep pushing for this dangerously open-ended piece of legislation to be repealed.

As a final reminder of the importance of this particular cause, remember that when we think of Guantánamo, and when we think of all the permutations of America’s current wars — the “war on terror,” the “long war,” the war in Afghanistan, detentions at Bagram and elsewhere, the undeclared wars in other countries, and the drone attacks in Pakistan, Yemen and elsewhere — they all rely for their existence on the Authorization for Use of Military Force.

Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed (and I can also be found on Facebook, Twitter, Digg and YouTube). Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in June 2011, “The Complete Guantánamo Files,” a 70-part, million-word series drawing on files released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, and details about the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, and available on DVD here — or here for the US). Also see my definitive Guantánamo habeas list and the chronological list of all my articles, and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.

An edited version of this article was published exclusively on the website of the Future of Freedom Foundation.

Bringing the war to an end ought to be a priority for the American people on a number of fronts.

Firstly, the war is unwinnable. Ousting al-Qaeda from Afghanistan may have been a success, but the battle for hearts and minds was lost early on, through bombing raids that killed thousands of civilians, and the casual and imprecise violence that led to the imprisonment and abuse of hundreds of Afghan Taliban conscripts in Guantánamo and Bagram. To topple the Taliban, the US worked with brutal warlords, whose corruption, in many cases, had prompted the rise of the Taliban in the first place, and although the Taliban were ousted from power, the pointless diversion into Iraq was ruinous for the muddled and ill-conceived nation-building mission in Afghanistan.

Secondly, the cost is astronomical. According to the Cost of War project, the total cost to date is over $460 billion — and a useful breakdown of that figure, including some mention of what it could have been used to fund instead, is available here.

Thirdly, the loss of life is unforgivable. 1,407 US military personnel have been killed in Afghanistan since “Operation Enduring Freedom” began, and 14,342 have been wounded. Up to 29,000 Afghan civilians have been killed as a result of U.S-led military actions, and hundreds of thousands wounded and displaced.

A fourth reason to end the war, which is generally less well known (or at least less thought about), is because it led to the creation of Guantánamo, where a small number of terror suspects are held along with Taliban foot soldiers and innocent men seized by mistake, but all of the 779 prisoners held throughout the prison’s history were deprived of their rights and designated as “enemy combatants” without rights, who could be abused with impunity.

171 of these men are still held, even though only 36 of them have been proposed for trials, and there is no sign of when, if ever, the rest will be released. An end to the war will bring to an end the US government’s claim that it can justify holding prisoners at Guantánamo forever because of the Authorization for Use of Military Force, passed by Congress the week after the 9/11 attacks, which is used to justify the detention of prisoners seized in the “war on terror.” With the end of the war, and the end of the AUMF, the US government will have to explain how long the war in which the prisoners were seized will actually last.

A fifth reason to end the war is to close the US prison at Bagram airbase, and, as with Guantánamo, to ensure that, in future armed conflicts, the US government once more offers the protections of the Geneva Conventions to those seized in wartime. Instead, those in Bagram are still held arbitrarily, without even the compromised habeas corpus rights given to the Guantánamo prisoners by the Supreme Court (and since gutted by the D.C. Circuit Court). At Bagram, the prisoners have nothing but a periodic military review process that has nothing to do with the Geneva Conventions.

In launching the “Stop the Machine! Create a New World!” campaign, activist and author David Swanson wrote:

When other nations’ governments go off track, their people do something about it. In Tunisia and Egypt people have nonviolently claimed power in a way that has inspired Americans in Wisconsin and other states, as well as the people of Spain and the rest of the world.

Washington, D.C. is the weakest point in our democracy, without which state-level reform cannot succeed. Most Americans want our wars ended, our corporations and billionaires taxed, and our rights expanded rather than curtailed. We want our money invested in jobs and green energy, not a global military that can’t stop itself. Our government in Washington goes in the opposite direction, opposing popular will on these major issues, regardless of personality or party.

This will not be another rally and march on a Saturday, make home movies, pat ourselves on the back, and go home. We are coming to Washington to stay.

The organizers — Maria Allwine, Ellen Barfield, Catarina Correia, Ellen Davidson, Margaret Flowers, Tarak Kauff, Mark Mason, Devra Morice, Udi Pladott, Ward Reilly, Lisa Simeone, David Swanson, Dennis Trainor, Jr., the Rev. Dr. Bruce Wright and Kevin Zeese — also issued the following pledge, which has since been signed by many, or most of those turning up to protest:

I pledge that if any U.S. troops, contractors, or mercenaries remain in Afghanistan on Thursday, October 6, 2011, as that occupation goes into its 11th year, I will commit to being in Freedom Plaza in Washington, D.C., with others on that day or the days immediately following, for as long as I can, with the intention of making it our Tahrir Square, Cairo, our Madison, Wisconsin, where we will NONVIOLENTLY resist the corporate machine by occupying Freedom Plaza to demand that America’s resources be invested in human needs and environmental protection instead of war and exploitation. We can do this together. We will be the beginning.

And this is from their mission statement:

We call on people of conscience and courage — all who seek peace, economic justice, human rights and a healthy environment — to join together in Washington, D.C., beginning on Oct. 6, 2011, in nonviolent resistance similar to the Arab Spring and the Midwest awakening. [...]

Forty-seven years ago, Mario Savio, an activist student at Berkeley, said, “There’s a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious — makes you so sick at heart — that you can’t take part. You can’t even passively take part. And you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop. And you’ve got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you’re free, the machine will be prevented from working at all.”

Those words have an even greater urgency today. We face ongoing wars and massive socio-economic and environmental destruction perpetrated by a corporate empire which is oppressing, occupying and exploiting the world. We are on a fast track to making the planet unlivable while the middle class and poor people of our country are undergoing the most wrenching and profound economic crisis in 80 years.

“Stop the Machine! Create a New World!” is a clarion call for all who are deeply concerned with injustice, militarism and environmental destruction to join in ending concentrated corporate power and taking direct control of a real participatory democracy. We will encourage a culture of resistance — using music, art, theater and direct nonviolent action — to take control of our country and our lives. It is about courageously resisting and stopping the corporate state from destroying not only our inherent rights and freedoms, but also our children’s chance to live, breathe clean air, drink pure water, grow edible natural food and live in peace.

Since June’s announcement, of course, another movement, “Occupy Wall Street,” has sprung up on a similar basis, recognizing that only a permanent occupation, rather than turning up for the day, patting ourselves on the back, and going home can bring about change. Although prompted primarily by opposition to the war, and its ruinous cost, the organizers of the Freedom Plaza occupation were also clearly motivated by the bigger picture — the revolutionary movements in the Middle East, the inspirational actions in Madison, Wisconsin in February and March, and the mass movements in Greece and Spain — which all fed into “Occupy Wall Street” and the hundreds of other occupations that are now taking place all over the United States.

With the additional focus on seeing “our corporations and billionaires taxed,” and “our money invested in jobs and green energy,” the aims of the Freedom Plaza occupation are, of course, dovetailing with those of the “Occupy Wall Street” movement, which began its own mobilization in Washington D.C., “Occupy D.C.,” on Saturday, and which continues to draw new supporters.

The timing could hardly have been more fortuitous. As “Occupy Wall Street” continues to grow, finally attracting some serious mainstream attention, it seems as if a revolutionary call for change is gaining momentum in the US — driven not just by the long-term activists behind October2011.org, but also by the young people of the “Occupy” movement, educated but without work, who are ideally placed to take to the streets as permanent protestors, and not to leave until a solution is found.

Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed (and I can also be found on Facebook, Twitter, Digg and YouTube). Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in June 2011, “The Complete Guantánamo Files,” a 70-part, million-word series drawing on files released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, and details about the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, and available on DVD here — or here for the US). Also see my definitive Guantánamo habeas list and the chronological list of all my articles, and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.

With the latest UK poll showing 71 percent of respondents agreeing that the war in “unwinnable,” and 57 percent calling for the immediate withdrawal of British troops, the Coalition is noticeably in tune with a majority of the British public, and has secured significant support from opponents of the war for the following statement of intent for Saturday’s protest:

I pledge that if British Troops are still in Afghanistan on the tenth anniversary of the invasion I will join the mass assembly in Trafalgar Square on Saturday 8 October to make it clear to the government that they must not continue this brutal and pointless war in defiance of the will of the people.

The Stop the War Coalition also provides “10 reasons to sign“:

• 1. We were told the war was won at the end of 2001, but today the fighting, casualties and air strikes are all worse than ever.
• 2. Record numbers of NATO troops, including 100,000 Americans, have not brought security, but ever rising levels of death and destruction.
• 3. There are three times as many air strikes on Afghanistan today compared to a year ago.
• 4. The war was launched to capture Osama bin Laden — “wanted dead or alive.” He is now dead but the war continues.
• 5. Life expectancy in Afghanistan is 43, the lowest in the world.
• 6. Afghanistan under occupation is one of the worst places in the world to be a woman or a child.
• 7. Millions of Afghans have become refugees as a result of the war.
• 8. The war in Afghanistan is costing £5 billion a year, at the same time welfare spending, housing and pensions are under attack.
• 9. Politicians talk of withdrawal, but have no credible exit strategy.
• 10. Parliament is ignoring public opinion, which opposes the war. A mass turnout in Trafalgar Square on 8 October will send a message to MPs and the government that it’s time to go.

At 12 noon, the rally will be opened by Joe Glenton (also see here), the former Lance Corporal who was jailed for nine months for refusing to return to Afghanistan after a tour of duty (and who, instead, went AWOL in south-east Asia and Australia, before returning to the UK and handing himself in to the authorities), and Grace McCann, who, in 2010, attempted a citizen’s arrest on Tony Blair.

Explaining his support for the 10th anniversary protests, Joe Glenton said, “I’m pledging to attend the assembly because, unlike Cameron, Obama and their lackeys, I actually know some of the people sent out to die in these wars. I shared cigarettes and food with them, I spoke to them about our ambitions in life. For me they are real people, not cannon-fodder or political capital to string out a dodgy war. Likewise, I have more in common with those innocent people in Afghanistan then I’ll ever have with the ones who started all of this ten years ago.”

After the opening of the rally, the main stage will feature speeches, music, films and performances, and musicians, actors, writers, filmmakers and artists will join MPs, trade union leaders and activists from across the anti-war movement. Performers and speakers include John Pilger, Julian Assange of WikiLeaks, composer Howard Blake, Billy Bragg, Jeremy Corbyn MP, Brian Eno, Jemima Khan, Lowkey, actor Simon McBurney, Unite general secretary Len McCluskey, actor Mark Rylance, novelist Ahdaf Soueif, and comedian Mark Steel.

There will also be a marquee stage, featuring meetings, stalls, displays, installations and “open mic” sessions, and the event in Trafalgar Square will close with a “Naming the Dead Ceremony,” led by Joan Humphries, who lost her grandson in Afghanistan, and Rose Gentle, who lost her son in Iraq.

At 4 pm, there will be an End of Assembly March to Downing Street, led by ex-soldiers and their families, to demand that no more lives are wasted in Afghanistan.

Throughout the day, campaigners from the Save Shaker Aamer Campaign will also be present in Trafalgar Square, calling for the immediate return from Guantánamo of Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in the prison (whose British wife and four children live in Battersea), and who, it was reported in August, has resumed a hunger strike to protest about his seemingly indefinite detention without charge or trial under President Obama. As the SSAC notes, “The news that Shaker is once more on hunger strike can only lead us to suspect that his health is deteriorating and his life may be in danger. We urge the UK Government to insist on access to Shaker Aamer by an independent medical team with a view to his fitness to travel back to the UK. Shaker’s health has suffered from the long years of physical and mental abuse both in Guantánamo and in Afghanistan.”

The SSAC action, “Ten Hours for Ten Years,” will run from 10am to 8 pm, and features a “Guantánamo Cage,” which the organizers are hoping will be occupied by volunteers throughout the day. They also ask people to wear orange if possible, and there will be speakers and “open mic” sessions throughout the day, as well as a stall with letters, cards and petitions to sign, and balloons printed with the message, “Shaker Aamer, last Londoner in Guantánamo, cleared for release in 2007 but still not back. Bring him home now.”

For further information please contact Ray Silk on 07756 493877 or email. Also, please sign the London Guantánamo Campaign’s e-petition to the US ambassador to be delivered to the US Embassy on the 10th anniversary of the opening of Guantánamo on January 11, 2012, asking for the return to the UK of Shaker Aamer and former resident Ahmed Belbacha, who fears being returned to Algeria, and calling for the closure of the prison.

Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed (and I can also be found on Facebook, Twitter, Digg and YouTube). Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in June 2011, “The Complete Guantánamo Files,” a 70-part, million-word series drawing on files released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, and details about the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, and available on DVD here — or here for the US). Also see my definitive Guantánamo habeas list and the chronological list of all my articles, and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.

In Kabul, Staff writer Ernesto Londoño met two former prisoners, Haji Sahib Rohullah Wakil (discussed below) and Haji Shahzada, a village elder in Kandahar province. About 50 years of age, Shahzada, who is a father of six, was seized in a raid on his house in January 2003, with two house guests, and held at Guantánamo for over two years until his release in April 2005.

Shahzada’s story (and that of the men seized with him) was one that had struck me as particularly significant when I was researching my book The Guantánamo Files, as it was a clear demonstration of how easily US forces in Afghanistan were deceived, seizing innocent people after tip-offs from untrustworthy individuals with their own agendas. In Shahzada’s case, it has not been confirmed whether the tip-off came from a rival or from members of his family seeking to seize his assets, but the entire mission was a disgrace.

One of the men seized with him, Abdullah Khan, had sold Shahzada a dog, as both men were interested in dog-fighting, but he was regarded by the soldiers involved in the raid (and, subsequently, by US interrogators) as Khairullah Khairkhwa, a senior figure in the Taliban. The problem with this scenario was not only that Khan was not Khairkhwa, but also that Khairkhwa had been in US custody since February 2002 and was held at Guantánamo (where he remains to this day).

In addition, Shahzada, a landowner who had never liked the Taliban, endured numerous aggressive interrogations in which he was obliged to repeat, over and over again, that his friend Khan was not a Taliban commander, and that he had not been supporting the Taliban. He was also particularly eloquent in warning his captors that seizing innocent people like him was a sure way of losing hearts and minds in Afghanistan.

“This is just me you brought but I have six sons left behind in my country,” he said. “I have ten uncles in my area that would be against you. I don’t care about myself. I could die here, but I have 300 male members of my family there in my country. If you want to build Afghanistan you can’t build it this way … I will tell anybody who asks me that this is oppression.”

In his report about Shahzada, nearly six and half years after his release from Guantánamo, Ernesto Londoño noted that he “never leaves home without a neatly folded scrap of paper that is the closest thing to an apology the United States offered after keeping him locked up in Guantánamo Bay for more than two years.”

The document states, “This individual has been determined to pose no threat to the United States Armed Forces or its interests in Afghanistan,” although it also states, as a kind of veiled threat, “This certificate has no bearing on any future misconduct.”

As Londoño noted, however, this is “of little consolation to Shahzada,” as he “struggles to rebuild a life he says is in ruins.” Like other former prisoners who spoke to him, Shahzada said he had concluded that the American presence in his country was “a bigger curse” than the years he spent in Guantánamo.

Around 220 of the 779 men held at Guantánamo were Afghans, although most have been released, and only around 20 remain. As the Washington Post described it, they “serve as legacies of what is arguably the most notorious institution of the US war against terrorism,” and their “different paths reflect some of the unintended consequences of the way the United States has waged this battle.”

Identifying three categories of former prisoners, the Post stated, “Some have again taken up arms against the Americans and their allies. Others have stayed out of the battle but consider their status as a former Guantánamo detainee a badge of honor and express support for the Taliban.” The third group consists of “those who opted to let bygones be bygones, even going as far as keeping an open line of dialogue with Western officials in Afghanistan.”

Shahzada loosely fits into this third category, although he stated that he “remains too angry to forgive.” He added, “I am worried for my life. They destroyed my life, and they made me dishonorable.”

Before his capture, Shahzada, as noted in previous publicly available accounts, “looked after a vineyard in Dand, a village in southern Kandahar province,” which is the birthplace of the Taliban, although that meant nothing to Shahzada. He had fought the Russians in the 198s, but he “sought to keep to himself” when the Taliban rose to prominence in 1994. “They treated people like donkeys, not human beings,” he said.

As the Post noted, “It took several days for news of the worst attack on American soil to reach Shahzada’s dusty village, just south of the provincial capital. It took a few weeks for the first Americans to stream in from neighboring Pakistan hunting for al-Qaeda leaders who had set up shop in this landlocked, impoverished country,” and “It took more than a year and four months for US soldiers to storm into his house,” seizing him on the basis of the thoroughly unreliable evidence outlined above.

In Guantánamo, after the long months of pointless interrogation that he has also spoken about before, he told his Combatant Status Review Tribunal, convened to assess whether the prisoners had been correctly designated on capture as “enemy combatants,” who could continue to be held without rights, “If 20 years from now or even 100 years from now you can find any proof that I helped the Taliban or I was involved with the Taliban, you can cut off my head.”

Although the tribunals were a sham, designed not to honestly assess the prisoners’ stories, but to keep most of them in Guantánamo, Shahzada was one of 38 prisoners judged to be “no longer enemy combatants” at the end of the process, which took place from July 2004 to March 2005, and he was freed in Kabul “with little fanfare,” as the Post described it, on April 9, 2005.

However, on returning home, Shahzada “found his home town transformed.” The “influx of cash the Americans and their allies had poured into southern Afghanistan had had a dramatic effect,” he told Ernesto Londoño, but it had unforeseen consequences that were not beneficial. “I saw reconstruction projects and buildings. That created a lot of disunity among people,” he said. “If one person got money to build a building, his relative would turn against him.”

Shahzada also explained that, around 2007, as the Taliban regrouped in Kandahar, they sought to recruit him. “Since I had been in Guantánamo,” he said, “they told me I should stand alongside them and do harm to the Americans. When I told them I was not ready to join them, they branded me an infidel.” As a result, he said, he had “no option but to abandon his fields, leaving grapes dangling on vines,” and moving to “the relative safety” of the city of Kandahar.

If everything about Shahzada’s story demonstrates the human wreckage of Guantánamo, and the delusional truth about America’s inability to recognize what a disaster it has been, and continues to be, the story of another prisoner interviewed by Ernesto Londoño is more nuanced. With reference to other former prisoners “forced to leave their home towns as fighting has spread around the country in recent years,” he spoke to Haji Sahib Rohullah Wakil, another former prisoner, who has “formed a support group.”

Wakil, who was once a tribal leader in Kunar province, bordering Pakistan, is now living in Kabul as a refugee. “I have a house in Kunar, but I can’t get to it because of the insecurity,” he said, adding that he had “recently met with the US ambassador to Afghanistan and a senior NATO commander to discuss peace prospects.”

He said that many former Guantánamo prisoners had “become pariahs, both in the eyes of the US-led NATO coalition and Afghanistan’s intelligence service, the National Directorate of Security,” and he added that, as a result, some of them had joined the insurgency. Some of them, he might have added, undoubtedly had pressure exerted on them by the Taliban or other insurgents, as happened with Haji Shahzada.

Even so, Wakil, who was released in May 2008, is a contentious figure, and was regarded in Guantánamo as a tribal leader who was opposed to the Taliban but supported al-Qaeda, because of longstanding connections between al-Qaeda and the people of Kunar province. Moreover, in May 2009, when the Pentagon produced a fact sheet, “Former Guantánamo Detainee Terrorism Trends” (PDF), as part of disputed claims that 1 in 7 released prisoners were “reconfirmed or suspected of reengaging in terrorist activities,” he was listed as suspected of associating with terrorist groups.

However, when Nancy Youssef, a reporter for McClatchy newspapers, investigated this claim, seeking out Wakil in Afghanistan, she discovered that he “spen[t] his days going from one high-level official meeting to another” — with President Karzai, his chief of staff, or other presidential candidates — “with the swagger of a tribal elder, advocating for the needs of Kunar province, his home region.” Wakil denied the allegations, of course, but so did others who spoke on his behalf. Presidential candidate Mirwise Yaseeni said, “How could he be a terrorist? He is never far off the government’s radar. His family is here. I have never known him to do anything criminal.”

Youssef explained that “Pentagon officials didn’t respond to a request for comment on why Wakil was included in [the] report that was leaked in May,” although she noted, crucially, that “[t]he discovery that Wakil, far from being in hiding, operates openly among officials of Afghanistan’s US-allied government raises questions about the report’s credibility.”

That was an understatement, as President Karzai’s chief of staff, Omar Daudzai, told McClatchy that Wakil was “an honorable man,” although controversy still dogs him. In August, when a man named Sabar Lal was killed as an insurgent in Afghanistan, it was claimed that he was Sabar Lal Melma, an aide to Wakil who was also held in Guantánamo, and released in September 2007. Wakil and Melma were seized together in August 2002, while attending a meeting with US military officials, but Mohammed Roze, the director of the Afghan government’s Peace and Reconciliation Commission in Kunar, said in 2009 that Wakil “was never a threat to American troops,” and, by extension, the same verdict applied to Melma. Roza was convinced that Wakil (and Melma) had been betrayed by the head of a rival tribe, who had persuaded the Americans that he was an enemy.

Although NATO officials said that Sabar Lal “was responsible for attacks and the financing of operations in the Pech District, and was in contact with senior members of Al-Qaeda in eastern Afghanistan and in Pakistan,” and that he was shot dead after coalition forces “located him at a compound near Jalalabad” and he “came out with an assault rifle,” Wakil said that, after his release from Guantánamo, Lelma “chose a civilian life” and “was not in the insurgency.”

Whether or not this is true, Wakil remains an astute commentator on the US presence in Afghanistan. He “said he harbors no ill will toward the Americans who detained him for more than five years,” although he was critical of  their “war strategy,” stating that it had “done far more damage than good.” He added that “[t]he Afghan government that the West empowered and bankrolls is hopelessly weak and corrupt,” and that “Afghans continue to be detained without being charged or are prosecuted in an unfair system.” His conclusion was that, “By staying in Afghanistan, NATO soldiers are emboldening the Taliban and allied groups.”

“The existence of the foreign troops is an excuse for the Taliban” to fight, he said. “Once the foreign troops leave, the people will stand against them and defend their districts and provinces.”

Shahzada, according to the Post, had a gloomier prognosis, concluding that “the rifts that the US invasion [has] created in Afghan society will result in an escalation of bloodshed, regardless of how soon the foreigners leave.” He said, “What they have done is created more enmity. Once the Americans go, they will leave behind a river of blood.”

In conclusion, Siyamak Herawi, a spokesman for the Afghan government, said that most former prisoners led “normal lives” after being released. He added that the government estimated that “between eight and 10 percent rejoined armed groups fighting the NATO-backed government.”

That’s an interesting statistic on which to conclude, as it appears to confirm, once and for all, how the Pentagon’s regularly aired claims of “recidivism” amongst the former prisoners, which involved 74 “confirmed or suspected” recidivists in May 2009, but which rose to 1 in 4 by the start of this year, without any evidence being provided whatsoever, are so unreliable that they are nothing more than propaganda, pumped out by those with an agenda to keep Guantánamo open, and, presumably, to prolong the occupation of Afghanistan.

1 in 4 of the 600 men released from Guantánamo is 150 prisoners in total, and it is simply inconceivable that this is an accurate figure. In January, the New America Foundation established in a report, “Guantánamo: Who Really ‘Returned to the Battlefield’?” (PDF), that 49 was a more accurate figure for those confirmed or suspected of “engag[ing] with insurgent groups that attack or attempt to attack the United States, US citizens, or US bases abroad.”

That list contained 15 Saudis, 13 Afghans and 21 others, and whereas the Pentagon’s claim would genuinely require the number of Afghan “recidivists” to be around half of those released (around a hundred in total), because there is simply no evidence that released prisoners from other countries (beyond those mentioned in the available reports) are involved in any kind of insurgency, the New America Foundation’s report tallies broadly with the Afghan government’s own figures — between 8 and 10 percent of the 200 or so prisoners released; in other words, between 16 and 20.

I’m not convinced that the New America Foundation report is completely accurate, as I believe some of those cited in did nothing wrong, but as the 9/11 anniversary recedes, and the 10th anniversary of the opening of Guantánamo approaches (on January 11, 2012), the accounts in the Post‘s article, and the figures quoted by Siyamak Herawi, ought to contribute to a much-needed understanding that Guantánamo has done incalculable damage to America’s standing in the world, and that, of the 171 men still held, the 89 cleared for release but still held, largely because of Congressional obstruction, and false “recidivism” claims, should be freed as soon as possible.

Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed (and I can also be found on Facebook, Twitter, Digg and YouTube). Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in June 2011, “The Complete Guantánamo Files,” a 70-part, 700,000-word series drawing on files released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, and details about the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, and available on DVD here — or here for the US). Also see my definitive Guantánamo habeas list and the chronological list of all my articles, and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.

As a follow-up, Jeff recently wrote another article for Truthout, providing further examples of the use of water as a torture technique, not only in Guantánamo, but also in Afghanistan and Iraq, and to mark my return to work after two weeks away in Greece, I’m cross-posting his latest article as my own follow-up, because I cross-posted his earlier article just before my departure for Athens and Agistri, and I hope that making both articles available here will ensure that they reach new readers who have not yet come across Jeff’s work.

More Evidence of Water Torture “Depravity” in Rumsfeld’s Military
By Jeffrey Kaye, Truthout, August 18, 2011

There have been a number of cases of detainees held by the Department of Defense (DoD) who have been subjected to water torture, including some that come very close to waterboarding, according to an investigation by Truthout. The prisoners have been held in a number of settings, from Afghanistan and Iraq to Guantánamo Bay.

In a number of settings, DoD spokespeople in the past — most notably former secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld — have denied the use of waterboarding by DoD personnel. But as examples of DoD water torture have multiplied, it appears government denials about “waterboarding” were overly legalistic, and that behind them, DoD personnel were hiding torture involving similar methods of choking, suffocation or near-drowning by water.

Reports of water-related torture by the military include having water forced into the nose or mouth by a hose, repeated dunking in water, pouring water over the head in such a way that it is difficult to breathe or over a piece of cloth or hood, dousing with high-pressure hoses, dousing or partial drowning in combination with the application of a chemical agent, and in a few instances, actually being thrown into a large body of water, such as a river.

An article in Truthout earlier this month [cross-posted here] documented a half-dozen cases of DoD prisoners subjected to waterboarding-style torture. The article also detailed discussions among high-ranking military and intelligence officials around the use of waterboarding, and the fact that interrupted or simulated drowning at a military site in Kandahar, called “water treatment” in this instance, was revealed at a Congressional hearing in May 2008.

Human rights and civil liberties groups have expressed concern over news of DoD water torture and have asked for further investigation.

Asked to respond on behalf of the Senate Armed Services Committee on the reports of such water torture, spokesperson Kathleen Long said the committee had “no comment.”

One web site, Lawfare, co-founded by former Department of Justice official Jack Goldsmith, who was involved in internal decisions surrounding torture inside the Bush administration, seemed confused by the Truthout report, complaining that “reports of waterboarding-like tortures at Guantánamo” lacked “any examples of the military’s using waterboarding, but refers to the repeated use of water in interrogations instead.”

Truthout continues to investigate further instances of DoD waterboarding-style torture at US military sites in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantánamo.

“Waterboarding-style” torture refers to the use of water to provoke choking or suffocation by water, and, in some cases, the triggering of the sensation of drowning, if not actual drowning itself, but without actually following the CIA’s description of the waterboard procedure. It is has also been called “water treatment,” “water torture” and “drown-proofing.”

“The Interrogators Asked Me to Confess to Being a Part of 9/11″

In an affidavit filed on April 21, 2009, in the US District Court for the District of Columbia, Muhammad al-Ansi, a Yemeni accused of being a bodyguard for Osama bin Laden, described his torture in a tent at Kandahar Air Base in Afghanistan in the early weeks of 2001. According to al-Ansi, it began after a female interrogator became angry he would not “confess”:

Four American soldiers came and took me into another room. It was not a tent. They put me on a slab (the size and shape of a bed) made of bricks. I was made to lay on my stomach with my head hanging over the edge. They brought in a big water container and placed it under my head. They would [force] my head and shoulders [under] the water until I almost drowned and lift my head out at the last minute. They did this over and over. During this time, the interrogators asked me to confess to being a part of 9/11, confess I am part of al Qaeda, confess that I swore allegiance to Osama bin Laden, confess I have explosive weapons training, and confess to knowing several names that I had never heard of. This continued for one to two hours. I said nothing other than: “Have mercy on me.”

In another instance of torture in Afghanistan, in June 2008, Tom Lasseter reported for McClatchy that Ghalib Hassan, “a district chief in Nangarhar province for the Afghan Interior Ministry,” was detained “in a basement at an airstrip in Jalalabad during March 2003″ by Special Forces troops.

According to Hassan, “At night they would strap me down on a cot, and put a bucket of water on the floor, in front of my head. And then they would tip the cot forward and dunk my head in the bucket … They would leave my head underwater and then jerk it out by my hair. I sometimes lost consciousness.”

Once again, the military personnel involved demanded that the prisoner confess, in this instance to supporting a former Taliban official. In fact, the Taliban had expelled Hassan in 1996, and he had fought with US-backed forces at Tora Bora against the Taliban and al-Qaeda.

Another case from Afghanistan concerned Saudi national Ahmed al-Darbi. Arrested by authorities in Azerbaijan in 2002 and later turned over to the Americans, he is the brother-in-law of 9/11 hijacker Khalid al-Mihdhar. Al-Mihdhar is also famous for being one of two al-Qaeda suspects who US intelligence knew was attending a meeting with other suspected terrorists in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in January 2000. As it turned out, this meeting likely involved the planning of the 9/11 and USS Cole terrorist attacks.

In a recently aired video interview with filmmakers John Duffy and Ray Nowosielski, Richard Clarke, the former counterterrorism “czar” who resigned during the Bush administration, charged former CIA director George Tenet and top CIA officials Cofer Black and Richard Blee with suppressing information about al-Mihdhar’s intent to enter the United States after the Malaysia meeting. The CIA deliberately had withheld cables to the FBI about al-Mihdhar entering the United States and failed to notify the State Department to put him and his traveling companion on the State Department watch list.

Al-Mihdhar’s brother-in-law, al-Darbi, was renditioned from Azerbaijan to Afghanistan in 2002 and was later sent to Guantánamo, where he remains to this day. In a declaration dated July 1, 2009, al-Darbi cited a number of instances of abuse and torture at both the Bagram prison in Afghanistan and later at Guantánamo.

At Bagram, al-Darbi stated, at times, “a sand bag or hood was placed over my head and tightened around my neck, and then they would grab my head and shake it violently while swearing at me and they would also pour water over my head while my head was covered.” The covering over the head while water is poured sounds very much like waterboarding. Al-Darbi also indicated that a powder, perhaps pepper spray, was applied to him and then water sprayed on him, so that the “water absorbed the powder and it burned my skin and made my nose run.”

More Water Torture at Guantánamo

In an August 2 Truthout article, six cases of water torture were described at the Cuban naval base prison. Two of these cases, including “near asphyxiation from water,” were described in an article published in an online medical journal earlier this year, but the identities of the detainees were kept anonymous.

Further investigation has found three more reports of such torture at Guantánamo and two cases of unique water torture, something between water dousing and waterboarding-style interrupted drowning.

One of the cases, of British citizen Tarek Dergoul, who was released from Guantánamo in 2004, involved treatment very similar to that reported by Omar Deghayes and Djamel Ameziane in the earlier Truthout article. According to an interview given to UK Guardian reporter David Rose, when Dergoul refused to have his cell searched for a third time on one day, an Extreme Reaction Force (ERF) squad was called.

“They pepper-sprayed me in the face and I started vomiting,” Dergoul reported. “In all I must have brought up five cupfuls. They pinned me down and attacked me, poking their fingers in my eyes, and forced my head into the toilet pan and flushed.” They continued to beat him and finally shaved off his hair, beard and eyebrows.

In another interview, Guantánamo detainee Salim Mahmoud Adem, a Sudanese national released in 2007, told Amy Goodman of Democracy Now that he had witnessed another prisoner having his head shoved repeatedly into a toilet. Interestingly, the story came up after Goodman asked about waterboarding.

AG: Salim, did — Salim, did you witness anyone waterboarded?

SMA: I did not see waterboarding, but my neighbor, they insulted the Qu’ran, so we refused to listen to the guards. So they would come with the riot police and enter into the cells, one by one. So they went into the cell of a Yemeni brother, whose name is Othman [phonetic]. After they tied him, his hands to his back, they put his head to the toilet and turned on the flush many times. And all of us could see it. This was a horrible sight.

The torture of Sami al-Haj, an Al Jazeera cameraman held at Guantánamo for seven years and finally released in 2008, presents a unique instance of torture involving forced application of water. Al-Haj was a hunger striker who, along with a number of other hunger strikers, was put on a forced feeding schedule. Civil rights attorney Candace Gorman, who has also represented some of the Guantánamo detainees, described the procedure in a May 2007 article for In These Times.

According to Gorman, al-Haj described his experience of forced feeding to his attorney. Al-Haj said he was strapped into a chair and had a tube painfully inserted through his nose twice each day. The attendants would blow air into the tube in order to ascertain its placement. Al-Haj would suffer in silence, “until tears stream down his cheeks.”

But sometimes things went even worse:

Three times they have inserted the tube the wrong way, so it went into his lungs. When they think that has happened they check by putting water into the tube, which makes him choke. Al-Haj says that never once have the hospital personnel apologized when the tube entered his lung.

Extreme “Water Dousing”

In a few reports, detainees have described a form of “water dousing” that went far beyond the description of the procedure given by the CIA. According to the 2004 CIA Inspector General (IG) report on “counterterrorism detention and interrogation activities,” which looked at the implementation of the so-called “enhanced interrogation” techniques of the Bush administration, “water dousing” involved “laying a detainee down on a plastic sheet and pouring water over him for 10 to 15 minutes.” The room was to be maintained at room temperature.

In a 2008 Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) report, “Broken Laws, Broken Lives: Medical Evidence of Torture by US Personnel and its Impact,” PHR quoted testimony by a detainee, Haydar (not his real name), who recalled having been sprayed with pepper spray and then hosed with high-pressure water. “This one female soldier subjected me to pepper gas and then sprayed me with water with extreme force — and I was writhing on the ground in pain,” Haydar said.

Another Guantánamo detainee, British citizen Jamal al-Harith, noted in a 2004 statement to the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly that he knew of “three or four occasions guards using an industrial strength hose to shoot strong jets of water at detainees. This was done to me on one occasion. A guard walked along the gangway by the cages sending the hose into each alternate cage. When it happened to me I was hosed down continuously for about one minute. The pressure of the water was so strong it forced me to the back of the cage. It soaked the cage including my bedding and my Koran.”

Such cases of “water dousing” by Guantánamo guards, including the use of high-pressure hoses, went far beyond what was even contemplated by such a technique even under CIA torture procedures.

Drownings in Iraq

A review of news reports from Iraq reveal two separate instances of actual drowning of Iraqi detainees by US and British forces. In one case, soldiers were court-martialed and received light sentences. In the other case, the men were acquitted.

In January 2005, Army Sgt. First Class Tracy Perkins was convicted for ordering men under his command one year earlier to throw Iraqi detainees into the Tigris River. One of the Iraqis, 19-year-old Zaidoun Hassoun, drowned. Perkins was sentenced to six months in military prison and his rank was reduced to staff sergeant.

Perkins claimed he was ordered to throw the men in the river by his platoon leader, Army First Lt. Jack Saville. According to an account by the UK Guardian, Saville “pleaded guilty to assault and dereliction of duty,” and was sentenced to 45 days in military prison and ordered to pay a $12,000 fine. The light sentence was reportedly because “Lt. Saville agreed to testify against his captain, who had given him a hit list of five Iraqis who were to be executed on the spot if they were captured in a raid.”

But there was more. According to a July 2004 Associated Press article, the actions by Saville, Perkins, and two other soldiers, Sgt. Reggie Martinez and Spec. Terry Bowman, were initially covered up by their commanding officers. At an Article 32 hearing, and under grants of immunity, Capt. Matthew Cunningham, Maj. Robert Gwinner and battalion commander Lt. Col. Nathan Sassaman said they told Saville and his men to “to clam up because they feared higher-ups in the chain of command would use the incident against them.”

In another case, British soldiers, operating as part of the US-led alliance that invaded Iraq, arrested and beat an Iraqi teenager, who was then ordered to swim across the Shatt al-Basra canal. According to an account in the Guardian, 17-year-old (some reports say 15-year-old) Ahmed Jabbar Kareem was too weakened by his injuries and drowned. All four soldiers involved were acquitted of manslaughter in the case. One of the soldiers, Irish guardsman Joseph McCleary, told the press, “We were told to put the looters in the canal. I was the lowest rank, and we were always told we weren’t paid to think. We just followed orders.”

The acquittal of the British soldiers and the light sentences for US soldiers involved in the drowning of captives represent an attitude towards prisoners in general — including the use of water torture and drowning — that carried minimal consequences in the Iraq war theater.

Indeed, in a US Army Criminal Investigation Command (CID) investigatory report dated May 27, 2004 (pg. 70), the special agent in charge reported that a team leader for 5th Special Forces group (Airborne), based in Al Asad, Iraq, gave “special instructions for the guarding and handling of EPWs” [enemy prisoners of war], including “maintaining a sandbag over their heads, playing loud music and pouring water over their heads.”

The torture of the Iraqi EPWs is very similar to the description Ahmed al-Darbi gave of his treatment at Bagram.

Reactions to New Revelations

The examples of water torture described in this and the earlier Truthout article are certainly not the only occurrences of water torture. For instance, one further example exists of a Guantánamo detainee who suffered water being poured over his head while it was covered, but further details could not be given due to legal restrictions covering his case.

It is also assumed that some instances of such torture have not yet been revealed. The press and human rights groups have not interviewed most prisoners released from US custody. Furthermore, detainees released from Guantánamo must sign an agreement that twice notes they can be “immediately” re-imprisoned if the United States finds any condition of the agreement, which includes prohibitions against conspiracy or vague “preparation of” “combatant activities,” violated. Fear of re-imprisonment and psychological traumatization from their experience have led many former detainees to maintain a silence about their experiences.

Not all observers or participants in DoD activities have indicated they witnessed or heard of water torture at DoD sites.

Morris Davis, who was chief prosecutor for the military commissions at Guantánamo Bay from September 2005 until his resignation in October 2007, told Truthout that his office “focused on about 75 of the detainees we were assessing for potential prosecution.” He added he “did not have the time or the manpower to examine the many others that were not likely candidates for prosecution.”

Even so, Davis told Truthout, “I never saw any evidence that any detainee was waterboarded or subjected to any similar technique at Gitmo,” though “others things [were] done to some of them that I believe constitute torture.”

In addition, some guards, even if critical of abuses at Guantánamo, have said they did not witness waterboarding or water torture at the Cuban prison camp. In an interview with The Talking Dog blog in March 2009, former guard Terry Holdbrooks Jr. said, “In my time in Camp Delta, I didn’t see or hear of any waterboarding.”

But testimony and evidence offered in this investigation strongly suggest that water torture similar to waterboarding or of other extreme nature was inflicted on some prisoners under US military control, and also by allied forces.

Some sources have been adamant that waterboarding did in fact occur, for instance, at Guantánamo.

In an April 2007 statement to the Center for the Study of Human Rights in the Americas, Guantánamo detainee attorney Brent Mickum said that a guard who had worked at the prison camp told him “prisoners at Guantánamo were routinely waterboarded.” Mickum reiterated this point in an interview with the blog The Talking Dog later that year.

Mickum said the guard “confirmed that waterboarding, which he called ‘drown-proofing’ took place. This individual knew extensive details of the camp layout and the names of military personnel. Eventually, the full story will be released and people will be shocked at the extent of the depravity.”

Mickum has also said he heard from a civilian contractor that he heard interrogators talking about waterboarding at Guantánamo in 2003.

In a telephone interview, Alexander Abdo, a staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union’s (ACLU) National Security Project, responding to the accumulated evidence compiled on DoD water torture, told Truthout, “The suggestion that the use of water to torture is more widespread than previously thought is extremely troubling, and reaffirms the need for greater transparency and a broader investigation into the abuse committed under the Bush administration.”

In an emailed statement, Vince Warren, executive director for Center for Constitutional Rights, whose attorneys have represented a number of Guantánamo detainees, said, “It’s clear even from the accounts of men who were released from Guantánamo that many more people were subjected to different forms of water torture or simulated drowning than the three victims of waterboarding the government has admitted to. Our attorneys can’t talk about what happened to our all of clients because they are under a protective order, but public documents show the widespread extent of this barbarity. It’s simply shameful.”

Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed (and I can also be found on Facebook, Twitter, Digg and YouTube). Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in June 2011, details about the new documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, on tour in the UK throughout 2011, and available on DVD here — or here for the US), my definitive Guantánamo habeas list and the chronological list of all my articles, and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.

John Walker Lindh is the original scapegoat in the “War on Terror,” a young man who never raised arms against anyone, but who was vilified as a terrorist because, in November 2001, he was seized in Afghanistan, where he had traveled because of his interest in the Taliban government. A convert to Islam, Lindh, like many Muslims, wanted to see for himself what life was like in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan.

Lindh was held with hundreds of other men in Qala-i-Janghi, a fortress in northern Afghanistan, but when a CIA officer, Johnny “Mike” Spann, was killed by some of the prisoners, who staged an uprising when they feared that they would be shot, most of those held were killed by Northern Alliance soldiers supported by US and British Special Forces and American bombers. Lindh, however, was one of 86 men (and boys) who survived for a week in the basement of the fort, despite being bombed and flooded.

As I explained in May, “Lindh was never sent to Guantánamo (even though he had been designated as Guantánamo prisoner number 1 — ISN number 001), because the horrors of Guantánamo were only for foreigners, and not for anyone in possession of an American passport.” Instead, as I also explained:

[H]e was moved to Camp Rhino near Kandahar, where he was stripped naked, blindfolded, bound to a stretcher with duct tape, held in a shipping container ringed with barbed wire and interrogated by the US military and the CIA, who reported regularly to Donald Rumsfeld (and where soldiers scrawled “shithead” on his blindfold and told him he would be hanged).

He was then held on two ships (the USS Peleliu and the USS Bataan), and was brought to the US on January 22, 2002, and charged on February 5 on ten charges relating to his alleged involvement with al-Qaeda and the Taliban. In July 2002, he was persuaded to accept a plea deal, which led to a punitive 20-year sentence, announced on October 4, 2002, which he is still serving in at the Federal Correctional Institution at Terre Haute, Indiana. He is held in one of the Communication Management Units (CMUs) for mainly Muslim prisoners that have come under intense criticism from human rights activists, as I explained in two articles in April, and, as a result of his plea deal, is prevented from speaking publicly and is also permanently prevented him from challenging anyone in authority about his shameful abuse in US custody prior to his trial.

Following his op-ed in the New York Times, Frank Lindh has followed up with a  full-length article about his son, which was published in the Observer on July 10, and I’m cross-posting it below for a variety of reasons. Frank Lindh tells his son’s story in a compelling manner, but he also strikes to the very heart of the terrible and deliberate confusion at the heart of the Bush administration’s “War on Terror” — the cynical decision to equate soldiers with terrorists, and to hold both categories of prisoner without any rights whatsoever.

Describing how “the US has, for 10 years, been affected by post-traumatic shock,” Frank Lindh specifically points out that his son is not a terrorist, and, crucially, cites evidence given by the author and journalist Rohan Gunaratna, who “conducted a lengthy interview with John, and prepared a written report for the American court to which John was brought for trial,” explaining, “Those who, like Mr. Lindh, merely fought the Northern Alliance cannot be deemed terrorists. Their motivation was to serve and to protect suffering Muslims in Afghanistan, not to kill civilians.”

Lindh also points out that, in December 2001, prior to his son’s return from Afghanistan to face what was surely the most prejudiced trial in modern US history, a Justice Department lawyer cut through the disgraceful propaganda emanating from the mouths of Donald Rumsfeld and John Ashcroft, by stating, simply, “At present, we have no knowledge that he did anything other than join the Taliban.”

Lindh acknowledges that his son was guilty of “misplaced idealism,” and that his “decision to volunteer for the army of Afghanistan under the control of the Taliban was rash, and failed to take into account the Taliban’s mistreatment of its own citizens.” However, he adds that “his assessment of the Northern Alliance warlords was neither exaggerated nor inaccurate. The brutal human rights violations committed by the Northern Alliance were thoroughly documented in the US department of state’s annual human rights reports throughout the 90s.”

This is certainly true, and Frank Lindh provides an important service in an age of forgetfulness not only by running through the US history of involvement with Afghanistan in the 1980s, as supporters of the mujahideen against the Russians, but also by digging up references to American support for the Taliban prior to the 9/11 attacks.

However, what remains of particular importance is that cynical manipulation at the heart of the “War on Terror,” in which soldiers were confused with terrorists, and everyone was deprived of their rights. Lindh faced this when he was tortured in Afghanistan and then subjected to little more than a show trial, with the punitive sentence that his father is seeking to overthrow, but for those held in Guantánamo the twist was that they were labelled as “enemy combatants,” and, on February 7, 2002, in a particularly vile presidential order, George W. Bush decided that they were not protected by the Geneva Conventions.

Under President Obama, the direct torture that followed on from this decision has come to an end, but the confusions remain. Of the 171 men who are still held at Guantánamo, the President has only designated for trial (or subjected to trial) 36 of them, although he maintains that he can continue to hold everyone under the Authorization for Use of Military Force, passed by Congress the week after the 9/11 attacks, which has become the justification for holding forever prisoners who were involved, however tangentially, with al-Qaeda and/or the Taliban.

The result is that other soldiers from other countries, who did not do “anything other than join the Taliban,” are held alongside the handful of genuine terrorist suspects at Guantánamo, and still , essentially, regarded as one and the same. Congress is content to allow this unjust charade to continue, the right-wing judges of the D.C. Circuit Court, who are now dictating detainee policy — after the Supreme Court demonstrated that it was no longer interested, despite giving the prisoners habeas corpus rights in 2004 and 2008 — apparently believe that everyone in Guantánamo is a terrorist, without proof being required, and President Obama cannot be bothered to remember what is right and what is wrong.

The 20-year sentence given to John Walker Lindh is a disgrace, but so too is the open-ended detention of the majority of the men in Guantánamo, who did nothing more than Lindh — the 58 Yemenis still held because of Congressional scaremongering and Obama’s cowardice, the 31 men held because they cannot return home safely, and because America is unwilling to provide them with a new home, and, I can say with confidence, the majority of the 46 other men that the President, disgracefully, wants to hold forever because he regards them as dangerous even though he has no evidence against them that would stand up in any court.

As Frank Lindh calls for the release of his son, I call for the release of 135 of the 171 men still held at Guantánamo — all those who will not be tried, and who, in the absence of any more compelling information, have, like John Walker Lindh, been subjected to abuse and dressed up as terrorists when they are no such thing.

America’s ‘detainee 001′ – the persecution of John Walker Lindh
By Frank Lindh, The Observer, July 10, 2011

Frank Lindh, father of ‘American Taliban’ John Walker Lindh, explains why his son is an innocent victim of America’s ‘war on terror’

John Phillip Walker Lindh, my son, was raised a Roman Catholic, but converted to Islam when he was 16 years old. He has an older brother and a younger sister. John is scholarly and devout, devoted to his family, and blessed with a powerful intellect, a curious mind, and a wry sense of humour.

Labelled by the American government as “Detainee 001″ in the “war on terror”, John occupies a prison cell in Terre Haute, Indiana. He has been a prisoner of the American government since 1 December 2001, less than three months after the terror attacks of 9/11.

John is entirely innocent of any involvement in the terror attacks, or any allegiance to terrorism. That is not disputed by the American government. Indeed, all accusations of terrorism against John were dropped by the government in a plea bargain, which in turn was approved by the US district court in which the case was brought.

Despite its proud history as a stable constitutional democracy, the US has, for 10 years, been affected by post-traumatic shock, following the horrific events of 11 September 2001. I can find no other explanation for the barbaric mistreatment and continued detention of a gentle young man like John Lindh.

John is blessed with a calm and curious nature. As a child, he was more sceptical than our other two children about such things as Santa Claus. When he was 12 years old, he saw the film Malcolm X, and was moved by its depiction of the pilgrims in Mecca. He began to explore Islam and, four years later, decided to convert.

What attracted John to Islam, I think, was the simplicity of its beliefs, and the authenticity of its source documents — the Qur’an and Hadith. It appealed to his intellect as well as his heart. To me and to John’s mother, his conversion was a positive development and certainly not a source of worry. I once told him I felt he had always been a Muslim, and only needed to find Islam in order to discover this in himself. He remained the loving son and brother he had always been. There was never a breach of any kind between us.

John had always been a good student, but his study habits improved after his conversion. He immersed himself in Islamic literature, and quickly came to the conclusion that he needed to learn Arabic in order to continue his studies.

In 1998, at the age of 17, John left home in California and travelled to Sana’a, the ancient capital of Yemen, where he embarked on a rigorous course of study. He was determined not only to become fluent in Arabic, but also to pursue an education in the old traditions of Islam. He returned home briefly in 1999, and then returned to Yemen in February 2000, just before his 19th birthday. John’s mother and I supported him, emotionally and financially. He remained in close contact with us and with his sister and brother while overseas.

In September 2000, John told me he intended to continue his studies in Pakistan, focusing on Arabic grammar and Qur’an memorisation. I wrote back: “I trust your judgment and hope you have a wonderful adventure.” He arrived in Pakistan in November 2000 and enrolled in a Qur’an memorisation programme in a madrassa.

John’s letters home showed passionate enthusiasm for both Yemen and Pakistan. He loved the cultures he discovered in both countries. He was a Muslim in a Muslim world.

In late April 2001, John wrote to me and his mother, saying he planned to go into the mountains to escape the oppressive summer heat. We had no further contact from him for seven months. Unbeknown to us, he crossed the Khyber Pass into Afghanistan, with the intent of volunteering for service in the Afghan army under the control of the Taliban government.

John’s mother and I grew increasingly worried as the summer passed. John had warned us that there might be gaps in his contact with us, as there were no internet cafes in the mountains of Pakistan from which to send emails. But we did not anticipate such a complete lapse in correspondence from him. We also never guessed he was in Afghanistan rather than Pakistan. John’s mother, especially, was frantic with worry as the months passed with no word from him.

At that time, the Taliban governed most of Afghanistan, and were engaged in a long-running civil war against a Russian-backed insurgency known euphemistically as the Northern Alliance. John was quickly accepted as a volunteer soldier, and received two months of infantry training in a Taliban military camp before being dispatched to the front lines.

Rohan Gunaratna, an international terrorism expert and author of the book Inside Al-Qaeda: Global Network of Terror, conducted a lengthy interview with John, and prepared a written report for the American court to which John was brought for trial. Gunaratna is an expert consultant to the US government itself on terrorism matters. “Those who, like Mr. Lindh, merely fought the Northern Alliance,” he wrote, “cannot be deemed terrorists. Their motivation was to serve and to protect suffering Muslims in Afghanistan, not to kill civilians.”

John described his motivation in similar terms. “I felt,” he later explained to the court, “that I had an obligation to assist what I perceived to be an Islamic liberation movement against the warlords who were occupying several provinces in northern Afghanistan. I had learned from books, articles and individuals with first-hand experience of numerous atrocities committed by the Northern Alliance against civilians. I had heard reports of massacres, child rape, torture and castration.”

To the western world, and to me as John’s father after I learned where he had been, this was misplaced idealism. John’s decision to volunteer for the army of Afghanistan under the control of the Taliban was rash, and failed to take into account the Taliban’s mistreatment of its own citizens. But his assessment of the Northern Alliance warlords was neither exaggerated nor inaccurate. The brutal human rights violations committed by the Northern Alliance were thoroughly documented in the US department of state’s annual human rights reports throughout the 90s. They did indeed include massacres, rape (of both women and children), torture and castration.

John’s impulse was to help. In doing so, he was responding not only to his own conscience, but to a central tenet of the Islamic faith, which calls upon able-bodied young men to defend innocent Muslim civilians from attack, through military service if necessary. This is not “terrorism” at all, but precisely its opposite.

From the time of the Soviet invasion in 1979, tens of thousands of young Muslim men from all over the world had volunteered, as John did, for military service in Afghanistan. It was comparable to the influx of young volunteer soldiers in support of the republic of Spain during the Spanish civil war.

These young soldiers performed heroically in the defeat of the Soviet Union. Their cause was openly supported by the American government itself, particularly during the administration of President Ronald Reagan, who took office two weeks before John’s birth in early 1981.

In March 1982, President Reagan declared: “Every country and every people has a stake in the Afghan resistance, for the freedom fighters of Afghanistan are defending principles of independence and freedom that form the basis of global security and stability.” In March 1983, he cited “the Afghan freedom fighters” as “an example to all the world of the invincibility of the ideals we in this country hold most dear, the ideals of freedom and independence”. In a March 1985 speech, he said: “They are our brothers, these freedom fighters, and we owe them our help… They are the moral equivalent of our Founding Fathers and the brave men and women of the French resistance. We cannot turn away from them.”

Given the history of US involvement in Afghanistan, it would seem absurd to suggest that John Lindh was being disloyal to America when he went into Afghanistan in 2001 and joined the army there. If the march of history could be arrested in the spring or summer of 2001, John’s odyssey might be regarded as quixotic and unusual for a young American, but not in the least bit sinister, and certainly not criminal in nature. In fact, John’s concern about the suffering of people in Afghanistan was shared by his own government. On 21 July 2000, for example, the US department of state issued a “fact sheet” that reported that the US was “the largest single donor of humanitarian aid to the Afghan people”.

The US also provided substantial economic assistance directly to the Taliban government. In May 2001, for example, the American government under President George W. Bush announced a grant of $43m to the Taliban government for opium eradication. Secretary of State Colin Powell personally announced the grant himself in a press release and pledged: “We will continue to look for ways to provide more assistance to the Afghans.” The New York Times called this “a first, cautious step toward reducing the isolation of the Taliban” by the new Bush administration.

This is not to suggest the US was entirely friendly with the Taliban. In 1999, President Clinton placed the Taliban government under economic sanctions as a consequence of its human rights violations, particularly against women. But there were no hostilities between the US and the Taliban, and by 2001 relations were improving.

In his novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell describes a nightmarish world of perpetual war, in which two massive nations, Oceania and Eastasia, are aligned against a third nation state known as Eurasia. The alliance between Oceania and Eastasia ends, and Eastasia then begins fighting alongside Eurasia against Oceania. In what Orwell famously called “doublethink”, the population of Oceania then is taught to believe “we have always been at war with Eastasia”.

Something eerily similar happened in the US after 9/11. Thirty years of American policy abruptly changed and America swung to the opposite side. The Taliban became our enemy. “They have always been our enemy” is what people in America came to believe.

In October 2001, the US invaded Afghanistan and aligned itself with the Northern Alliance in order to oust the Taliban government. Colin Powell’s April press release was quietly removed from the state department’s website.

In early September 2001, days before the 9/11 attacks, John arrived at his military post in the province of Takhar in the far north-eastern corner of Afghanistan, near the border of Tajikistan. This was the frontline in the civil war between the Taliban and the Northern Alliance. John was issued with a rifle and two hand grenades — standard issue for an infantry soldier. He performed sentry duty and did some cooking for the Taliban troops. He never used his weapons. He served with a number of other foreign volunteer soldiers. They were called Ansar, an Arabic term meaning “helpers”.

The training camp in Afghanistan where the Ansar received their infantry training was funded by Osama bin Laden, who also visited the camp on a regular basis. He was regarded by the volunteer soldiers as a hero in the struggle against the Soviet Union. These soldiers did not suspect Bin Laden’s involvement in planning the 9/11 attacks, which were carried out in secret. John himself sat through speeches by Bin Laden in the camp on two occasions, and actually met Bin Laden on the second such occasion. John has said he found him unimpressive.

After 9/11, America’s intelligence agencies came under intense scrutiny for their failure to anticipate and prevent the attacks, and their apparent inability to track down Osama bin Laden. It is a curious fact of history that John Lindh, an idealistic 20-year-old Californian, suspecting nothing of bin Laden’s connections to terrorism, was able without difficulty to meet this notorious figure in the summer of 2001. Why American intelligence agents were unable to do so remains unexplained. John himself did not believe he was encountering a terrorist. John knew only that bin Laden had been generous in funding the military camp, and he was able to discern that Bin Laden was not a legitimate scholar or leader in the traditions of Islam.

The American invasion of Afghanistan commenced in October 2001. Few American troops were deployed in the northern reaches of Afghanistan. The Americans relied on Northern Alliance forces as their proxy, combined with aerial bombing, to displace the Taliban forces.

The front between the Taliban and the Northern Alliance in Takhar where John was stationed quickly dissolved after the bombing commenced. Taliban troops fled in panicked retreat to Kunduz. They marched without stop for two days, covering a distance of 50 miles of harsh, desert terrain. The conditions were hellish. The Northern Alliance troops killed all stragglers who fell behind, often castrating them before killing them.

The soldiers at Kunduz who wished to surrender faced a terrible dilemma. For years it had been the practice of the Northern Alliance to torture and murder prisoners of war. These crimes were legendary and well known to both the Taliban soldiers and the US government.

John’s lawyers later obtained from the American government an unclassified cable sent from the US embassy in Kunduz on 20 November 2001, to Colin Powell and the joint chiefs of staff. The cable was labelled “priority”. It bore the subject line: “Kunduz representatives appeal for a bombing halt during surrender negotiations.” It said that, according to local authorities in Kunduz, Taliban soldiers trapped in Kunduz “wanted to surrender to someone who would not kill them”. This was described as a “sticking point” in the surrender negotiations. The Taliban, according to the cable, had “proposed surrendering to the US or the UN”. The cable confirmed that the American authorities had informed their counterparts in Kunduz that “neither was a realistic option and suggested that they seek the [Red Cross's] involvement if they had not done so already”.

On 21 November 2001, the regional Taliban military leader, Mullah Fazel Mazloom, entered into face-to-face surrender negotiations with General Abdul Rashid Dostum of the Northern Alliance. The pact was destined not to end well. Dostum was a notorious figure who had served as an officer in the Soviet occupation government. Troops under Dostum’s command were believed responsible for the mass execution of an alleged 2,000 Taliban prisoners captured near Mazar-i-Sharif in 1997. The New Yorker magazine has referred to Dostum as “perhaps Afghanistan’s most notorious warlord”, a man who is “viewed by most human rights organisations as among the worst war criminals in the country”.

Nonetheless, a bargain was reached in which Dostum demanded and received a large cash payment, then agreed to grant approximately 400 disarmed Taliban soldiers safe passage through Dostum-controlled territory to the city of Herat. John, in haggard condition after the march through Takhar, was among those 400 troops.

The Taliban soldiers had no sooner laid down their arms when Dostum breached the agreement. Instead of the safe passage they had been promised, the soldiers were loaded into trucks and diverted to the ancient Qala-i-Janghi fortress on the outskirts of Mazar-i-Sharif. As the prisoners were being unloaded in the courtyard, John heard a loud explosion when one of the prisoners detonated a grenade that he had concealed. Two of Dostum’s men were killed in the blast.

Dostum’s soldiers quickly regained control, but they were infuriated. The prisoners were crowded into the basement of a sturdy, pink Soviet-built classroom building adjacent to a horse pasture. The “pink building”, as it became known, was at the centre of the events that unfolded over the next seven days. It was dark in the basement rooms into which the 400 men were crowded. To retaliate for the earlier attack, Dostum’s men dropped a grenade down an air duct that wounded or killed several prisoners, narrowly missing John, who spent the night crouched in a corner unable to sleep.

The next morning, Sunday 25 November, was sunny and warm at the Qala-i-Janghi fortress. Video footage shows a seemingly calm scene as the prisoners, with arms tied behind backs, are led out of the basement and made to kneel in rows in the horse pasture beside the pink building. The main sound on the film is the chirping of hundreds of birds. Dostum’s men were rough. Some prisoners were kicked and beaten with sticks. John was hit in the back of the head and nearly knocked unconscious. Nonetheless, he hoped they would be released for the agreed upon journey to Herat.

Although there were no US or British troops at the fortress that morning, two American intelligence agents were present, dressed in civilian clothes. They circulated among the prisoners, occasionally giving instructions to Dostum’s guards. One of them, Dave Tyson, was dressed in a long Afghan shirt and carried a large gun and a video camera. The other, Johnny “Mike” Spann, a former marine, was dressed in a black shirt and jeans. He was also armed. As they moved among the prisoners, they singled out captives for interrogation. They never identified themselves as American agents, and so they appeared to John and the other prisoners to be mercenaries working directly for General Dostum.

John was spotted and removed from the body of prisoners for questioning. The moment was recorded on video and later seen by millions on television.

In the video, John sits mutely on the ground as he is questioned about his nationality.

“Irish? Ireland?” Spann asks.

John remains silent.

“Who brought you here? … You believe in what you are doing that much, you’re willing to be killed here?”

Still no reply.

Tyson to Spann [for John's benefit]: “The problem is, he’s got to decide if he wants to live or die, and die here. We’re just going to leave him, and he’s going to [expletive] sit in prison the rest of his [expletive] short life. It’s his decision, man. We can only help the guys who want to talk to us. We can only get the Red Cross to help so many guys.”

I think it was apparent that Spann and Tyson were American agents, but because they were in the company of Dostum’s forces, unaccompanied by American troops, it clearly was not safe for John to talk to them. They meant business when they said John might be killed by Dostum, and that the Red Cross could only “help so many guys”. John was in extreme peril at that moment, and he knew it.

John was then returned to the main body of prisoners, while others were still being brought out of the basement and forced to kneel in the horse pasture. Then, suddenly, there was an explosion at the entrance to the basement, shouts were heard, and two prisoners grabbed the guards’ weapons. According to Guardian journalist Luke Harding’s account: “It was then … that Spann ‘did a Rambo’. As the remaining guards ran away, Spann flung himself to the ground and began raking the courtyard and its prisoners with automatic fire. Five or six prisoners jumped on him, and he disappeared beneath a heap of bodies.”

Spann’s body was later recovered by US special forces troops. He was the first American to die in combat in the American–Afghan war. He was buried with full military honours at Arlington National Cemetery, near Washington.

As soon as the uprising began, the Northern Alliance guards turned their weapons on the 400 bound prisoners, killing or severely wounding scores of them. Some prisoners tried to stand and run; they were gunned down. It was a slaughter. John tried to run, but he was shot in the right thigh and fell to the ground. For the next 12 hours he lay motionless, pretending to be dead.

There were two groups of Taliban prisoners in the fortress: those who chose to fight and those who hunkered down in the basement of the pink building and tried to survive. John was in the latter group. The prisoners who fought put up a fierce resistance, looting buildings for weapons and ammunition, firing from windows, rooftops, and ditches. Using a satellite phone, Dave Tyson, who had just seen his colleague killed, telephoned the US embassy in Tashkent, shouting: “We have lost control. Send in helicopters and troops.” US air controllers stationed outside the fortress walls called in air strikes, which struck with devastating impact inside the fortress.

More air raids were staged the next day, Monday, when a massive 2,000lb bomb was dropped. It missed its intended target, the pink building, and hit Dostum’s soldiers. This “friendly fire” incident brought an end to the air strikes. For John and the other Taliban soldiers holed up in the basement of the pink building, the percussive effect of the bomb shook them to their bones and left them trembling.

By Wednesday, the last of the resisting Taliban fighters had been killed, and Dostum’s soldiers were once again in full control of the fortress. Luke Harding was allowed into the compound along with some other journalists, and he found a horrific scene: “We had expected slaughter, but I was unprepared for its hellish scale … It was hard to take it all in. The dead and various parts of the dead … turned up wherever you looked: in thickets of willows and poplars; in waterlogged ditches; in storage rooms piled with ammunition boxes.” Harding observed that many of the Taliban prisoners had died with their hands tied behind their backs.

On Wednesday and Thursday, Dostum’s troops engaged in a sustained effort to kill the Taliban survivors who remained in the basement of the pink building, which they were afraid to enter themselves. More grenades were dropped down the air ducts and RPGs were fired directly into the basement. John received shrapnel wounds in his shoulder, back, ankle and calf, in addition to the bullet still lodged in his thigh. At one point, fuel was poured down the air ducts and a fire was ignited in which some fuel-drenched prisoners were burned to death. John, choking on the black smoke, lost consciousness. He awoke with the taste of gasoline in his mouth and loud explosions in the hall, as more rockets and grenades ricocheted through the basement.

On Friday, Dostum’s troops tried yet another tactic. They flooded the basement with cold water. Unable to stand on his own, John braced himself on a stick and a fellow soldier for the next 24 hours to avoid drowning in the waist-deep water, which was full of blood and waste. The next morning no one inside the fortress thought it possible that anyone was still alive in the pink building, but 86 of the prisoners had managed to survive the week-long ordeal. One of them was John Lindh.

On Saturday 1 December, the Red Cross arrived at the fortress and the survivors, who for several days had been trying to surrender, were finally allowed to exit the basement. When they emerged into the bright sunlight, they encountered a confusing horde of journalists, Red Cross workers, Dostum’s soldiers, and British and American troops.

That evening John and the other survivors were taken to a prison hospital in Sheberghan. Although wet and cold from the flooding of the basement, they were transported in open bed trucks in the frigid night air. At Sheberghan, John was carried on a stretcher and set down in a small room with approximately 15 other prisoners. CNN correspondent Robert Pelton came in accompanied by a US special forces soldier and a cameraman. Despite John’s protests, Pelton persisted in filming John and asking questions as an American medical officer administered morphine intravenously. By the time he departed a short time later, Pelton had captured on videotape an interview in which John said that his “heart had become attached” to the Taliban, that every Muslim aspired to become a shahid, or martyr, and that he had attended a training camp funded by Osama bin Laden.

The CNN interview became a sensation in the US. By mid-December, virtually every newspaper in America was running front-page stories about the American Taliban, and the broadcast media were saturated with features and commentary about John. Here was a “traitor” who had “fought against America” and aligned himself with the 11 September terrorists. Newsweek magazine published an issue with John’s photograph on the cover, under the caption “American Taliban”.

Beginning in early December, President Bush, vice-president Dick Cheney, members of the cabinet and other officials then embarked on a series of truly extraordinary public statements about John, referring to him repeatedly as an “al-Qaida fighter”, a terrorist and a traitor. I think it fair to say there has never been a case quite like this in the history of the US, in which officials at the highest levels of the government made such prejudicial statements about an individual citizen who had not yet been charged with any crime.

I will offer only a small sample of these statements. In an interview at the White House on 21 December 2001, President Bush said John was “the first American al-Qaida fighter that we have captured”. Donald Rumsfeld, secretary of defence, told reporters at a press briefing that John had been “captured by US forces with an AK-47 in his hands”. Colin Powell, secretary of state, said John had “brought shame upon his family”. Rudy Giuliani, New York mayor, remarked: “I believe the death penalty is the appropriate remedy to consider.”

John Ashcroft, the US attorney general, staged two televised press conferences in which he accused John of attacking the US. “Americans who love their country do not dedicate themselves to killing Americans,” he declared.

A federal judge took the unusual step of writing to the New York Times criticising the attorney general for violating “Justice Department guidelines on the release of information related to criminal proceedings that are intended to ensure that a defendant is not prejudiced when such an announcement is made”.

Even the ultra-conservative National Review thought Ashcroft had gone too far in making such prejudicial comments about a pending prosecution. It criticised the comments as “inappropriate” and “gratuitous”, stating that in the future “it would be better for the attorney general simply to announce the facts of the indictments, and to avoid extra comments which might unintentionally imperil successful prosecutions”.

I am a lawyer, trained in the law, with more than 25 years of experience. Never have I seen or read about a case in which a person accused of a crime was so conspicuously deprived of what we call “the presumption of innocence”. On the contrary, my son was presumed guilty, not only by government officials but by the entire mainstream journalism and media establishment in America. It was — and still is — widely reported in America that John Lindh is a “terrorist” who fought against the US.

Our lives back home were completely upturned by the sudden and pervasive notoriety of John’s case. We found ourselves dodging television cameras and reporters. In the first couple of days after John’s capture, I appeared on several news programmes in an effort to explain who John was and to ask for mercy. My sense of privacy and anonymity were at least temporarily destroyed.

All of us in John’s family also were wracked with anxiety about John’s own physical and emotional wellbeing. We had no source of information about John from within the government itself. They were holding our son incommunicado, even as President Bush and other officials made repeated statements about him. Anything we were able to learn about John came from the news media, not from the government.

Happily, our neighbours, friends, co-workers and even strangers in California were uniformly warm and supportive towards me, John’s mother and our other children. One Sunday, on my way to church, a friendly stranger stopped his car and shouted to me: “How’s John?”

Another enormous source of comfort to us came from James Brosnahan, a distinguished and courageous trial lawyer in San Francisco who agreed to represent John. On 3 December, Brosnahan took up his case, and from that day forward we had a valiant defender in him and the other lawyers who worked on the defence team. It felt as if a protective shield had been constructed around John and all of us in the family.

Once John was in the custody of the US military, the US government had to decide what to do with him. The FBI has estimated that during the 90s as many as 2,000 American citizens travelled to Muslim lands to take up arms voluntarily, and that as many as 400 American Muslims received training in military camps in Pakistan and Afghanistan. None of these American citizens was indicted, or labelled as traitor and terrorist. They were simply ignored by their government, which made no attempt to interfere with their travel. But the 9/11 attacks changed everything, and it was the timing of John’s capture that contributed to his fate. It soon became apparent to me that, rather than simply repatriate my wounded son, the government was intent on prosecuting him as a “terrorist”.

In the days and weeks that followed, John endured abuse from the US military that exceeded the bounds of what any civilised nation should tolerate, even in time of war. Donald Rumsfeld directly ordered the military to “take the gloves off” in questioning John.

On 7 December, wounded and still suffering from the effects of the trauma at Qala-i-Janghi, John was flown to Camp Rhino, a US marine base approximately 70 miles south of Kandahar. There he was taunted and threatened, stripped of his clothing, and bound naked to a stretcher with duct tape wrapped around his chest, arms, and ankles. Even before he got to Camp Rhino, John’s wrists and ankles were bound with plastic restraints that caused severe pain and left permanent scars — sure proof of torture. Still blindfolded, he was locked in an unheated metal shipping container that sat on the desert floor. He shivered uncontrollably in the bitter cold. Soldiers outside pounded on the sides, threatening to kill him.

After two days in these circumstances, John was removed from the shipping container and taken into a building at Camp Rhino. When his blindfold was removed, John found himself in front of a man who identified himself as an FBI agent and then read from an advice-of-rights form. When the agent reached the part that concerned right to counsel, he said: “Of course, there are no lawyers here.” John was not told his mother and I had retained an attorney for him who was ready and willing to travel to Afghanistan. Worried that he would be returned to the shipping container if he did not sign the form, John signed the waiver.

A lengthy interrogation followed, after which US military personnel put John back in the metal shipping container, although this time his leg restraints were loosened and he was no longer bound by duct tape or blindfolded. On 14 December, he was placed on board the USS Peleliu, where navy physicians observed that he was suffering from dehydration, hypothermia, and frostbite, and that he could not walk. On 15 December, the bullet was finally removed from his leg in a surgical procedure — more than two weeks after he had been transferred to the custody of the US military. The doctor who removed the bullet later told John’s lawyers there had been little or no healing of the wound, which he attributed to malnutrition and cold.

In June 2002, Newsweek obtained copies of internal email messages from the justice department’s ethics office commenting on the Lindh case as the events were unfolding in December 2001. The office specifically warned in advance against the interrogation tactics the FBI used at Camp Rhino, and concluded that the interrogation of John without his lawyer present would be unlawful and unethical. This advice was ignored by the FBI agent who conducted the interrogation.

Interestingly, in an 10 December email, one of the justice department ethics lawyers noted: “At present, we have no knowledge that he did anything other than join the Taliban.”

The government brought 10 counts against John in its overblown indictment. “If convicted of these charges,” attorney general Ashcroft boasted, “Walker Lindh could receive multiple life sentences, six additional 10-year sentences, plus 30 years.” The most serious count was a charge of conspiracy to commit murder in connection with the death of Mike Spann. The charge was groundless: the prisoner uprising at the Qala-i-Janghi fortress had been spontaneous and John was also a victim, not a participant.

John arrived back in the US on 23 January 2002 in chains aboard a military plane that landed at Washington Dulles International airport. The government selected Dulles so they could bring charges against John in northern Virginia, near the Pentagon (one of the 9/11 targets), where hostility against John was assured. He was flown by helicopter to the Alexandria City Jail. John’s mother and I tried to visit him that night, along with the lawyers we had retained for him, but we were turned away. We finally were able to see our son the next morning in a holding cell on the first floor of the US courthouse. His lawyers met him only briefly before his first appearance in the court that morning.

The case of United States of America v John Philip Walker Lindh was set for trial before Judge T.S. Ellis III. On 24 January, the judge announced he was setting a trial date for late August. We were horrified, as this would ensure that John would be on trial on the first anniversary of 9/11. It would be hard to conceive of a more prejudicial circumstance for a criminal defendant, especially in the wake of the intemperate statements attorney general Ashcroft had made in his two press conferences.

John’s lawyers filed a motion to “suppress” the statements that had been extracted him under duress at Camp Rhino. A hearing was scheduled in July 2001, which would have included testimony by John and others about the brutality he had suffered at the hands of US soldiers. On the eve of the hearing, the government prosecutors approached John’s attorneys and negotiated a plea agreement. It was apparent they did not want evidence of John’s torture to be introduced in court.

In the plea agreement John acknowledged that by serving as a soldier in Afghanistan he had violated the anti-Taliban economic sanctions imposed by President Clinton and extended by President Bush. This was, as John’s lawyer pointed out, a “regulatory infraction”. John also agreed to a “weapons charge”, which was used to enhance his prison sentence. In particular, he acknowledged that he had carried a rifle and two grenades while serving as a soldier in the Taliban army. All of the other counts in the indictment were dropped by the government, including the terrorism charges the attorney general had so strongly emphasised and the charge of csnspiracy to commit murder in the death of Mike Spann.

At the insistence of defence secretary Rumsfeld, the plea agreement also included a clause in which John relinquished his claims of torture.

The punishment in the plea agreement was by any measure harsh: 20 years of imprisonment, commencing on 1 December 2001, the day John came into the hands of US forces in Afghanistan. The prosecutors told John’s attorneys that the White House insisted on the lengthy sentence, and that they could not negotiate downward.

On 4 October 2002, the judge approved the plea agreement as “just and reasonable” and sentenced John to prison. Before the sentence was pronounced, John was allowed to read a prepared statement, which provided a moment of intense drama in the crowded courtroom. He spoke with strong emotion. He explained why he had gone to Afghanistan to help the Taliban in their fight with the Northern Alliance, saying it arose from his compassion for the suffering of ordinary people who had been subjected to atrocities committed by the Northern Alliance. He explained that when he went to Afghanistan he “saw the war between the Taliban and the Northern Alliance as a continuation of the war between the mujahideen and the Soviets”.

John strongly condemned terrorism. “I went to Afghanistan with the intention of fighting against terrorism and oppression.” He had acted, he said, out of a sense of religious duty and he condemned terrorism as being “completely against Islam”. He said: “I have never supported terrorism in any form and never would.”

After a brief recess, the judge granted a request by John Spann, the father of Mike Spann, to address the court and express his dissatisfaction with the plea agreement. He began by saying that he, his family, and many other people believed that John had played a role in the killing of Mike Spann. Judge Ellis interrupted and said: “Let me be clear about that. The government has no evidence of that.” Spann responded: “I understand.” The judge politely explained that the “suspicions, the inferences you draw from the facts are not enough to warrant a jury conviction”. He said that Mike Spann had died a hero, and that among the things he died for was the principle that “we don’t convict people in the absence of proof beyond a reasonable doubt”.

Osama bin Laden is dead. John Lindh, now 30 years old, remains in prison. He spends most of his time pursuing his study of the Qur’an and Islamic scholarship. He also reads widely in a variety of nonfiction subjects, especially history and politics. He remains a devout Muslim.

As a father, I am grateful that John survived his ordeal, and I am pleased that he maintains his good-natured disposition. I am especially proud of the dignity he displayed throughout his ordeal overseas and in court.

Other than his lawyers, the only visitors John has been permitted during all his years in prison are those of us in his immediate family. We treasure these visits. We are not allowed any sort of physical contact with John, and are kept separated from him by a glass partition. We must speak via telephones, and everything we say is monitored and recorded by a government agent who sits in an adjoining room. Despite these constraints, our conversations are free-flowing and punctuated with humour.

A commentator at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University called this “a petty prosecution” that was “unworthy of a great country”. But it was more than petty, in my view; it was brutally inhumane.

My hope and prayer is that at some point rational, fair-minded officials in the American government will see the wisdom in releasing John from prison, rather than making him serve the entire 20-year sentence. His continued incarceration serves no good purpose. Releasing John from prison would help restore America’s image in the world, and particularly among Muslim people, as a humane country committed to the rule of law.

Note: The Observer pointed out that Frank Lindh had donated the fee for this article to charity.

Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed (and I can also be found on Facebook, Twitter, Digg and YouTube). Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in June 2011, details about the new documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, on tour in the UK throughout 2011, and available on DVD here — or here for the US), my definitive Guantánamo habeas list and the chronological list of all my articles, and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.

This is the sixth article in “Bagram Week” here at Andy Worthington (although I freely acknowedge that the original seven-day schedule has slipped), with seven articles in total exploring what is happening at the main US prison in Afghanistan through reports, analyses of review boards, and the voices of the prisoners themselves, and ongoing updates to

This is the second of three articles telling, for the first time, stories — in the prisoners’ own words, albeit in a heavily redacted format — from the US prison at Bagram airbase (now replaced by a new building, called the Detention Facility at Parwan). The stories come from the Detainee Review Boards at Bagram, established by President Obama in 2009, and are taken from documents obtained by the ACLU through FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) requests, in which the Pentagon not only released documents providing summaries of the review boards’ conclusions (which I began analyzing here), but also released 58 documents relating to specific prisoners.

These 58 documents contain more information than the brief summaries — the Commander’s Final Decision Memo, a Memo from the DRB President to the Commander or the Deputy Commander, a DRB Report of Findings and Recommendations, and, most importantly, a Summary of the DRB Hearing, which, between redactions, usually contains some of the allegations against the prisoners, which are otherwise unknown, and some of the prisoners’ own statements and their responses to questions from the panel.

Below, following the first part of this three-part series, are 20 more stories from these documents — of prisoners recommended for release, for transfer to the Afghan authorities for prosecution, or for release under a rehabilitation program, or for continued detention at Bagram/Parwan — these various choices being a refined version of the unilateral reworking of the Geneva Conventions under President Bush that has not been adequately addressed under President Obama (see my articles The Black Hole of Bagram, What is Obama Doing at Bagram? (Part One): Torture and the “Black Prison” and What is Obama Doing at Bagram? (Part Two): Executive Detention, Rendition, Review Boards, Released Prisoners and Trials.

The last 20 stories will be covered in an article to follow. Individually, the stories these documents are not always revealing — although in some cases they clearly are — but cumulatively they help to provide an overview of the entire process, and, unfortunately, echo the problems with the tribunals at Guantánamo on which they were modelled.

20 Stories from Bagram

ISN 3782: Nek Marjan

At a Detainee Review Board on June 5, 2010, it was explained that 2 out of 3 board members found that internment was necessary to mitigate the threat posed by Nek Marjan (also identified as Shah Wazir), who was assessed to be “a part of or a substantial supporter of insurgent forces opposing Coalition Forces,” even though, alarmingly, it was also noted, “Notwithstanding the majority vote, the evidence was so weak that one board member found no internment criteria.”

In a statement at his hearing, he said:

My name is Nek Marjan, son of [redacted]. I lived in Sukart. Sukart is in … Khost province. There is no Taliban in my village … I do not know any Taliban at all. I don’t know of any Taliban in my village. I have not ever done anything to help Taliban because I barely can take care of my family. I don’t have time to help the Taliban … I’ve never had anyone in my village come to my house that has attacked CF [Coalition Forces].

He also said:

I am accused of being Taliban and a Taliban commander and none of this is true. [I do] not store anything for the Taliban in my house. My house is for my wife and children only. I’m not against coalition forces or government. I’m a poor person making a living driving a cab. You can verify this by anybody in my village. Someone paid money to the police to detain me … Before I started driving taxi I had a retail shop and I was living there. You can ask anybody about me. Anything they say will be the truth about me. The US is improving our country, making roads, schools and hospitals. Why would I do anything to the US? I like the coalition forces. I have never been involved with attacks against coalition forces. There might be two reasons I’m here, if someone paid money to keep me here, or somebody has animosities toward me.

And:

Of course I have enemies; my father was killed by our enemies. The three enemies I speak of specifically are [redacted], they are my enemies who killed my father. They killed my cousin for marrying a woman they did not approve of.

ISN 3799: Nawar Khan

At a Detainee Review Board on June 7, 2010, the board members found that Nawar Khan did not meet the criteria for internment, because there was “a lack of credible evidence” against him, and a more senior figure then ordered his release.

In the analysis of the supposed reasons for his detention, it was stated, “The following items were found in the detainee’s compound: laptop computer, bolt-action rifle, seven rounds of ammunition, SIM card. The following items were found at the place of capture: ID card, cell phone, calling cards, bold-action rifle, small pocket litter.”

Clearly, however, this had nothing to do with Nawar Khan, as he explained:

I am a poor person. All the stuff you accuse me of I wasn’t involved … I don’t know anything about anything that was found. I am a farmer … I don’t know whose items that were captured belong to. I am tired of the dispute. I’m just a farmer and land is an important thing for me. It’s up to the board for your decision to make.

He also said:

I have had a brother killed by Coalition Forces. There was fighting going on between two tribes because they were arguing about who owned the mountain. They had people bring them drinking water up to the mountains because they were fighting with each other. My brother went by himself to provide water for a nomad tribe because they paid [him] money. When [he] was coming back, the Coalition Forces shot him. I don’t know if he ran from them or somebody told something against him, but they shot him. My brother went to the fight without saying anything to our parents. He did something wrong and God punished him for that. I don’t blame anybody, and I don’t have any bad feelings towards anyone. My brother died maybe two or three years before my capture.

And, perhaps demonstrating how difficult his life was in general, he also said, “Since I have been here, I have been treated very good. I am happy. I learned some Pashtu training. I am in farming class too.”

ISN 3820: Bismullah

At a Detainee Review Board on September 24, 2009, the board recommended that he should be transferred to the Afghan authorities for criminal prosecution. The exact circumstances of his capture were not spelled out, but it was clear that he was seized in connection with explosives held in a compound, as, in response to questions that were not included in the transcript, he said:

• No, I was not in the compound with the explosives.
• I did not know that the Taliban kept or held weapons there.
• The compound is about a 30-minute walk.
• The Taliban never approached my brother.

In a statement, he also said:

Four people were detained when I was captured with my family. I am innocent. I am a farmer. We have no hostility. We are a peaceful people. I have no one to support my family. We have not done anything violent. My father was there but they released him because he was not able to walk. We would live in the city away from violence but we do not have the money. We need your help … I am innocent. Detain and arrest people only involved in violent acts.

ISN 3822: Abdul Janan

At a Detainee Review Board on September 24, 2009, the board recommended that he should be transferred to the Afghan authorities for criminal prosecution. According to the US authorities, “He supports the Taliban and associated forces” and “was observed fleeing from an IED factory with eight other individuals,” but in a statement, Abdul Janan said, “I teach children and I am innocent.” He added, “My name is ‘Janan’, ‘Mullah Janan.’”

In response to specific questions about the circumstances of his capture, which were not included in the transcript, he said:

• I do not know whose motorcycle that was. I was not riding one. I was at my house all day long.
• I do not know whose phone was recovered the night I was captured. I do not know how explosives ended up on the clothes that I was wearing. The clothes I originally had on got dirty and the family that I was staying with gave me fresh clothes to put on so that I could pray and [so] that they could be washed.
• I have a wife and children. I learned my lesson from this; and if I am released, I will live a peaceful and free life … If I get released, I will live my life as a mullah.
• A water pump accident caused me to lose my fingers.

In a final statement to the board, he said, “I have nothing else to say other than I am worried about my family.”

ISN 3823: Sadullah

At a Detainee Review Board on September 24, 2009, the board recommended that he should be transferred to the Afghan authorities for criminal prosecution, although it was unclear why, as all the allegations were redacted, and all that remained were his assertions that he was seized at his home, and that US forces found nothing incriminating:

• We are a very poor people. If you have any proof, then don’t release me. I am a farmer. You can ask anyone and they will say that I am not involved in this. There is an old saying, “If you are not a thief, then you are not scared of the king.” I was brought here as an innocent person.
• Yes, I do have a brother named [redacted]. We were captured together at my home. I do not know anyone by name of [redacted].
• I do not know a man by the name [redacted]. My father was there with me when I was captured, but they did not take him.

In a final statement, he said, “I am an innocent man. You found nothing at my house when it was searched. [Showing feet to members] I have calluses on my feet from farming. I am from a big village.”

ISN 3824: Idris

At a Detainee Review Board on September 24, 2009, the board recommended that he should be transferred to the Afghan authorities for criminal prosecution. In hand-written notes on a rare “Unclassified Summary” included with the documentation, it was claimed that he “AttenDeD [sic] a jihad tRaNiNg [sic] camp,” filmed an attack on a vehicle, and participated in an attack.

In his defense, he made the following statement, which, I must admit, I cannot entirely understand:

All of my friends received a job and I was left in my village without one. The Taliban told me I was smart and gave me money to fight. When I was captured, I wasn’t beaten or mistreated so I knew that the Taliban deceived me. I never fought or trained with the Taliban.

He also said:

• If I get out, I will try to find a job with a friend.
• I am 20 years old. I am going to look for a job to generate money and income. If I was going to go back to the Taliban, why would I tell you I was with the Taliban? I was very scared during the bombing.
• I did not attend a training camp.

ISN 3825: Khalilullah

At a Detainee Review Board on September 24, 2009, the board concluded that he did “not meet the criteria for internment,” and a senior officer approved his release without conditions. The basis of his capture was not officially explained, but in a statement Khalilullah was able to explain, “I am innocent. I have not done anything. I am only a teacher. I have no connections to those groups whatsoever.”

He also said:

• I am in prison, so I don’t know of the current government. I am a teacher of the Qu’ran.
• I have no connection with jihadists. I am not familiar with the jihadists in the Khowst Province. I think that proper planning by the Afghanistan government would get jihad out of this country.

ISN 3829: Bakhtyar

At a Detainee Review Board on September 24, 2009, the board recommended that he should be transferred to the Afghan authorities for criminal prosecution. Although the allegations against him were not spelled out, it was clear that they involved claims that he was involved in some sort of insurgent movement because he had transported weapons, as the following passage shows:

Those weapons in the photo are not mine. I just transported the weapons from the village to the mosque. I hand carried the weapons. I transported them for money but I did not get paid. If I get released, I will be a farmer on my father’s land and raise my brothers. I will not carry weapons for them again nor walk with them.

Who “they” were was not explained, although elsewhere he said, perhaps confusingly, “There is no Taliban or jihad movement in my area.” It was perhaps more significant when he said, “I do not know who is supporting the Taliban in my area.” What was also clear, however, as Bakhtyar himself pointed out, is that he was a poor, uneducated man who needed money:

• I don’t have an education. If you can read the charges, then I can explain them one by one.
• I am the oldest son of my family and I need to raise my brothers because my father is dead.

ISN 3839: Mohammad Azim

At a Detainee Review Board on October 1, 2009, the board recommended that he should be transferred to the Afghan authorities for criminal prosecution. In an “Unclassified Summary,” it was stated that he “was in possession of approximately 2050 voter cards, with his fingerprints on 442 of them,” although another charge was redacted.

In a statement, and in response to questions, Azim said:

• I graduated from school and then I was working for the government of Afghanistan. How could I be a Taliban member? The reporting that you have on me was from one of my enemies.
• I am from the Ebad village. [Redacted ] is one of the vllagers and he works for the Taliban.
• I was working on the election for Afghanistan. I made cards so that women could vote. This task was given to me by the district. I previously had been working to improve the country.
• I do have a car and it is a gray station wagon. I was asked to go to NDS [the Afghan National Directorate of Security] and they said that I was not guilty of anything. I was detained for 4 days. I have a cousin that reported to NDS because I burned his hay and that is why I was arrested. The person that accused me is working for NDS and that is why I was arrested.

In a final statement, he said, “I am innocent. You can ask the mayor of our district or the school about me.”

ISN 3845: Sher Agha (Dil Awar)

At a Detainee Review Board on June 5, 2010, the board recommended that he should be transferred to the Afghan authorities for participation in a reconciliation or reintegration program, but a more senior figure then ordered his release instead.

The allegations against him were that “he was found with an SD card, which contained propaganda videos and images,” and also that a computer was found at the compound where he was captured, However, in response he not only said that his name was “Dil Awar,” and not Sher Agha, but also explained that he had worked at a motorcycle dealership for 19 years before he was detained, that he had been invited to the compound where he was captured, and that the computer was not his. He also stated:

I got the SD card/memory chip from a bizarre [sic]. I put these pictures on the SD card. I don’t know where the propaganda videos of exploding coalition forces vehicles on my SD card came from. I bought the memory card used and didn’t know what was on the card before when I bought it.

In the detailed account of his review board hearing, he also said:

• I have never supported the Taliban with anything.
• I don’t make that much money to help anybody, only enough to help my family.
• I have not planned or executed any attacks against the coalition forces.
• I do not have enemies, but some people may be trying to make money.
• I don’t know who would say I was taking part in Taliban activities.
• I am well liked in my village. I don’t know of anyone who dislikes me.

He also provided the explanation of why he had a photo of himself with a weapon:

I took the pictures because I wanted a picture of me with the weapon. People take pictures with lots of different things, so what is so wrong with me taking a picture with a weapon?

He also said, “I am happy with coalition forces; they are all right. The Taliban are not so good. I don’t know if there are Taliban in the area I’m from.”

In his review board hearing, an Afghan civilian witness was also called, who corroborated his account, stating the following:

• I am from Ghazni province, Khalati village, it’s my hometown.
• I am the lead elder of the village and I farm.
• I know the detainee, he is my neighbor. I’ve never heard of him being called another name but Dil Awar. I’ve known him since he was a little baby.
• He worked at the motorcycle dealer.
• He was visiting some relatives for Laundy [?] and then coalition forces arrested him. I don’t know why he was arrested.
• I’ve never seen or heard of him being involved in anti-coalition activities.
• He is not a member of any terrorist group that I’ve heard of.
• If he was part of any of those terrorist groups I would never have come to testify on his behalf.
• If you release him, then I will make sure he doesn’t do anything wrong and I will keep an eye on him.
• If you release Dil Awar, please don’t release him to the Afghan government because his father is poor and doesn’t have enough money to bribe to get him released from the Afghan government.

Dil Awar’s father also made a statement:

[He] has been here for about 19 montns. I am very old, and I sold my property because I wasn’t able to keep it up. Now I don’t have any money and I am really old and will probably be dying soon. Please release my son because I want to be buried with his hands. My son’s kids were crying for their father before I came here and want their father back. The Mullah here came here because he’s going to vouch for Dil Awar. I’m not saying you guys are guilty for holding him here. I know someone must have said something about him and that’s why he’s being detained here. Please let me stay in place of my son here so he can go back and take care of his family. I can’t support his family because I am poor and have no money. Thank you for letting me make a statement.

ISN 3877: Shamsuddin Ul-Rahman

At a Detainee Review Board on September 24, 2009, the board recommended that Ul-Rahman, a lumber driver, should be transferred to the Afghan authorities for criminal prosecution. What he was alleged to have done was not made clear, although it seemed to involve a claim that he was involved in distributing threatening “night letters” from the Taliban to people in his village, and also that his name was mentioned on a Taliban radio transmission.

As he said:

I have not seen “night letters” in all of my life. Everyone in my village hates the Taliban. Every Taliban is my enemy because they killed my uncle. I do not know why my name was mentioned on a Taliban radio when I was captured. If I was released, I would bring my whole family to Kabul so that I can work and they can go to good schools.

He also said:

I am a poor man and my children have no one to take care of them. I am not Taliban and these are wrong accusations against me. I just want to go and take care of my kids. I am glad that America is here in Afghanistan because the overall pay has gone up. When I was captured, they searched my home and nothing was found. I will always prefer to have my family over Taliban. My uncle was with the government and, when the Taliban found out, they killed him. I hate the Taliban because of this. I.am happy with the Americans and I just want to be with my family.

ISN 3932: Bahram Jan

At a Detainee Review Board on October 1, 2009, the board recommended that he should be transferred to the Afghan authorities for criminal prosecution. Although the allegations against him were not made clear, it was apparent that they involved a claim that he was involved in handling materials to be used in an IED attack, although he refuted the claim:

I have a mental problem and I forget things. The IED materials are not mine. The explosive materials were given to me to take care of. The explosives were in a box and I did not know what was inside the box. The reporting on me was false.

He also said:

• I have always been cooperative.
• I buy and sell flowers. If I am released I would sell goods. I was threatened by the Taliban to cooperate.
• I’m a poor person, you should capture the Taliban. US is always very nice and I will help and cooperate if I am paid.

ISN 3938: Abdullah

At a Detainee Review Board on October 1, 2009, the board recommended that he should be transferred to the Afghan authorities for criminal prosecution. The allegations against him were not spelled out, but involved a claim that he had been involved with explosives, although he denied it:

I am a mullah of two families. The book was an address book to family members. I have never touched explosives and I am a poor person. [Redacted] is a mullah.

He also said:

• If this is an accusation, then that is different than proof. If you have proof, then you can hang me.
• If you are keeping me for being a mullah, then that is not a crime. You can keep me for 100 years, but I have never touched explosives.

ISN 3939: Noor Alam

At a Detainee Review Board on October 1, 2009, the board recommended that he should be transferred to the Afghan authorities for criminal prosecution. As usual, the allegations were not spelled out, although a heavily redacted “Unclassified Summary” included the words, “cell member.” In his defense, he stated:

I am a land owner and a carpenter. I know nothing of politics. I was caught by Taliban and they said that the infidels were coming and then they left me in the car and I was caught by US forces.

He also said, “[Redacted], a Taliban member, is my sister-in-law’s son. [Redacted] is my brother-in-law. [Redacted] was kicked out of the village by the elders.” He added, “I did not provide water for Taliban forces.”

ISN 3952: Jai Gul

At a Detainee Review Board on October 15, 2009, the board concluded that he did “not meet the criteria for internment,” and a senior officer approved his release without conditions. Unfortunately, the redactions in the document mean that there is no clue as to what he was alleged to have done, just the following statements by Gul himself:

• I am a poor man. I was happy when America and the Coalition Forces came to Afghanistan. I am a small farmer and I was waiting on Spring to come.
• My village is called Wurzana Kalay. I know nothing of Taliban there because I have not seen them. I am busy with my own work and I am poor. My younger brother is a very bad and hated person in my village.
• If I were released, I would go to my garden and plant seedlings and take care of it. I would be enough to feed and provide for my family.

In the saddest passage, he spoke about how well he had been treated, which, I think, showed up the desperation of his life before imprisonment:

Everything is good here but the detainees. The food, guards, and everything is good but the detainees are loud and bang on the cages because some of them are on strike. I get treated better here than I ever did at home. I have never received good treatment like this in my whole life. I try to be nice.

He also spoke about the abuse he received on capture, saying, “When I was detained, the American Army hit me,” which prompted a US Captain, perhaps acting as his representative, to ask “that the board inquire deeper into the abuse of the detainee at the time of capture,” and Jai Gul made the following statements to questions that were then asked:

• The army guard at capture hit me when I told him that I did not do anything wrong. He slapped the right side of my face and it caused my head to hit the wall. [The detainee lifted his right hand and placed it on his right cheek and simulated a motion that looked like his head was hitting a wall].
• I do not remember what the guard looked like because I was dizzy and bleeding after I got hit.

At the end of the hearing, he said, “Please help me because there is no one to feed my family and they have no source of income.”

ISN 3990: Abdul Samad

At a Detainee Review Board on June 9, 2010, the board concluded that he should continue to be held at Parwan. From the information presented, it was obvious that he was seized in a compound in which there was a large amount of material that US forces thought significant, including “spools or copper wiring, car batteries and battery chargers, remote controls, electrical tape and clips with trip wires, ammunition, two frag-grenades, and multiple blasting caps with some caps found in the Detainee’s pocket, three cell phones-one cell phone found [redacted], three walkie-talkies, 14 SIM cards, inventories of nefarious materials, ledgers, and Jihad poetry.” Also found were an “RPK machine gun, with used ammunition,” plus “part of ‘Stars and Stripes’ newspaper, a DVD, and a used bandolier.”

However, Abdul Samad claimed that he had no knowledge of any of it, except his school books. “There were four of us detained, my two uncles and one cousin,” he said, adding, “I am an honest person. These things that you have read to me I do not have. The only things that are mine are my store [school?] books. I am a student and I am not involved with IEDs at all. I do not have anything else to say, feel free to ask me questions.”

ISN 3995: Hajji Agha Jan

At a Detainee Review Board on June 7, 2010, the board recommended that he should be transferred to the Afghan authorities for participation in a reconciliation or reintegration program. In the documentation, it was stated that on capture, the following items were seized: “six hard drives, one laptop computer, nine SIM cards, loose papers, business cards, telephone directories, 1630 Afghani, 1690 Pakistani Rupees, 20 US dollars, camcorder with tape, still camera and case, Polaroid camera with scope, four ID books, five ID cards, three Afghanistan passports indicating numerous trips to Pakistan, airline ticket. receipt book, photo album, phone book, and audio cassette.” It was also noted, “Detainee’s computer and hard drives contained anti-coalition propaganda. Detainee claimed in his last Detainee Review Board hearing that his son was responsible for these materials.”

In a detailed statement, in which he protested his innocence, and also seemed to suggest that he had been robbed at the time of his capture, he said:

The allegation[s] that I’ve heard here are entirely false. If there is any proof, then, of course, I am guilt[y]. But there is no truth to these allegations. While I am making my statements my witnesses hear me and listen to me. I am a businessman. I don’t need to be involved in these activities. Of course, I have telephones. That doesn’t mean that I am part of the Taliban. I don’t know how to operate a computer. I bought it for my sons, for their education. There is nothing on the computer against the government or against the coalition forces. If you have any proof from outside my house, if someone in the village said something, I will take responsibility for that. You will not find anyone in the village who will accuse me of these things. While I have been detained in the facility, I have not cause[d] any problems or been involved in any detainee reports (DR’s). At the time of the search, I left $28,500 US dollars with my passports and some other business cards. How come they only mentioned 20 US dollars? Any witnesses that will testify against me, or any documents against me, I have a right to know about them. I am a businessman. I don’t hide anything from the board. Anyone who knows me knows that I am an innocent man, I [am] not involved in any activities against the government, nor do I have any ties to the Taliban.

During questions from board members, he not only dealt with questions about people regarded with suspicion by US forces, whom he admitting knowing but not being close to, but also answered questions about his computer as follows:

I can’t tell if that is my computer. I don’t know how to run a computer. I know that it is a computer, but I can’t identify it … It’s common in Afghanistan now to find videos of beheadings and IED explosions in the bazaar. Maybe my kids bought them just for fun. I myself am not involved. I didn’t buy them. I have never been against the government or the coalition forces. I’m a well-liked businessman, and I have nothing to do with those kinds of videos.

Speaking further of his sons and his work, he said:

I have ten sons, all of which live with me. They all use the same laptop. I don’t know how to work the computer, so I don’t know how to keep track of what they are doing on it. My sons are not dangerous people. They are my kids. In the area where I live, there is no Taliban. I live in the middle of the city for the last sixteen years. I live in Sahino, and there is not Taliban influence. If I were released, I would just continue with my businesses. I have some house[s], shops and lands. I own about 2,500 acres of land. I am not in favor of those who want to destroy the country. I am in favor of those who build the country. I am in favor of the government, the Coalition Forces, and American Forces. I have farmers and supervisors who take care of my land. I lease my lands to other people, and they grow grain and wheat on it. I do not personally work on the land. I am not a farmer. I have a brother-in-law in [redacted], who takes care of leasing the lands to people.

Speaking of Pakistan, he said:

I have made some trips to Pakistan because I have a cooking oil factory there. I go there to take care of business. Also, sometimes when someone in my family gets sick, I take them to Pakistan for treatment. I do business in Dubai involving cooking oil, dry milk and sugar.

In a final statement, after witnesses had also spoken on his behalf, he said:

I have been detained here for almost a year. What is the reason for my detainment here? I have no ties with the Taliban. I have never been in favor of the Taliban. I have never lied in the previous interrogation and I will never lie in any future interrogation.

ISN 3997: Ajmal Shamsher

At a Detainee Review Board on June 9, 2010, the board concluded that he did “not meet the criteria for internment,” and a senior officer approved his release without conditions. In the documentation, it was stated that he had been seized on April 22, 2009, but the exact allegations against him were not spelled out. However, he told the board, “I have a land dispute with a guy and he is the one who made the false report,” explained that “My brother, his son, his five daughters, my two wives, and seven children live with me,” and made the following statement:

My name is Ajmal. My dad’s name is [redacted]. I was a member of the local security team … I was driving for the Government of Afghanistan and I worked all my life to reconcile the differences between people in different parts. When I was driving for the Government I had the Taliban actually threaten to kill me. With all these threats why do you guys think that I am a member of the Taliban? If they are trying to kill me why would I try to be a part of them and support them? This is a proven fact that I have never been part of the Taliban. The Taliban burned my truck trying to kill me. Whoever reported to you that I am a bad person is against peace and reconciliation … They are my enemies and have made false reports about me. As I told you before, if the oil, diesel and spare parts for my truck are considered explosives than these are the only ones I have. The Taliban is out to kill me.

Witnesses also spoke on his behalf.

ISN 4112: Rahmat Wali

At a Detainee Review Board on September 17, 2009, the board recommended that he should be transferred to the Afghan authorities for criminal prosecution. In a rare “Unclassified Summary” included with the documentation, it was stated that he “was captured [redacted] weapons network and its commander,” but there were no further clues as to what he was accused of. He reportedly “stated that he is glad that the Americans came because now we have good schools for his children,” adding that “he had never been involved with the Taliban coming from Pakistan to Afghanistan,” and “that he was afraid of the Taliban and Haqqani Network [an independent insurgent group, under veteran warlord and former mujahideen commander Maulvi Jalaluddin Haqqani, which is closely aligned with the Taliban].” There is no further information, however, as no one on the board asked him any questions.

ISN 4122: Abdul Ghani

At a Detainee Review Board on October 8, 2009, the board concluded that he did “not meet the criteria for internment,” and a senior officer approved his release without conditions. He was evidently a teacher, as the following statement reveals:

I’m not a Taliban member and have no association with them. My nephew was with me going to a wedding. I stayed the night in Deh Chopan [redacted]. I don’t understand why I’m here. I’m from a sub district in Zabol. I have lived there for 10 years. I’m a teacher and after my students pass five grades I teach them religion as well.

After explaining that the “Taliban are not in the district itself but in the mountains,” and that, “If released, I would go back to teaching,” he also explained that he was captured with two others, who had both been released. As he said, “[Redacted] is my friend and was released as well as my brother.”

Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed (and I can also be found on Facebook, Twitter, Digg and YouTube). Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in July 2010, details about the new documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, on tour in the UK throughout 2011, and available on DVD here — or here for the US), my definitive Guantánamo habeas list and the chronological list of all my articles, and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.

As published exclusively on Cageprisoners.

This is the fourth article in “Bagram Week” here at Andy Worthington, with seven articles in total exploring what is happening at the main US prison in Afghanistan through reports, analyses of review boards, and the voices of the prisoners themselves, and ongoing updates to the definitive annotated Bagram prisoner list.

As part of “Bagram Week” here at Andy Worthington, I’m cross-posting a rather harrowing story, originally published on the Afghanistan Analysts Network, that I came across recently, and then lost again. I retrieved it via my colleague Mathias Vermeulen, who, on his blog The Lift, picked out a key passage in this bleak account by a former Bagram prisoner of the time he spent in the Tor jail — Bagram’s secret torture prison — before his transfer to the main facility. This is the passage:

After our arrest we were first taken to Tor Jail, or the Black Jail. It was terrible. They didn’t treat us like humans at all. They didn’t allow us to sleep. There was nothing to cover ourselves with. They insulted the Quran. Whenever we were taken to the bathroom, they left the door open. We never knew when it was time to pray or which direction we should face. We never saw sunlight. We were treated rudely during interrogation.

This entire article is a damning revelation — an insider’s account not only of the “enhanced interrogation techniques” used in the Tor Jail, but more generally of the cruelty and incompetence that fuels Bagram as surely as it fueled Guantánamo, with random arrests, threats, psychological abuse, poor intelligence, incompetent translators, ”segregation” — in isolation cells — used as persistently as it was in Guantánamo on perceived troublemakers, and, worse than Guantánamo (but as Bagram was in its early days) the death of a prisoner that was, it seems, effortlessly covered up and not reported. The account is also revealing about the dysfunctional relationship between the Afghan and American detention facilities, where there is supposed to be cooperation regarding trials, but where in fact chaos reigns, and prisoners are being lost between the two systems, abandoned unless they can pay a substantial bribe.

Overall, this article should, I think, be widely circulated as an antidote to all the claims that the move from Bagram to the new Detention Facility in Parwan has suddenly done away with abusive patterns of behavior that, it seems, are engrained in the operations, and in the casual racism and dehumanization of war, and that have nothing to do with the buildings themselves. Of all the accounts I have read, this one rings the truest, not just becasue it accords with other insider reports I have heard over the last few years about the ongoing physical and psychological abuse of prisoners, but also because it so clearly echoes what we know about detention operations throughout the “War on Terror,” which will not fundamentally change until someone draws a line under it all, and actually starts all over again, with respect for the geneva Conventions that were shredded by the Bush administration, and that have not been thoroughly reintroduced under President Obama.

Stories people tell: Bagram prison; not a single good day
By Martine van Bijlert, Afghanistan Analysts Network, March 9, 2011

There are so many stories of people who get caught up in the nightly operations by American and Afghan forces. In the search for ‘kill & capture’ targets the net is cast wide: once a door is kicked in all males in a household are usually taken for interrogation. And it is then anyone’s guess when they will be released again. One story — out of many — of how an unlucky sleep-over resulted in years of detention, and what those years were like.

I was arrested by American and Afghan Special Forces about two and a half years ago. It was night and I was staying as a guest in a house when the forces came. I had saved money to open a small medicine shop and that night I had gone to see this man to buy medicine. Maybe someone reported him to the Americans; in Afghanistan there are so many enmities. Maybe they thought there was some kind of meeting or program going on, because there were other guests as well. I don’t know why they arrested us, but they took all the men in the house: nine in total, including a 12-year old boy.

When they came we were sleeping. None of us was wearing shoes or proper clothes. One of us was only wearing his underwear. They took us with them just like that. We had to walk through the mud. After our arrest, one of the men was handed to the NDS (National Directorate for Security); he was a friend of the owner of the house. The four sons and a nephew were released after about two weeks. Then two other guests were released. They had come that night to get a tahwiz (religious amulet). They were released a few months before me. The owner of the house and I were released last, now a few weeks ago.

After our arrest we were first taken to Tor Jail, or the Black Jail. It was terrible. They didn’t treat us like humans at all. They didn’t allow us to sleep. There was nothing to cover ourselves with. They insulted the Quran. Whenever we were taken to the bathroom, they left the door open. We never knew when it was time to pray or which direction we should face. We never saw sunlight. We were treated rudely during interrogation. Some people were also beaten, but that didn’t happen to me.

After 33 days in the Black Jail I was transferred to the big jail. Here we were visited by ICRC [the International Committee of the Red Cross], which was good even though they had no authority. They brought letters, but they didn’t tell the press about us or about the circumstances we were in. The Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) didn’t come to the prison; maybe they were not allowed in. About a month before my release they came, but they were so young. What could they do?

Many things were really bad. For instance, I was locked up in ‘segregation’ sixteen times, sometimes for 10 or 20 days at a time. I did nothing special to provoke this. I didn’t do anything serious like hit them or attack them. It happened when I asked for my rights.That was reason enough to call me shureshi (trouble maker, revolter). I just asked for food, for instance, or I complained that they were interfering with our prayers. The food in segregation was especially bad; they called it ‘low-grade food’. It smelled and tasted horrible and made you sick. They even put an old man of 75 years in segregation, with bare feet and a bare head. The guards also used gas on the prisoners, it was like teargas and it made it very difficult to breathe.

There was one group of [American] guards who were called badmashi (thugs). They behaved very badly and rudely with the prisoners. One of them once told me he would kill me. When that group left things got a little better. But we did not see one good day in that place. The Black Jail of course was worse. At least in the big prison I was registered with ICRC. I knew they could not just execute me. Other prisoners said that from Tor Jail many people had disappeared.

There was a man from Uruzgan; he was about 30 years old. He became very agitated, but the doctor said he was alright. When the doctor finally came, he had died. Those kinds of things happen. But they don’t appear in the press, nobody pays attention.

There was also a young boy, he was mute and had psychological problems. When he was put in our cell, he was climbing the walls and trying to hurt himself. We tried to calm him down and to stop him. I told those in charge that it was not our job to look after him and that he should receive proper treatment. They said he was a suicide bomber. In the end they put him in segregation. When I was released he was still there. By that time he had been there for three months. He didn’t receive any medication. He was very loud and kept all the prisoners in that section awake.

There were also no facilities for handicapped or wounded people. Many prisoners had no legs or had other handicaps. It was difficult for them to go to the bathroom. There was one person in my cell who had fallen off the roof when he was arrested. His 10-year old son was shot during the raid. He arrived in prison with two broken legs. For two months we carried him to the bathroom.

About one year ago things in the prison became a bit better. A mullah was appointed. He belonged to the Americans and he helped improve the situation. Then the ANA [Afghan National Army] took over and we were transferred to a new jail. The new jail was better, there were bigger cells. But the Americans were still in charge. The Afghan soldiers had no right to talk to the prisoners. In every block there was a station, one at the north and one at the south, where there were Americans. They had to be informed about any request the prisoners had. The Afghan soldiers complained that they were just like waiters or sweepers in a hotel and that they weren’t allowed to do anything. Even the officers felt like that.

I was interrogated so many times. They asked me, “Do you know this person? Have you done that?” Once they showed me some pictures of what looked like explosives. I don’t know what it was, but they kept saying that it belonged to me. I was tied to a chair until nine o’clock at night. The Americans say that they don’t do zulm (oppression, cruelty), but they do. They bothered prisoners in a psychological way. They threatened them.

Once they told me that they would bring my father to the prison. I said that I would be very happy, because my father had died several years ago and I would like to see him again. But they did the same to other prisoners, who really became worried. Especially those who were not educated, who didn’t know whether the Americans might really do this or not. Sometimes the Americans even told the prisoners they would bring their wives or sisters to the prison. There was one man from Zabul. When they arrested him they took pictures of all the women in his family. During the interrogation they showed him the pictures and said they were going to make copies and distribute them in the whole of Zabul. They also took pictures of prisoners while they were having a shower and threatened to distribute them in their home areas. These kinds of things can give you psychological problems.

There were also problems with the translators. Some of them didn’t understand Afghan vocabulary at all. Once when I was being interrogated I told them that I had done two namaz (prayers) and that there were two left. He translated that I had shot two rockets and that there were two left. I didn’t know it at the time, but they confronted me with this during an interrogation much later. The whole thing was like a stupid joke.

There was a commander who was also detained. After six and a half years they told him, “We still have doubts that you are a Hezb-e Islami commander”. He said, “You have doubts? There is no doubt! I am a Hezb-e Islami commander, for sure. But what is my crime?” He was a commaner and a malek, a person who tried to build up the government, but they kept him detained for such a long time for no reason. There was another man called Abu Baqer. The Americans thought he was Commander Abu Baqer, because his name was the same, so they kept him detained for seven years. In the meantime the real Commander Abu Baqer was still moving around and everybody knew it.

Some prisoners did not see their relatives for a year or more. There was a man from Khost. When his relatives asked about him, the Americans told them that he was not there — but he was. After a year and a half he was finally given a meeting. After that he was released.

I was released a few weeks ago. At my release an American colonel apologized to me. He said that they had concluded that I was innocent and that I had worked for the good of Afghanistan. He said that after two and a half years! They gave me a bottle of perfume, but they did not return my possessions. When I was arrested I had $6000 on me, as an advance for the medicines, and also my mobile phone and some afghanis. They did not give them back. At the time I didn’t say anything; I just wanted to leave. But they should give it back.

Now I am in a bad situation. I feel like half my life is gone. My economic situation is bad, my savings are gone. My health is not well. My legs hurt, I don’t know why, maybe because of the lack of exercise. On the day of arrest I also hit my leg, when they pushed me into the car while I was blindfolded. For the first few months I couldn’t walk properly. My back also hurts. We went on strike for a while in the prison, because of the bad conditions and because we were upset that our fate was not clear. After four and a half months they came in with force to break up the strike. One man broke a leg and an old man broke a rib. Two guards fell on top of me with their heavy jackets. My back still aches from that.

One prisoner wrote a book. He actually wrote two books. While he was in prison he gathered toilet paper and wrote on it with a pen. We were not allowed pens, but he had received one from an ANA guard. The books are called ‘Gift from Bagram’ and ‘From Karez Mir to Bagram’. I don’t know if they have been published yet.

According to Afghan and international law you can detain a person for three months, but they hold people for years and years without any decision. Since the demonstrations there are now reviews every six months, but there are so many people who have already been kept for years and who are still in the prison. Their detention just gets extended every time. Once when I was getting ready for the DRB (Detention Review Board), the representative gave me a piece of paper and said that if I read that at the meeting I would be released. The paper said that I had killed people. I said I cannot read that, but he said if you do you will be handed over to the Afghan government. I went to the court but I did not read the paper. My detention was extended for six months.

In the end I was sent to two Afghan courts. They decided to release me. Two months after that the Americans released me. They don’t care about the Afghan courts, and the Afghan courts are not processing the cases. There are more than 300 prisoners that are in between the two systems. Their files have been sent to the Afghans, but they are still in the American prison. They are lost. If they don’t give money, their file will never be found again.

I wasted two and a half years of my life. I don’t feel well at all. I am afraid that, because this happened once for no reason, it may happen again. Who can guarantee me that I will not be unlucky again? When I was arrested I was engaged. I still am, but I have no money or income. So much happened in those years, I cannot remember it all. I have only told you what I remembered. I think it might be good if my story is published. The world should know what it was like. There was not one good day in all those years. We were not treated like humans. Even though we had done nothing wrong and they had no information against us.

Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed (and I can also be found on Facebook, Twitter, Digg and YouTube). Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in July 2010, details about the new documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, on tour in the UK throughout 2011, and available on DVD here — or here for the US), my definitive Guantánamo habeas list and the chronological list of all my articles, and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.

Since the US prison at Bagram airbase in Afghanistan opened in December 2001, the voices of the prisoners held there have never been made available to the outside world by the US authorities. When they have become known, it is either after the prisoners’ release, or, for those sent to Guantánamo from Bagram between 2002 and 2004, through the transcripts of their tribunals and review boards at Guantánamo, when some spoke about what happened to them in Bagram.

The prison has changed over the years. It was a place of mayhem and murder in the early years, when horrendous brutality accompanied its role as the prison used for processing prisoners for Guantánamo. After the transfer of ordinary prisoners ceased (in November 2003), and most of the additional prisoners who had passed through a variety of secret prisons were also disposed of (by September 2004, when some were sent to Guantánamo and others were forcibly repatriated), Bagram became Guantánamo’s dark mirror, untouched by the lawyers who, at Guantánamo, fought for and secured habeas corpus rights for the men held there.

Under Obama, attempts have been made to pry Bagram open. Three foreign nationals, seized in other countries and rendered to Bagram, where they have been held for many years (since 2002, in two of the cases), had their habeas corpus petitions granted in a court in Washington D.C. in March 2009, when Judge John D. Bates ruled that their circumstances were essentially the same as the Guantánamo prisoners and that therefore the habeas rights that the Supreme Court granted the Guantánamo prisoners in June 2008 extended to foreigners rendered to Bagram as well. This was undoubtedly true, but the ruling was overturned on appeal last May, hurling the men back into a legal black hole.

In an attempt to hide this blatant unfairness, the Obama administration introduced a new review process at Bagram, replacing the disgraceful set-up under President Bush, whereby prisoners had to make a statement before they were even told what the allegations against them were. Obama’s solution was to introduce a process almost identical to the Combatant Status Review Tribunals at Guantánamo — which the Supreme Court found to be “inadequate” — in which the prisoners are assigned personal representatives, instead of lawyers, and are not allowed to see or hear any evidence that the government regards as classified.

The Detainee Review Boards, which began in September 2009, are therefore as “inadequate” as the tribunals at Guantánamo, in particular because they maintain the Bush administration’s unchallenged fiction that the Geneva Conventions do not apply to current US wars, and that prisoners seized by the US since 9/11 are therefore not prisoners of war.

The Review Boards also reveal the chaotic nature of detention policies in Afghanistan, where there are prisons run by the Americans and prisons run by the Afghans, and the Boards, as a result, are given a smorgasbord of options for dealing with the prisoners: releasing them, continuing to hold them, or transferring them to Afghan custody, either to face criminal prosecutions, or to be put through a process of reconciliation and rehabilitation.

Although the Review Boards have led to the release of hundreds of prisoners, it would be difficult to regard them as a success, not only because they continue the unacceptable sidelining of the Geneva Conventions, but also because the entire process of holding hearings for prisoners who are not allowed to have lawyers and are not able to see or hear classified evidence against them is fundamentally unfair, as was demonstrated at Guantánamo, and as has also been demonstrated in reports from Bagram over the last year, as discussed in my articles, What is Obama Doing at Bagram? (Part Two): Executive Detention, Rendition, Review Boards, Released Prisoners and Trials and Broken Justice at Bagram — for Afghans, and for Foreign Prisoners Held by the US.

Nevertheless, the Detainee Review Boards have produced the first documents that reveal the words of the prisoners themselves, albeit in a heavily redacted form. In documents obtained by the ACLU through FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) requests, the Pentagon not only released documents providing summaries of the review boards’ conclusions (which I began analyzing here), but also released 58 documents relating to specific prisoners, which contain more information than those brief summaries — the Commander’s Final Decision Memo, a Memo from the DRB President to the Commander or the Deputy Commander, a DRB Report of Findings and Recommendations, and, most importantly, a Summary of the DRB Hearing, which, between redactions, usually contains some of the allegations against the prisoners, which are otherwise unknown, and some of the prisoners’ own statements and their responses to questions from the panel.

Below, I’m posting synopses of the first 18 of these documents, and will cover the other 40 in two articles to follow. Individually, they are not always revealing — although in some cases they clearly are — but cumulatively they help to provide an overview of the entire process, and, unfortunately, echo the problems with the tribunals at Guantánamo on which they were modelled.

18 Stories from Bagram

ISN 1433: Salah Mohammed Ali

Ali is — or was — a Pakistani prisoner, who was just 20 years old when he was seized. His Detainee Review Board took place on June 5, 2010, when he had, by his own reckoning, been held for six and a half years. The board recommended that he should be released in Pakistan, having concluded that he was “not an Enduring Security Threat.” During his DRB, he made the following statement:

I never belonged to any of the organizatIons that were mentioned. I came to study at a madrassa in Lahore. A group came to the madrassa school based on Islamic teaching. They brainwashed me against Americans. They talked a lot about Americans and that they are very bad people. They said Americans did bad things in Iraq, killing innocent kids and raping women. They said Americans came for the oil. I. am not associated with any organization like LET [Lashkar-e-Tayyiba] or Al-Qaeda. No one told me to join them. The other people who came to the madrassa might belong to them [redacted]. I accept that I went there for Jihad. That was a serious mistake in my life and I was too young to understand the consequences of that.

ISN 2619: Shafiq

On October 8, 2009, a Detainee Review Board concluded that Shafiq, assessed as “an insurgent member” who had “been involved in coalition attacks,” should be transferred to the Afghan authorities “for participation in a reconciliation program.” The board found that, although he was “not an Enduring Security Threat,” “internment is necessary to mitigate the threat [he] poses.”

In his hearing, Shafiq “sat on the floor and refused to make any statements.”

ISN 2638: Mullah Abdullah

On October 8, 2009, a Detainee Review Board concluded that Mullah Abdullah, assessed as “a low-level Taliban member and informant,” should be transferred to the Afghan authorities “for criminal prosecution.” The board found that, although he was “not an Enduring Security Threat,” “internment is necessary to mitigate the threat [he] poses.”

In his hearing, Mullah Abdullah asked a number of questions indicating that he did not believe the allegations against him:

• If I am Taliban, then who told you this?
• If weapons were found in the village, then it is not my fault. If I had weapons, then they should have taken a picture.
• The weapons were not 10 feet away. The weapons were 200 feet away. I was in my home at the time of the capture.
• I am mad because no one asked me anything for 4 years.

ISN 3151: Abdul Rahman Jan

On June 7, 2010, a Detainee Review Board concluded that Jan, a recently seized prisoner who was not included in the list of prisoners held in September 2009, should be released. The board “found no support for [his] internment.”

In statements, he explained that he was seized after taking his son to Pakistan, because he was sick, and then returning to meet a friend who had just returned from the Hajj (pilgrimage to Mecca). The exact circumstances of his arrest were redacted, but it was clearly something to do with allegations about a cousin of his, which he said were mistaken, as US forces had a different name to that of his cousin. Specifically, he said, “I don’t know anything about any weapons or radios found in the area I was captured. It was not my house, or my village. I didn’t see anyone carrying any weapons that day.”

He also explained that he had been captured before, and sent to Bagram, but that he did not bear a grudge against US forces:

I was captured in my own house in 2007. There were four of us captured … I don’t have any hard feeiings about the coalition forces, even though they’ve captured me twice. They didn’t disrespect me. They didn’t beat me. I am satisfied with and have confidence in the government. The government brings prosperity and security. I just want to explain to the board that I am a poor person and I’m not involved in any of the activities I’m accused of.

ISN 3154: Qari Mohamand (aka Mohmand)

On October 8, 2009, a Detainee Review Board concluded that Qari Mohamand, captured on February 6, 2007 and “assessed to be an insurgent facilitator,” should be transferred to the Afghan authorities “for criminal prosecution.” The board found that, although he was “not an Enduring Security Threat,” “internment is necessary to mitigate the threat [he] poses.”

In his hearing, Qari Mohamand said, “I have never fought with anyone. I am innocent. It is common for Afghans to make up stories. Nobody found any evidence.” He added, “I went to school at the Madrassa when I was 8 years old. I am only a farmer and I do not know anyone with explosives.”

ISN 3273: Said Wali Jan

On June 7, 2010, a Detainee Review Board concluded that Said Wali Jan was “an Enduring Security Threat,” and should “continue to be detained at the Detention Facility in Parwan.”

In his hearing, Jan, who evidently worked as a baker, said:

There is no proof of the allegation against me. it you have proof, I am willing to take whatever punishment you give me. If you can prove that I was involved in any suicide mission against the coalition forces, either by training or supplying materials, then bring the proof to me and I will accept it. There is not any proof that I was involved in [redacted]. If I had ties to these types of attacks or operations, I would not have been captured in my bakery. I see Coalition Forces, ANP, and ANA every day while running my bakery. These people come and buy bread from me. If I was that type of person they could have captured me anytime they wanted.

ISN 3314: Maulawi Ahmad Jan

On September 24, 2009, in his Detainee Review Board, it was decided that Jan did not meet the criteria for internment, and that he should be released without conditions. It was stated that he was captured on September 10, 2007 and that “He was but no longer is assessed to be a Taliban commander.”

Most of the case against him was not clear from the documents (as is the case with most of these hearings), but it was stated at the time of his capture that he was regarded as the Taliban district commander of Andar, in Ghazni province, and that he was “known to be extensively involved in the coordination of insurgent activities in Ghazni Province” and had “directed IED and ambush attacks against ANSF and Coalition forces throughout the region.”

Although Army Maj. Chris Belcher, a Combined Joint Task Force-82 spokesperson, said at the time of his capture, “With Ahmad Jan now detained, Ghazni will be a less dangerous place,” it may be that this was not the case, and that he was released because he was not who the US thought he was, or had far less influence than was thought.

Whatever the exact story, Maulawi Ahmed Jan’s dissatisfaction was clear from the following comments he made in response to various allegations:

• I am not part of the Taliban. I was brought here by force.
• I was not captured at home.
• My feet and wrists are injured from fighting with the guards.
• I am frustrated today because people hit me.
• I want to go home so that I can be a farmer.
• I have a wife and children. I have communicated with my family since I have been here.
• I was captured by the Taliban.

ISN 3451: Amanullah

At a Detainee Review Board on September 24, 2009, it was decided that Amanullah was “part of, or substantially supported Taliban or al-Qaeda forces, or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities aginst the United States or its coalition partners,” and the Board recommended that he should be transferred to the Afghan authorities for prosecution.

It was not made clear what he was supposed to have done, but it evidently involved his alleged knowledge of another individual in his village. In statements, he said, “I am a poor farmer and not Taliban. If I was guilty, then I would have run away from the scene. I have always been calm and cooperated with you.”

ISN 3483: Mak Mali Jan

At a Detainee Review Board on October 1, 2009, Mak Mali Jan’s release without conditions was recommended, even though a box was ticked which indicated that he was “part of, or substantially supported Taliban or al-Qaeda forces, or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities aginst the United States or its coalition partners.”

What Jan, a schools inspector, was supposed to have done was unclear, although it may have involved him allowing — or being prevailed upon to allow — someone to stay at his home who subsequently brought trouble on him. In statements from his hearing, he said:

• I am an innocent man.
• I work for the government so we have the same goal.
• I am an anti-coalition enemy.
• I do not know [redacted]. I do not want them to stay at my home.
• I check the curriculum for schools for the government. I like GIRoA [the Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan]. They are a good government. If I get released, I will do my previous job.

ISN 3485: Qari Abdul Wali

At a Detainee Review Board on October 8, 2009, Qari Abdul Wali’s release without conditions was recommended, even though, as with Mak Mali Jan (above), a box was ticked which indicated that he was “part of, or substantially supported Taliban or al-Qaeda forces, or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners.”

Although it was stated that he was “reported as a Taliban facilitator,” this was clearly not the case. As he stated at his hearing:

• I have always been cooperative and I will continue to be. When I was captured, they asked me my name and where I was coming from. It is outrageous to call me a Taliban member.
• I never said I was a Taliban member. I am not a driver for the Taliban.
• If I say that I know Taliban, then you will say that I am a bad person. If I say that I do not know any Taliban, then it does me no good because I am already in jail.

ISN 3665: Yakoub

At a Detainee Review Board on September 17, 2009, it was stated that Yakoub was “part of, or substantially supported Taliban or al-Qaeda forces, or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners,” and the Board recommended that he be transferred to the Afghan authorities for criminal prosecution.

Whether this was fair or not was impossible to ascertain, as all Yakoub’s statements were redacted, although the inference that he was involved with the insurgency can be easily reached from the the recorder, Specialist [redacted], who “presented the board with the unclassified information and internment criteria” and “further stated that a vehicle with five RPGs, six RPG propellants, one tank mine, a link of 7.62-mm rounds, one pressure plate, and two fragmentation grenades were found with the detainee.”

ISN 3670: Sadik

At a Detainee Review Board on October 15, 2009, it was recommended that Sadik be released without conditions, because he did not meet the criteria for internment. Although he was assessed to be “part of or supporting Taliban engaged in hostilities against the US and Coalition forces,” it was clear that he had been falsely regarded as harbouring an insurgent who attacked US forces. As he said, “The guy did not come from my vehicle. I have seen the soldier by my own eyes. I am innocent.”

He also said:

• I deny any part of any forces against the US. My little brother is 15 years old. I am poor. I transport things in my truck. I am innocently in jail. My truck is now ruined because it was shot up. I am innocent. Are you going to pay for my truck and pay me for the time I’ve been here innocently? Once I’m out, I expect someone to pay for my truck.
• I am innocent. If I stay, it is unfair to hold an innocent person for another 6 months.

ISN 3686: Ghulam Yaya

At a Detainee Review Board on October 15, 2009, it was recommended that Ghulam Yaya, described as “part of, or substantially supported Taliban or al-Qaeda forces, or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners,” should be transferred to the Afghan authorities for participation in a reconciliation program.

The exact cause of his detention was unclear, although it obviously involved his uncle, whose purported connections with the insurgency he claimed to know nothing about, and a white car. As he explained:

• I haven’t seen the white car. I am a working man, What. have I been brought here for? I haven’t done anything. Look at my file and ask about me. What is my fault? Why am I here?
• I am a peasant. That morning I was sleeping. I heard gunfire so I went outside to see what was going on. They put my wife, and children in a corner and asked me questions.
• For God’s sake, I have not done anything. I have a wife. It is cruelty that I am here. Please, don’t be cruel to me.

ISN 3687: Mohammad Nazar

At a Detainee Review Board on November 15, 2009, it was recommended that, even though Nazar was “part of, or substantially supported Taliban or al-Qaeda forces, or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners,” he should be transferred to the Afghan authorities for participation in a reconciliation program.

In a statement at his hearing, it was claimed that “pressure plate IEDs, six pressure cooker IEDs, two propane tank IEDs, one PKM, three AK-47s, five chest rigs, two hand grenades, and multiple amounts of ammo” were found near his point of capture, and that, according to a sworn statement by a US soldier, Nazar “was seen fleeing the raid.”

Whether Nazar had any connection to this cache of weapons and a firefight that is mentioned in the documents is unknown, but from his testimony he appeared to be a nobody, seized only because he was around and had run away. He said:

• I am new to this village, and I am just a farmer. All accusations are wrong. I am a poor farmer just trying to feed my family. I have done nothing wrong. I have nothing to feed my family, and it is not good for my family that I am in here. I moved to Baqua to work for [redacted]. I have three daughters, two sons, and a wife. I have no idea on why you are holding me here.
• I live at someone else’s home. The house does not have a door. I was inside, with my family. I will do labor job to feed my kids.

He also complained about being the victim of violence after his capture:

After I was cuffed I was hit. I did not resist arrest. It was too dark to tell who hit me … They hit me on the head and many other.places. I was bleeding after being hit in the head. I was hit with a gun, and I was kicked. I talked to the investigators about it, many times.

It was clear that he was an extremely unsophisticated man, nothing more than the laborer he said he was, because, in the words of a US Army sergeant who was called as a witness, “The detainee is not good with seeing himself in pictures because he is not used to it.”

ISN 3691: Noor Ahmad

At a Detainee Review Board on November 15, 2009, it was recommended that Ahmed, designated as someone who was “part of, or substantially supported Taliban or al-Qaeda forces, or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners,” should be transferred to the Afghan authorities for criminal prosecution.

Ahmad was evidently seized in the same raid as Mohammad Nazar, above, as it was stated that his arrest involved “a white vehicle containing four pressure plate IEDs, one PKM, three AK-47s, five chest rigs, two hand grenades, and various amounts of ammo.”

Ahmed also spoke less than Mohammad Nazar, and all that was unredacted in the report of his hearing were the following statements, which make it impossible to know whether he played any role in the events that led to his capture:

• These things are not true, Everything you are saying is not true. I am a poor person. I have told everything to the 10 or 15 investigators, make your decision off of them.
• Everything is in my file. Please don’t beg me to speak.

ISN 3748: Shahbodin

At a Detainee Review Board on October 8, 2009, it was recommended that Shahbodin, designated as someone who was “part of, or substantially supported Taliban or al-Qaeda forces, or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners,” should be transferred to the Afghan authorities for criminal prosecution.

In an “Unclassified Summary” included with the documents — not made available in any other cases — it was stated that Shahbodin had “confessed to IED activitiy” and had led his Afghan captors to “a site where he had hidden IED material.” He was then transferred to other Afghan forces, who discovered that he had been abused by his previous captors. Nevertheless, he then “confessed to placing IEDs wth intent to target CF [Coalition Forces]” during an interview after he was handed over to US forces a few days later.

In statements, Shahbodin explained that he had been involved in a planned IED attack, but had not been in charge, and had handed himself in because he was not happy with his involvement:

I have been here for 30 months, I am an Afghan and I would not destroy my country. I was present when the IEDs/mines were placed. I turned myself in because I realized it was wrong. I took the authorities to show them where they were placed.

After explaining that he used to “ship bread to Pakistan” from Ghazni, he spoke about meeting two men, whose names were redacted, who, he claimed, were in charge of the operation and recruited him. One of the men, he said, “gave me a speech about the Americans being bad and how he wanted to kill them,” and while these two men “placed the mines,” Shahbodin said, “I was the watch man.”

ISN 3771: Fazel Rahman

At a Detainee Review Board on June 5, 2010, “the board members found that [he] did not meet the criteria for internment,” and a more senior military figure then ordered his release. It was disclosed that Fazel Rahman, also identified as Hajji Nazar Gul, was a shopkeeper, and the following extraordinary passage explained why his “support” for the Taliban was no basis for his detention — because it consisted of him standing by while they robbed him:

Overall the DRB assessed that if Fazel Rahman provided any support at all to the Taliban it was most !ikely in the form of him standing by while they took items without payment from the store. The DRB considered this kind of support to be unwilling and under implied threat of violence.

The Review Board also noted:

• Notably, there is some evidence that Fazel Rahman smokes hashish and supplements his income in the off season by working in opium fields. The DRB considered these habits inconsistent with the tenets of some of the puritanical types of Taliban.
• Lacking any substantial support of or membership of an insurgent group, the DRB voted that Fazel Rahman, ISN 3771, does not meet internment criteria.

The Board also explained that Fazel Rahman’s small shop sold “chai, candies, sugar, chewing gums, candy, and groceries,” and that he understood that he was “accused of having a nefarious relationship” with someone whose name was redacted, but the mention of whose name prompted him to say that he “knows three of them, a shopkeeper, a barber, and a mullah,” who “is a suspected Taliban member.” The Board considered that he “was forthcoming when admitting ‘borderline’ nefarious conduct, lending a sense of credibility to his testimony generally,” and mentioned that he “discussed his travel to Iran for work. including the use of smugglers to cross the border.”

He also said that his brother and others would vouch for him: “They can tell the DRB what kind of person he is. When released he will try to help Americans. He likes the Americans because they build clinics, madrassas, and roads.”

In statements, Fazel Rahman said:

• I appreciate the respect I have received while here. I want to help Americans but I cannot because I’m a detainee. I have a shop and almost all the people know me and my brother and they all would have good things to say about me.
• I am receiving excellent medical treatment here. I have received two [doctors' visits] since being here. I was trying to tell the guard I needed to go to the Dr. and they would not take me so I spit on the guard. Yes, I threw my feces at the guard. I did it because I’m a sick person.

ISN 3776: Gul Haider

At a Detainee Review Board on June 9, 2010, the board members found that Gul Haider met detention criteria, but recommended that internment was not necessary to mitigate the threat that he posed, and that he should be released without conditions.

In his hearing it was stated that Gul Haider had admitted that his brother was a “known Taliban member,” and that he also “expresse[d] personal knowledge of numerous Taliban personalities and details regarding Taliban activities.”

In a statement, Gul Haider said:

• Thank you very much for giving me the time to speak, here. I was never a Taliban. When my father was sick I went to Kabul and stayed at the hospital for 19 days. If I was a Taliban I would have never gone to the hospital ran by the government. I am very happy with my government and happy for the Coalition Forces. If I was a Taliban I could not have stayed in Kabul for so long. When I was captured by the Americans I knew that I would be safe but I have been captured too long. If I am released I will still say that I like the Americans. I am very happy with the education classes here. I have signed up for English and farming. This is really nice for people here but I should not be here because I have done nothing wrong. My behavior has been good here.
• The government is not bad; with your help we can build our country. I like the Coalition Forces; they are building schools and roads. They are good for this country.

He also said:

• I have never been a part of the Taliban. I have never wanted to become a part of the Taliban. I said before that the Taliban came to my house and I gave them food, but only one time.
• How can I admire my brother? Because of him I have been put in jail. He has caused me a lot of suffering so how can I like him? We are brothers and we have the same family but we each have our own five fingers. I have my own mentality and can think for myself. Each person has their own mentality so people living together don’t always do the same things.
• If your enemy comes in your home you have to be hospitable and when he leaves then you can say what you want.

Note: For more information about the prisoners at Bagram, see: Bagram: The First Ever Prisoner List (The Annotated Version).

Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed (and I can also be found on Facebook, Twitter, Digg and YouTube). Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in July 2010, details about the new documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, on tour in the UK throughout 2011, and available on DVD here — or here for the US), my definitive Guantánamo habeas list and the chronological list of all my articles, and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.

As published exclusively on Cageprisoners.