Last Taliban, al-Qaida detainees transferred
SHIBERGHAN, Afghanistan (AP) – Shackled and under guard, 434 alleged Taliban and al-Qaida fighters shuffled out of Afghanistan’s most notorious prison Thursday, winning transfer to a Kabul jail after a weeklong hunger strike to protest being held without charges for nearly 21/2 years. The U.S.-backed government promised they would get speedy trials and said those cleared of major offenses were expected to be freed soon.
Long before the uproar over allegations of Iraqi detainees being abused by American troops, Shiberghan’s prison gained a reputation for brutality under the control of northern warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum.
International human reports groups depicted the jail as an abysmal place, pointing to its severe overcrowding and recounting reports of torture and starvation of prisoners.
Warden Abdul Khaled allowed an Associated Press reporter and photographer to watch some of the transfer and visit cell blocks. He had the journalists escorted out before the process was complete.
The 236 Pakistanis and 198 Afghans taken away were among the last detainees from nearly 3,600 men once held at the prison in this northern city, leaving only 70 inmates convicted of non-terrorism charges, officials said. The men were being taken to join some 440 detainees moved to Kabul’s Pul-e-Charki prison earlier this week.
Jawed Ludin, a spokesman for President Hamid Karzai, said the transfer was prompted by “general problems” at the prison, as well as the hunger strike.
He said the men would be screened before possible release to make sure they “don’t pose a threat to Afghanistan or the region,” but wouldn’t say if the U.S. military would be involved in that process.
U.S. troops previously took away some detainees at Shiberghan as suspected al-Qaida members, and Americans were back in recent months for a final screening but didn’t remove anyone else, officials said. No U.S. military were present Thursday.
One of the inmates being transferred, Hazrat Mohammed, pointed inside the cramped confines of Cell No. 18, his home for the last two years. He said he had been beaten with a rubber hose for complaining to the Red Cross about the lack of food.
“For four months we didn’t see the sun; we didn’t see anything,” said Mohammed, an Afghan who appeared far older than his 30 years.
A 6-by-6-foot cell he was later moved to and recently shared with four others was strewn with old blankets and cooking oil bottles and decorated with a poster of the Muslim holy city of Mecca.
He said as many as 26 men were once crowded into the space, so inmates had to sleep in shifts.
“Finally, after more than two years and all the oppression, we all said this is enough and went on a hunger strike,” said Mohammed, who appeared to be a leader among the detainees.
The hunger strike began April 29 after a clash that ended with the burning of a shop inside the prison.
Some detainees said the fire was an accident. Aid workers at the jail said others told them a fight erupted when guards started beating a prisoner. The warden claimed to have foiled an escape attempt, but offered no details.
Brig. Gen. Ibrahim, deputy chief of the prison agency, said authorities in Kabul would put the prisoners on trial and that time served would be taken into account at sentencing.
Martin Minder, head of the Red Cross delegation in the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif, criticized the lack of trials.
Detainees “have to be judged in a reasonable time frame,” he said. “From 2001, it’s not reasonable anymore.”
Most of prisoners were brought to Shiberghan after being captured in late 2001 as the Taliban regime collapsed under U.S. bombing and ground attacks by the Northern Alliance. They were transported like cargo in metal shipping containers in sweltering heat, and many did not survive.
Prisoners were crammed into the jail at 10 times its capacity.
Malnutrition became so severe that the Red Cross began an emergency feeding program at the prison similar to those used to care for African famine victims.
Conditions had improved some at the jail, through assistance provided by the Italian-based aid group Emergency, which operates hospitals across Afghanistan and opened a clinic in the prison in April 2002.
Still, tuberculosis spread at an alarming rate among detainees, said Dr. S.K. Das, a physician with Emergency. “This prison is the worst place for communicable diseases,” he said, adding that he also couldn’t rule out HIV infections. Drug abuse also was widespread.
On Thursday, the prison yard was strewn with stacks of molding flat bread. Banners on the walls, some in broken English, read: “Release or death.”
Taking the prisoners from cells in groups, guards searched personal belongings, shackled detainees’ legs and bound their wrists with chains.
Ibrahim denied any mistreatment of prisoners and said terrorists were still among those in custody. “They are invaders, they are killers, they are fighters,” he said.