Among the most dismaying stories to emerge from the Guantanamo files is that of three hapless Tajiks caught up in a roundup of foreigners in Karachi in 2002.
The trio appear to have spent almost two years being interrogated and maltreated, first at the notorious Bagram airbase, and then at Guantanamo, before being released.
The prison files reveal that they were listed as “enemy combatants” on arrival, but turned out to be entirely innocent.
The then base commander, Major-General Geoffrey Miller, signed reports to the U.S. Southern Command HQ in Florida confirming that two of the men were not enemy combatants and he was having them sent home. He added: “It is undetermined as to why the detainee was transferred to GTMO.” Reports on the third man, Shirinov Abdulghafar Umarovich, are missing from the files, but he was reported to have also been released and returned to Tajikistan on March 31, 2004 along with the two others, Mukhibullo Abdulkarim Umarov and Mazhar Udeen.
The camp files disclose that the three were “arrested at a small library in Karachi”. Almost two years after their eventual release, a journalist for the U.S. magazine Mother Jones , while trekking in the Pamir mountains, stumbled across Mr. Umarov back at his remote home village and tape-recorded an interview.
Mr. Umarov's story, now confirmed by the classified prison camp files, is that the three were living in a room in the University of Karachi library, and looking for work, when they were rounded up by Pakistani police and given to the Americans. A suicide bomb had exploded and at the time, the U.S. was reported to be paying bounties of between $5,000 and $25,000 per Al-Qaeda prisoner.
Mr. Umarov said he had received no compensation since. He reportedly asked his interviewer: “Why did they keep a man for two years with no reason? Why? They caught me and kept me as a prisoner of war. What war, may I ask? When was I involved? I was sleeping when they came and dragged me out of my bed.” He described going on hunger strike, and being put in the isolation “cooler” at Guantanamo, for complaining to an investigator. “The soldiers took all my clothes and left me there.” During the day, two electric coils were used to overheat the three-feet-by-five-feet metal cell. At night, frigid air was pumped in. “Some prisoners wouldn't last the night and had to be taken to the doctor,” he said. “They kept me there for 10 days — and for no reason.” The three Tajiks were among more than 100 detenus taken to Guantanamo for little more than being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Of the 212 Afghans at the base, almost half were, in the assessments of the U.S. forces, either entirely innocent, mere Taliban conscripts, or had been transferred to Guantanamo with no reason for doing so on file.
Corruption
One such individual was a rural Afghan, Mohmed Allah. His docket says he was robbed of his cash and his vehicle after visiting the Chinese hospital in Kandahar in 2002. “Irregular Afghanistan troops found the detainee on the street in Kandahar City and held him. The detainee was turned over to U.S. forces.” The only reason given for Prisoner 347's internment was “because he was a Mullah, who led prayers at Manu Mosque in Kandahar province, Afghanistan ... which placed him in a position to have special knowledge of the Taliban”. The U.S. soldiers eventually released him, after more than a year's captivity, deciding he had no intelligence value and “does not pose a future threat to the U.S. or U.S. interests”.
Other Afghans taken to Guantanamo included a taxi driver, shipped to the base “because of his general knowledge of activities in the areas of Khowst and Kabul based as a result of his frequent travels through the region as a taxi driver”; two detenus brought for their knowledge of conditions of prisons run by the Northern Alliance; and, perversely, several Taliban conscripts for their knowledge of conscription techniques. Others ended up at the base as a result of corruption of Afghan or Pakistan authorities. Mukhtar Anaje was sent to Guantanamo in 2003 after allegedly masterminding an ambush that killed two U.S. soldiers in Helmand. The intelligence behind his transfer came from Dad Mohammad Khan, chief of intelligence in the province.
But by September 2004, U.S. forces concluded Mr. Anaje had been set up. “It appears his capture by Afghan militia forces (AMF) and subsequent handover to U.S. forces was based on fraudulent claims given by AMF personnel themselves,” states a file note recommending him for release.
“Dad Mohammad Khan and other members of the Hezb-I-Mujahideen terrorist organisation were later identified as conducting the ambush in Sangin, AF, that killed two Americans. (Analyst note: Considering that Dad Mohammad Khan was the individual who originally accused the detainee of participating in the ambush, that report is no longer credible.)” Mr. Khan later became a member of the Afghan Parliament and stood for Vice-President of the country.
Others were transferred through more mundane corruption. Noor Ahmad, arrested by Pakistani police in 2002, was asked to pay 1,000 rupees to secure his release. Unable to raise the money, he was transferred to U.S. forces and taken to Cuba “because of his general knowledge of routes of ingress into Afghanistan”. U.S. forces recommended him for release in January 2003, just seven months after his transfer to the base. — © Guardian Newspapers Limited, 2011
