How we treat prisoners
: The 18 Afghanis freed from Guantanamo Bay talk about their captivity:
Seated cross-legged on a floor of the Kabul Police Department jail yesterday, nearly all of the former detainees enthusiastically praised the conditions at Guantanamo and expressed little bitterness about losing a year of their lives in captivity, saying they were treated better there than in three days in squalid cells in Kabul. None complained of torture during questioning or coerced confessions.
After they were set free, however, two men who had remained silent earlier hesitantly began to recount being punished for protesting indignities to their captors. The two both admitted to having been employed by the Taliban as drivers….
”The conditions were even better than our homes. We were given three meals a day — eggs in the morning and meat twice a day; facilities to wash, and if we didn’t wash, they’d wash us; and there was even entertainment with video games,” said Sirajuddin, 24, a taxi driver from Kandahar, the birthplace of the Taliban. He said he was forcibly conscripted by the militia and captured by a notorious warlord, General Abdul Rashid Dostum, who ”sold us to the US.”
Before Kabul jail authorities told the men that they would be released, Sirajuddin said: ”The conditions here are worse than terrible. If we are to be imprisoned, I want to go back to Guantanamo,” he said, banging on a table.
Murtaza, 28, of southern Helmand province, was one of two who said they had received bad treatment. A driver for the Taliban who also fought as a soldier, his problems at Guantanamo began, he said, when he protested the confiscation of his Koran. US guards piled everyone’s copies on the floor and then sat on them, he said….
