Guantanamo Bay, Cuba- 23 Afghans Released

KABUL, Afghanistan (March 16) - Stepping into freedom in new denim jackets and gleaming white sneakers, 23 bearded Taliban and Taliban suspects headed to their homes Tuesday after one of the largest single releases of prisoners from U.S. captivity in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

For most, Tuesday marked the end of more than a year in U.S. military custody.

''Brothers, you are welcome to your country,'' Jamil Khan, a criminal investigations director, told the men at a Kabul prison, where they spent a final night behind bars Monday, after arriving from Cuba the same day.


"They didn't beat me - but jail is jail."
-Barak

''You are going back safe to your home,'' Khan told them. ''Go, see your family.''

The Pentagon announced the releases on Monday, making 119 one-time terror suspects now freed from Guantanamo, with about 610 still in detention there. It gave no explanation for the releases, saying each case was evaluated separately.

Prisoners freed Tuesday included hard-line Taliban who fought to the end as the fundamentalist regime fell in late 2001 under attack from U.S. forces and their Afghan allies.

Journalists spoke to the men as they gathered in a mosque at the prison, before being handed over to the International Committee of the Red Cross for help returning to distant villages and towns.

The U.S. military provided the denim jackets. The men wore them over traditional tunics and pants supplied by the Red Cross.

Red spokeswoman Jessica Barry said it was believed to be the largest single release of prisoners from Guantanamo.

The men's account of their physical treatment at Guantanamo varied sharply - with some saying they were abused and deprived of sound sleep for weeks at a time and others saying they were treated well.

''They did everything to us - they tortured our bodies, they tortured our minds, they tortured our ideas and our religion,'' ex-prisoner Mohamed Khan told Associated Press Television, in Arabic, without elaborating.

All spoke of the humiliations of captivity at Guantanamo and of the wrenching separation from home.

''We were in a cage,'' said Abdullah, an Afghan arrested in the Baluchistan province of neighboring Pakistan, who says he spent 22 months in captivity.

''They didn't beat me - but jail is jail,'' said Barak, 50, who like all the men interviewed refused to give their last names. Many Afghans go by only a single name.

A resident of Afghanistan's Paktia province, Barak said he was arrested after authorities found a weapons cache in his village. He spent 17 months in U.S. custody in Afghanistan and then Cuba.

Barak looked ahead - to home and family. ''I have one child - I will be happy to see my child, because the child is so sweet,'' he said.

Others looked behind, bitterly.

In Guantanamo, ''Many times, I say, 'God help me. You have forgotten me, God,''' said Mohammed, a 27-year-old held more than two years.

Mohammed, wearing crisp black curls and, like all the other prisoners, black beards, said he was captured at the end of the U.S.-led Afghan war, when holdout Taliban strongholds in the north - Kunduz and Mazar-e-Sharif - fell to Afghan warlords allied to the United States.

Caught by fighters serving warlord Atta Mohammed, he said, he saw eight wounded friends buried alive.

Transferred to a prison outside Mazar-e-Sharif, Mohammed said he survived what rights groups have identified as one of the greatest atrocities of the 2001 military campaign - suffocation of hundreds of captured Taliban fighters and others by northern alliance commanders in metal containers in November 2001.

''In mine, in one container, we had 100 people, and no oxygen,'' he said. ''We were dying.''

Mohammed said he was one of only eight in that container to survive.

In U.S. custody, he said, American wardens frequently challenged and offended his Muslim faith.

Behind razor wire at the U.S. detention center at Kandahar, Mohammed said, he saw Americans deliberately deface a Quran, the Muslim holy book.

Later, at Guantanamo, a top officer offended many prisoners by referring to the beauty of Afghan women - a sight some conservative Muslims believe is sacrosanct to the privacy of home.

None of Mohammed's claims could be independently verified. The U.S. military has barred most access to prisoners at Guantanamo and Afghanistan, including by their lawyers, but says the prisoners are being treated well.

One of his last sights at Guantanamo was of an American warden holding up an orange prison jumpsuit, Mohammed said. ''You do this again, you'll be wearing this again,'' he quoted the American as telling him.