Sorting Through Truth, Fiction in Afghan Prison

The grimy building off a back street looks like most of the other minor government ministries here in the Afghan capital. But two flights underground, past several steel doors, is a prison that was infamous for its squalor in the days of the Taliban.

Now the dimly lighted and poorly ventilated cells of Department 3 are occupied by some of the former regime’s own, both Afghans and about 110 foreign prisoners. Most of the foreigners are Pakistanis, but they are joined by several Saudis, a Jordanian, an Egyptian, an Uzbek and two Tajiks. They are believed to have fought for the Taliban or the Al Qaeda terrorist network.

Interviews with the foreign prisoners and their keepers suggest that the nation’s interim government has a rough road ahead in determining what to do with these men. The first difficulty is deciding what role, if any, each played in the Taliban or Al Qaeda. It is assumed that most of the foreigners belonged to one or the other, though many refuse to answer questions about what they were doing in Afghanistan.

Some foreign prisoners who were interviewed claimed that they were barely aware of the Taliban’s existence. Others said that although they supported the Taliban, they would never fight for it. And an occasional foreigner voiced admiration for Osama bin Laden.

Police officers who have questioned the foreign prisoners using tough interrogation techniques insist that they are all members of Bin Laden’s Al Qaeda network. The truth is difficult to sort out in a world where lying can be a survival skill: The captors want to show their effectiveness in their new role as law enforcers, while the captives want to save their skins. But the accounts of the foreign prisoners suggest that they had ties to Al Qaeda.

Zabin, a 22-year-old religion student from Saudi Arabia, insisted that he had not come to Afghanistan to help the Taliban or battle the United States. “I was here for military training because I wanted to go to Palestine for fighting,” he said last week.

He said he made his way to this nation at the urging of a mullah in his hometown. He traveled to Kandahar, where he said he trained at a camp outside the southern Afghan city under a Syrian commander named Abul Bara. Then Zabin and 60 other Arabs went to a camp near Kabul run by a Yemeni named Abu Ayesh. However, Zabin says he does not consider himself an Al Qaeda member.

Osama Hassan abu Khabir, a 32-year-old Jordanian, said he had come to Afghanistan for jihad, or religious struggle, but claims that he was captured before he had a chance to fight.

“We had a fatwa [religious edict] that we should protect Islam from the attack of America,” he said in careful English.

“America is treating Islam badly every place in the world,” said Khabir, who views Bin Laden as a hero. “All Muslims look at Osama as a good man who is trying to protect Muslims.”

“I was happy when I heard about the World Trade Center because I thought it was all sinners and money that was destroyed,” he added. “I did not know then that . . . civilians had died.”

However, Jawad Farouqi, 57, a fluent English speaker who said he was born in India but lived in Pakistan, insisted that he had come to Kabul on a pilgrimage. When asked why he had chosen the Afghan capital, which is not a major destination for such religious quests, he said blandly: “You can go anywhere for a pilgrimage.”

Such a “hear no evil, see no evil” defense is a lie, said Mirzasha Khan, deputy director of Department 3, part of the Interior Ministry’s security division.

“All of them are members of Al Qaeda, and we have got their confessions,” he said last week. “They said they were supported by Bin Laden--many of the Pakistanis came from Peshawar [in Pakistan] and they were fed by him and paid by him.”

There are other contradictions between the words of jailer and jailed. Khabir said he was unarmed and fleeing Kabul after the Taliban’s fall when he and a Singaporean friend were arrested. Khan said that the Jordanian was heavily armed when apprehended and that the Singaporean also was an Al Qaeda member. Khan believes that Khabir had been in the country for at least a year and is highly educated, contrary to the prisoner’s description of himself as only having studied in primary school.

Khan said most of the foreign prisoners that he has questioned trained at Al Qaeda camps in Kabul, and some also may have been at camps near the city of Jalalabad and in Khost, where U.S. forces carried out an aggressive bombing campaign.

“They said these were camps of Pakistanis and Arabs,” he said.

American debriefers have not made their way to Department 3, Khan said. If they do, in accordance with the interim Afghan government’s policies, they will be permitted to question the prisoners.

It is less clear whether any of the men might be moved to the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where the Americans are holding more than 250 terrorism suspects captured in Afghanistan. The chief justice of Afghanistan’s Supreme Court recently said he would prefer that the foreigners be tried in his nation.

The prisoners in Department 3 are just a few of those taken during the war. Monitors from the International Committee of the Red Cross have visited about 5,000 men held in 38 prisons around Afghanistan. Some of the facilities house hundreds of alleged fighters; others are little more than back rooms of warlords’ command posts, with straw strewn on the floors.

A key question is whether foreigners who were mere foot soldiers for the Taliban and Al Qaeda should be allowed to go free--treated, like many of their Afghan counterparts, as prodigal sons. Interim Prime Minister Hamid Karzai recently ordered the release of and amnesty for about 300 Afghan Taliban, many of whom appear to have been conscripts.

A further dilemma is what to do with those found to have been noncombatants.

The Afghan courts plan to deal with the foreign fighters differently from other prisoners. There will be a special system in which they will have their cases heard by a panel of judges selected by the chief justice, said Ghulam Rasul Rahimi, a senior member of the Supreme Court. In contrast with the usual Afghan legal system, the foreign Taliban will have no right to appeal.

Punishment for the crimes with which the foreign prisoners probably will be charged range from long prison terms to death, Rahimi said. From the Afghan point of view, no punishment is too severe; it is accepted wisdom here that the country has been cursed by foreigners meddling in its politics.

Under the Afghan penal code, there is a direct prohibition against immigrants coming into Afghanistan to fight against the government. This provision is often noted by Afghan lawyers in describing the foreigners’ alleged crimes. However, whether those who came to support the Taliban were fighting for or against the government is a point of debate.

At the time that most of the men imprisoned in Department 3 came to Afghanistan, the Taliban controlled about 90% of the country and was recognized as the legitimate government by three Islamic countries: Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Pakistan. The United Nations recognized the government of deposed President Burhanuddin Rabbani, whose alliance controlled only a small area in the north.

Rahimi said the Supreme Court regards Rabbani’s government as the legitimate one at the time and will punish foreigners who fought against it.

Although much has been made about the possibility that the rights of prisoners transported to Guantanamo were violated, those prisoners would have faced harsh conditions here. Sanitation and medical care are limited in Afghanistan, and spartan meals of rice with kidney beans are served twice a day in Department 3.

Day and night are little different in the cells. Only a small window high in the wall of each provides any natural light. Otherwise each room has a single bare bulb. The cells are almost unbearably tight, with three men sleeping on the floor and about half a dozen others squeezed onto cots.

In some ways, the prisoners might be more comfortable here because they are held in groups of eight to 10 and can pray and eat together.

“The first month or six weeks was very difficult. I was alone in the cell, but now I am with friends,” said Khabir, the Jordanian.

Prayer is a constant. A visitor entering the cold corridor can hear the rhythmic sound of Koranic recitation. Copies of the Koran hang from the wall in plastic bags to protect them from the damp. Nearly every cell holds someone who studied as a preacher.

Khan said his investigators make a point of avoiding abusive techniques against their prisoners. But his description of their approach leaves some questions. “If you use a stick--as opposed to a carrot--on a person, he will tell you one word, ‘Yes, I did it,’ but then in the future he will say, ‘No, I did not mean that.’

“But sometimes it is necessary to use mental pressure,” he added. “For example, we can say, ‘We know you’ve done this and if you don’t confess you will be killed or put in prison.’ And then his nerves will be shocked and he will be afraid.”