Indictee Handed Afghan to U.S.

The U.S. military said Thursday that it held an Afghan prisoner for two months after he was handed over by three Americans who have been charged with illegally imprisoning and torturing Afghans at an unofficial jail.

The admission came after the group’s leader claimed that the three had ties to the Pentagon.

The American military has denied any link and has sought to distance itself from the group led by Jonathan K. Idema, a former U.S. soldier once convicted of fraud.

But spokesman Maj. Jon Siepmann acknowledged that the military had taken custody of a detainee handed over by Idema’s group at Bagram air base, north of Kabul, on May 3.

Siepmann said that Idema had appeared “questionable,” and that suspicion grew as interrogators realized the detainee was not the Taliban suspect that Idema had claimed.