Afghan tells of US custody 'nightmare'

Real Alternative Independent News |  A former Afghan detainee mistakenly held in custody of US soldiers for about four days in March 2002 has described his ordeal as a "nightmare." Ghousouallah Tarin, 31, testified on Wednesday in a court in Copenhagen where he filed a complaint against Danish soldiers for handing him over to US troops in Afghanistan.

"I blame Denmark a lot because it is responsible for the suffering that I went through during my four days of detention. It was a nightmare I can't forget," AFP quoted Tarin as saying on the second day of the hearing of his case.

"I would have preferred to die than to live what I experienced," said the Afghan citizen.

Tarin has demanded $9,100 (6,700 euros) compensation from the Danish government for the suffering caused by the country's troops stationed in Afghanistan.

Danish soldiers, serving with the US-led NATO operation in Afghanistan, arrested Tarin along with 30 other Afghans at an Islamic school and handed them over to Washington's troops in Kandahar.

The Danish soldiers "did not allow me to ask a single question to their chief to explain that we were a militia working for the Afghan government, therefore their allies," Tarin told the court.

I was “thrown down on a gravel floor, hooded, my feet and hands tied and violently beaten twice" and kept in that position for two to three hours at the US base, he recounted.

All the 31 afghan detainees were then put into "two iron cages where (they) could hardly move" and were deprived of sleep, Tarin recalled, adding the soldiers had to drag him to the interrogation room because he had trouble walking.

The detainees faced "inhumane and degrading treatment" during their detention period which violates the Geneva Conventions on prisoners of war, Tarin's lawyer Tyge Trier said.

Trier says they were seeking to clarify whether the Danish government knew about the US troops' mistreatment of Afghan prisoners.

A report revealed that US guards engaged in mistreatment of Afghan detainees held at the notorious US-run Bagram prison camp and airbase in Afghanistan's eastern province of Parwan.

The report released by the US-based Open Society Foundation in October quoted former Bagram detainees as saying that their US jailors placed prisoners in solitary confinement, abused them and prevented them from observing religious rituals. They also said that they were deprived of proper food and natural light.

Other revelations show that prison guards withheld Red Cross visits to the secret US prison.

However, the US claims that all its detention facilities operate legally and meet international requirements and detention rules.

Over 800 detainees are being held at the Bagram military base which has become a symbol of prisoner abuse since US troops beat two detainees to death there in 2002.

The International Committee of the Red Cross has confirmed reports on the existence of a secret detention facility at the US airbase in Bagram, and that it has been informed as recently as May 2010 of names of several detainees held in the hidden prison in Afghanistan.

Human rights groups say the prison has remained a US torture center since the toppling of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan nine years ago.