US soldiers torture Afghan journalist at Bagram

This video from the USA is called Unfair Trials for Afghans Released from Guantanamo, Bagram.

From The Globe and Mail in Canada:

THE AFGHAN MISSION: ‘IT WAS LIKE A GRAVE’

U.S. frees Afghan fixer after 10-month detention he describes as ‘hell’

GRAEME SMITH

September 22, 2008

KABUL — In the U.S. military cells where he saw daylight only once a week, where he says they broke his ribs with beatings, his captors gave him a nickname: “the Canadian reporter.”

His formal designation was a detainee number: 3370. Last night, after almost a year in custody, the 22-year-old settled into a king-sized bed at the best hotel in Kabul with a big smile and started to regain his true names: Javed Yazamy, the name on his business card, or Jawed Ahmad, as he’s known to friends. Most importantly, he wants to rebuild his career and the working name that made him famous among Canadian journalists: Jojo, a name synonymous with some of the best coverage of breaking stories during his time as cameraman for CTV News in Kandahar.

It’s not clear why U.S. authorities let Mr. Ahmad walk free yesterday.

No explanations are usually given to detainees who are released. Mr. Ahmad was publicly named an “enemy combatant” by the U.S. military in February, but unlike most such prisoners, his case was watched closely by lawyers, journalists and diplomats.

The campaign for his release started almost immediately after U.S. forces took him into custody in late October of last year, and his fate had recently been publicized by human-rights lawyers using the example of his detention to challenge what they called a “legal black hole” at the sprawling U.S. prison in Bagram.

Mr. Ahmad says his U.S. guards told him many people were lobbying on his behalf, and he credits the pressure with finally winning his freedom. But he still seemed bewildered by his sudden good fortune as he plunged a fork into a moist chunk of chocolate cake and reflected on his recent hardships.

“I came from hell,” he said. “Now I’m back.”

Mr. Ahmad’s bright career as a journalist, and his terrible fall into the darkest part of the foreign military system in Afghanistan, started with a humble beginning. He took a job as a tailor at the age of 12, earning about 75 cents a day to cover the costs of his schooling. He also became captain of a soccer team, and his excellent language skills and physical fitness made him an ideal candidate when the U.S. Special Forces arrived in southern Afghanistan looking for translators.

…

But his journalistic endeavours may have contributed to his eventual imprisonment, Mr. Ahmad said, because much later his U.S. interrogators seemed interested in his forays into Taliban territory.

“Those people were not my friends,” he said, referring to the insurgents. “But they knew I was a good, honest reporter, and every media outlet was starving for Taliban video.”

About halfway through 2007, he started having problems getting through the gate at Kandahar Air Field, the main military base in the province.

He was once briefly detained and given a warning to stay away. He avoided the military base for a while, but returned Oct. 2, 2007, to help a 12-year-old boy shot by Canadian troops. After leaving the base hospital, a U.S. Special Forces soldier put a gun to his head and threatened him, telling him to stay away from the military base.

He again obeyed the warning, he says, until late October when he says he received a phone call from a male caller who described himself as a U.S. public-affairs officer who wanted to conduct an opinion survey of Afghan journalists. Mr. Ahmad agreed to meet the officer at KAF’s main gate. A red pickup truck arrived, he said, and the driver asked him to climb inside.

They drove into the U.S. Special Forces compound at KAF, he said, and soon events started unfolding like a movie. …

“I had seen that film, Road to Guantanamo, and the same things were happening to me,” he said.

His hands were bound with plastic ties, and he was hooded with a heavy bag. In the following days, he says, he was questioned, taunted, screamed at, beaten with chairs and slammed into walls.

“I was crying,” he said. “They were laughing, saying ‘You’re a spy,’ ” His captors accused him of spying for Iran,

where the Shiite government hates the Taliban

Pakistan

George W. Bush’s ally, certainly then under dictator Musharraf. Where the hell is the logic in those torture prisons?

or the Taliban.

They said he sold a sniper rifle to the insurgents. Interrogators falsely told him his family had been arrested and confessed. They even concocted wild stories about his Canadian employers, telling him that CTV had arranged for his detention – or, on another occasion, that a CTV reporter was a foreign intelligence agent.

“I knew these were lies,” Mr. Ahmad said.

The worst treatment he received at KAF was sleep deprivation, he said.

Placed in a small metal cage, and monitored by soldiers on a boardwalk overhead, he said they refused to let him sleep for nine days, frequently shouting abuse at him during the ordeal.

After the initial questioning he was flown to Bagram airbase north of Kabul, he said.

Still badly sleep-deprived, he was unloaded at the U.S. base and forced to stand for six hours in the snow wearing only a thin jumpsuit – no shoes, no hat – and he fell unconscious twice. Each time the guards forced him to stand up again.

“It felt like I had no skin left on my feet,” he said.

He tried to endear himself to his guards, who were amused to find a prisoner who enjoyed reading Shakespeare. But his situation got abruptly worse in early 2008, he says, when the stories began appearing in the media about his situation. Soon afterward, he was formally declared an enemy combatant. He was placed in a room he describes as the “death cell.”

Telling the story, his eyes brim with tears when he thinks about his treatment there, and says he doesn’t want to discuss all of it now.

He was deprived of sunlight, he said. “It was like a grave.” The interrogations continued at Bagram, he said, and no less violently than in Kandahar.

“They broke two of my ribs during the beatings. Four days I couldn’t eat because of this,” he said.

He received hints on Friday that he would be released, and yesterday he was abruptly transferred to local Afghan authorities and then onward to the Red Cross.

See also here.