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What Is My Crime?'; Case of an Elderly Afghan Freed After 3 1/2 years at Guantanamo Raises Questions About U.S. Detentions

By Kim Barker.
Chicago Tribune
October 2006

YAKHDAND, Afghanistan

Nasrat Khan wears the long gray beard of an Afghan village elder. He estimates he is 78 or 79, and he has trouble seeing and hearing. Since suffering a stroke about 15 years ago, he needs crutches or a walker to get around.

He doesn't fit the common image of a terrorist, but for much of the last 3 1/2 years, the United States imprisoned Khan at its detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Accused of links to a warlord and questioned about his son's possession of hundreds of weapons, he was designated an "enemy combatant" and a terrorist threat--until August, when he was no longer deemed a threat and released quietly, he and his U.S. lawyer say.

Now back in his family compound, surrounded by relatives and friends, Khan says he still is confused about why he was detained and flown halfway around the world.

"I asked them, `What is my crime?'" said Khan, his swollen legs splayed before him, sitting by the red walker he said U.S. officials gave him in Cuba. "They didn't say anything. No one would tell me what my crime was and why I was there."

While the details of Khan's Guantanamo experience are hard to verify, his complaints raise questions about who has been sent to the detention facility and how thoroughly the charges against them are investigated, just as a law approved by Congress late last month sets up military tribunals to try some of the detainees. President Bush is scheduled to sign the bill into law Tuesday.

Khan and his lawyer complain that the allegations never were made clear to them and that the U.S. military never contacted defense witnesses whose names Khan and his son provided to a judge at Guantanamo, despite the military's pledges to do so.

Tracked down in Afghanistan, two of the witnesses told the Tribune they never were contacted. One was a government official whose phone number was provided to the Tribune after one call to the Afghan Defense Ministry.

Rights group sees pattern

Sam Zarifi, Asia research director for Human Rights Watch, said Khan's case appears familiar. He said reviews of unclassified transcripts from tribunals and review board hearings for many of the detainees indicate that some were arrested because the U.S. military does not understand Afghan political rivalries.

"This really fits a pattern of problematic allegations and process at Guantanamo," he said. "It seemed to be arbitrary who was picked up and who wasn't."

The same concerns were expressed Thursday after 16 Afghans and one Iranian were released from Guantanamo and returned home by U.S. officials. Some had been in Cuba for four years. The Afghan government said "most" had been falsely accused, while all proclaimed innocence and some said they had been badly treated. Pentagon officials said Monday that another four--two Pakistanis, an Iranian and a Bahraini--were sent home over the weekend.

Secrecy surrounding the Guantanamo proceedings makes it hard even to know who is at the facility. But Khan, the Yakhdand elder, was confirmed to have been at the detention center because his name was on a list of detainees the Pentagon released to The Associated Press this year after a Freedom of Information Act request.

He was not the oldest detainee ever at Guantanamo; an Afghan nicknamed "Al Qaeda Claus" by guards was at least in his 90s and claimed to be 105 when sent home in 2002.

Officials at the Pentagon refuse to discuss individual cases but dismiss the general complaints. With all the estimated 460 detainees, "there is a significant amount of evidence, both classified and unclassified, which supports detention by U.S. forces," said Navy Lt. Cmdr. Jeffrey Gordon, a Pentagon spokesman.

Khan was detained in March 2003, just after his son was arrested, according to Khan and witnesses. Although formal charges never were filed against either, both were accused of being commanders for Hezb-i-Islami, a militant group linked to Al Qaeda, and of supporting the Taliban, according to unclassified transcripts of hearings provided to the Tribune by Khan's American lawyer, Peter Ryan.

Khan's son, Hiztullah Nasrat Yar, also was accused of stockpiling more than 700 weapons to use against the government, according to the documents. He remains jailed at Guantanamo.

Protests of innocence

Both maintained their innocence. Nasrat Yar told investigators he was a military commander living on a government compound and had collected the weapons to turn over to the government. Khan said he was sick and disabled and denied knowledge of what his son intended to do with the weapons, documents show.

Both admitted they once belonged to is Hezb-i-Islami, or Party of Islam, which was allied with the U.S. during the war against the 1980s Soviet occupation but has since splintered. Khan said he suffered a stroke shortly after the end of that war, and elders in the region confirm his story. He said he was never again able to walk without crutches, let alone fight.

"We really couldn't understand why Khan was there," Ryan said. "He really couldn't walk. He had a stroke. . . . He had difficulty hearing. He kept saying over and over again, `Why have they sent me here? Please tell the world I am here. I don't want to die here.'"

When the Taliban came to power, Khan and his son initially opposed the harsh regime but later supported it, they said. In Afghanistan, such shifting alliances are not unusual, and merely being loyal to one side or the other has not necessarily been a ticket to Guantanamo.

The Afghan government has pardoned Taliban and Hezb-i-Islami members who join the democracy. A faction of Hezb-i-Islami has opened an office in Kabul; one former Taliban commander and many former Hezb-i-Islami members have been elected to parliament.

Two witnesses whose names Khan and his son gave to the tribunal also said Nasrat Yar was a low-level militia commander who lived in a government compound when detained in late winter 2003.

Surprisingly, neither witness was a friend of Khan's. The former detainee even accused one of them, an ex-government official named Mohammad Wasil, of being an ethnic rival who turned him and his son over to the U.S. military.

"I don't think they were against the government," said Wasil, formerly the government's military commander in Khan's area. "And Nasrat Khan was an old man. He had a bad leg. He was very weak. He was not very active."

In transcripts from a tribunal hearing at Guantanamo in late 2004, the tribunal president said the military had attempted to locate Wasil, one of Khan's witnesses.

"I think you already know that we were unable to locate him and so he is unavailable to us today," the tribunal president told Khan.

When Khan named Wasil as a witness, Wasil was the governor of Panjshir province, just outside Kabul, and had regular contact with U.S. forces. It took the Tribune one phone call to get Wasil's phone number from the Afghan Defense Ministry. Wasil, now unemployed, agreed to talk the same day.

"Definitely I would have looked at the Americans' information and talked about it," said Wasil, who denied turning Khan and his son over to U.S. troops.

Another easy contact

Noor Ulhaq Kawoon, the chief of staff under Wasil, was named as a witness by Nasrat Yar, Khan's son. Transcripts of the son's military tribunal show that Kawoon "was ruled as not being reasonably available after efforts were made to obtain the assistance of the Afghanistan government."

But the Afghan Defense Ministry gave the Tribune the phone numbers of Kawoon and his son. When contacted, Kawoon confirmed Nasrat Yar's claim that he had collected a stash of weapons to turn over to the new Afghan government. But he added that Nasrat Yar also was resistant to disarming because he wanted compensation, including a good position in the military.

Kawoon said Nasrat Yar was given government housing and food for 300 soldiers as part of an attempt to keep him on the government's side. Kawoon believes Nasrat Yar was detained because he kept complaining about the disarmament program and rivals complained about him to the U.S.

Khan was one of five detainees flown back to Afghanistan in late August. He said he was welcomed home by villagers, other area elders and even British troops, which NATO officials confirmed.

Khan now sits in his family compound, worrying about his son in Guantanamo. But he is happy about another son: While Khan was detained in Cuba, the other son ran for election in the new democracy last year and now sits on the Kabul provincial council.

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