Seven Afghans freed after up to five years of detention at the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay arrived in Kabul on Saturday, desperate to get back to their home villages.
The long-bearded men, mostly farmers and simple villagers, dressed in dark blue jeans and jackets, arrived at the offices of the Afghan Commission for Peace and Reconciliation here to receive an official guarantee of freedom from the Afghan government.
Most of them were from Helmand, the southern province that has become the most volatile area of Afghanistan.
PHOTO: AP
Government and foreign troops there have come under repeated attack by the Taliban and other insurgents.
One of the seven men, Haji Alef Muhammad, 62, from the Baghran district in Helmand, said he lost his brothers four years ago in a US bombardment of his village.
After that, he said, he was taken into custody during a raid, and sent to Guantanamo.
"Is this my fault that I believe in the words, `There is no God but Allah?'" he said. "Other than that there is no witness and no evidence of my guilt."
"We had to eat, pray and go to the toilet in the same cell that was 2 meters long and 2 meters wide," he said in disgust.
Another prisoner, Abdul Rahman, 38, said he was an unwilling fighter for the Taliban.
He said that he was from Helmand, but had been arrested in Kunduz Province in northern Afghanistan in late 2001 by Northern Alliance soldiers led by the Uzbek leader General Abdul Rashid Dostum.
"The Taliban sent me there by force as they made every family provide one fighter or give money instead," he said.
He said he had been taken into custody in the city of Kunduz, held in the town of Sheberghan, and then "sold" to the US military.
Another returning Afghan, Haji Baridad, who said he did not know his age, spent five years in Guantanamo.
He appeared disturbed and kept complaining that an Afghan translator took his money -- 3,600 Pakistani rupees, or about US$62 -- while he was detained.
"Ask Hazrat Mojadidi what was our crime?" he said, referring to the head of the Afghan commission.
This was the eighth round of prisoner releases from Guantanamo under a reconciliation program begun 20 months ago by the Afghan government.
Forty-seven Afghans have been released from Guantanamo in that time, and 70 remain.
Others are held at the Bagram air base, north of Kabul.
A new prison wing is under construction in Kabul to house Afghan detainees from Guantanamo who are not freed.
The talks for handing over the Afghan inmates from US prisons to Afghanistan custody have slowed in recent months.
Sebaghatullah Mojadidi, the head of the peace and reconciliation commission, said they had worked for almost a year to prepare the prison so the Afghan detainees could be brought home.
"It is not in our hand, it is in the Americans' hands," he told the seven men during a speech.
But the seven were allowed to go home.
Drug lord Jose Adolfo Macias Villamar, alias “Fito,” was Ecuador’s most-wanted fugitive before his arrest on Wednesday, more than a year after he escaped prison from where he commanded the country’s leading criminal gang. The former taxi driver turned crime boss became the prime target of law enforcement early last year after escaping from a prison in the southwestern port of Guayaquil. Ecuadoran President Daniel Noboa’s government released “wanted” posters with images of his face and offered US$1 million for information leading to his capture. In a country plagued by crime, members of Fito’s gang, Los Choneros, have responded with violence, using car
The team behind the long-awaited Vera Rubin Observatory in Chile yesterday published their first images, revealing breathtaking views of star-forming regions as well as distant galaxies. More than two decades in the making, the giant US-funded telescope sits perched at the summit of Cerro Pachon in central Chile, where dark skies and dry air provide ideal conditions for observing the cosmos. One of the debut images is a composite of 678 exposures taken over just seven hours, capturing the Trifid Nebula and the Lagoon Nebula — both several thousand light-years from Earth — glowing in vivid pinks against orange-red backdrops. The new image
Canada and the EU on Monday signed a defense and security pact as the transatlantic partners seek to better confront Russia, with worries over Washington’s reliability under US President Donald Trump. The deal was announced after a summit in Brussels between Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President Antonio Costa. “While NATO remains the cornerstone of our collective defense, this partnership will allow us to strengthen our preparedness ... to invest more and to invest smarter,” Costa told a news conference. “It opens new opportunities for companies on both sides of the
OVERHAUL: The move would likely mark the end to Voice of America, which was founded in 1942 to counter Nazi propaganda and operated in nearly 50 languages The parent agency of Voice of America (VOA) on Friday said it had issued termination notices to more than 639 more staff, completing an 85 percent decrease in personnel since March and effectively spelling the end of a broadcasting network founded to counter Nazi propaganda. US Agency for Global Media (USAGM) senior advisor Kari Lake said the staff reduction meant 1,400 positions had been eliminated as part of US President Donald Trump’s agenda to cut staffing at the agency to a statutory minimum. “Reduction in Force Termination Notices were sent to 639 employees at USAGM and Voice of America, part of a