November 15, 2002	Friday	Ramazan 9, 1423

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LANDI KOTAL, Nov 14: The Pakistani prisoners returning from Kabul have spoken of torture and extortion by the Afghan authorities during their incarceration in that country’s jails.

They are presently in the custody of Khyber Agency political administration with three of them admitted to the agency’s headquarters hospital here for treatment and the rest lodged at the offices of assistant political agent (APA), Landi Kotal.

Most of them have lost their mental balance because of the application of third degree torture methods by the Afghan secret agencies during their interrogation.

APA Landi Kotal told Dawn that these prisoners would be released after the completion of interrogation by the Joint Investigation Team. They were, however, being provided all possible facilities by the authorities at Landi Kotal and properly taken care of.

Out of the total 16 captives, two were medical students while three of them had already completed their medical education. Naveeduddin and Bakht Zaman were admitted to the Qandahar Medical Institution in 1997 and after completion of their sixth semester, they returned to Pakistan.

It was in March 2002 when they went back to Afghanistan after an assurance for their security by then Afghan ambassador in Islamabad. Upon their return to Kabul they were arrested by the Afghan authorities on charges of being members of the Pakistan Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).

Rashid Ahmad, Mohammad Iqbal and Ghulam Yahya had long completed their medical education and had applied to the Pakistan Medical and Dental Council for registration which required attestation of their documents, for which they had gone to Kabul where they were nabbed by the Afghan authorities.

These medical students were first kept at an interrogation centre in Kabul for 45 days with other alleged “war criminals” and were severely tortured and forced to give a statement that they were ISI men. The Afghan secret agencies, after their failure to obtain any secret information from them, later shifted them to Riyasat-i-Seh (D-3), an underground prison outside Kabul.

It was at D-3 lock-up that these students met other Pakistani prisoners being held there for a long time with most of them mentally ill. Among the 16 freed persons, now being held in Landi Kotal, Sharafuddin from Quetta, Abdul Wahid from Islamabad, Abdul Ghafoor from Kohat, Mohammad Sharif from Khaniwal, Inayat Ali from Faisalabad and Mohammad Roz from Bara, Khyber Agency, have lost their senses and cannot recall as to why and when they had crossed over to Afghanistan and on what charges were they arrested. They lost their memories due to sever torture during their detention. They were arrested from different parts of Afghanistan after the ouster of Taliban government.

Naveeduddin, a medical student from Charsadda told Dawn that most of these prisoners had not seen daylight for months and were kept under the most inhuman conditions.

Riyasat-i-Seh jail, he said, was the most dreaded jail and most of the war prisoners were kept there with most of them being Pakistanis. “No medical treatment was ever provided to Pakistani prisoners and they were beaten, kicked and electrocuted to extort secret information from them,” he alleged. Sever marks of torture were visible on the neck and back of Sharafuddin when he was presented before the press. Sharafuddin has lost his memory and remembers only his own and his village’s name near Quetta.

Naveeduddin further informed that 50 per cent of Riyasat-i-Sah prisoners were real Talibans while the rest were innocent, who were mostly Pakistanis. These Pakistani nationals, he said, were dubbed by the Afghan authorities as ISI agents. He also disclosed that some Indian secret agents also visited them in the jail and interrogated them in the guise of press reporters.

Another medical student, Rashid Ahmad, said when they were clean shaven during the initial days of their arrest, Afghan authorities accused them of being ISI agents but later when they grew their beards, they were branded as Taliban or Al Qaeda agents.

These medical students, who themselves were in good health, appealed to the Amnesty International, human rights organizations and the Pakistan government to look into the plight of what he termed poor and innocent Pakistani prisoners in Afghan jails.