22 July 2004	Thursday	04 Jamadi-us-Saani 1425

KABUL, July 21: A US citizen appearing in court on Wednesday charged with running a private "war on terror" in Afghanistan claimed he and two other Americans were working with the full knowledge of US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

Jonathan Idema, who denies charges he detained and tortured Afghan citizens without US government consent, said they were hunting terrorists under the auspices of the Pentagon and said they had been abandoned by US authorities.

"The American forces absolutely condoned what we did, they absolutely supported what we did. We have extensive evidence of that," said Idema, who is on trial with his subordinates Brent Bennett and Edward Caraballo.

US-led coalition forces have disavowed all ties with Idema, but international peacekeeping troops said they were duped into helping Idema's team, who wore US-style uniforms, believing they were legitimate special forces operatives.

Judge Abdul Baset Bahktiari allowed the three men and four Afghan associates also on trial with them to delay their trial for up to 20 days to allow them to prepare a better defence and find adequate translators.

The adjournment came after two Afghan interpreters struggled to translate comments from the judge, prosecution and witnesses, and Idema protested that he and his associates would not be able to get a fair trial.

"It is impossible for us to know what's happening," he said. US and Afghan authorities allege that Idema's freelance counter-terror cell illegally jailed and tortured eight Afghan citizens without government authority.

The three US men, and four Afghans face jail sentences of between 16 and 20 years if found guilty, according to prosecutor Mohammed Naeem Dawari. Idema said that he had been running a counter-terrorism operation under deep cover for some months and handed militants he had detained to US-led coalition forces for further questioning on several occasions.

The group had emails, faxes and recordings to prove their links with senior US Defence Department officials, he added. He claimed to have handed the Taliban intelligence chief of the eastern Afghanistan city of Jalalabad to the FBI for questioning and to have foiled bomb plots and assassination attempts on senior Afghan government officials.

Although the trial was formally adjourned, three witnesses who had been held in Idema's private torture chamber gave statements to the court. Ghulam Sakhi said he was seized while in a taxi en route to Kabul from northern Laghman province. The vehicle was searched and he was bound, hooded and taken to a private jail by Idema and his Afghan associates. -AFP