NALCHIK (Russia): Dubbed a "Russian Taliban" by local media Ruslan Odizhev still cannot believe he is free after years in the United States' Guantanamo prison camp and a troubled relationship with Russia's security forces.

Back home in Russia's Kabardino-Balkaria republic near Chechnya the 30-year-old, shorn of the beard and Afghan clothes he lost in transit, reflects on a saga that saw him caught in one of the most controversial incidents of the 2001 overthrow of Afghanistan's Taliban leadership.

When he was arrested by US forces in November 2001, Odizhev was being held by US-backed Northern Alliance forces at the notorious Qala-i-Jhanghi fort near Mazar-e-Sharif.

He had been captured and held there after seeking refuge in Afghanistan from a clamp-down in his southern Russian homeland where mass arrests of young people had occurred following a series of attacks in 1999 that left some 300 people dead.

Odizhev, a Sunni Muslim of the southern Caucasus' Kabard ethnic group, had attracted Russian authorities' attention after returning from a period of study in Saudi Arabia in the 1990s and then joining a radical community led by local imam Musa Mukozhev.

In 2000 he was detained by Russian security forces and suffered two weeks of ill treatment before being released. "I knew that I had to leave Russia - I was accused of everything, of supporting the Chechen rebellion," Odizhev said.

Odizhev is vague as to what he did after arriving in Afghanistan - where he was not initially welcomed by the Taliban, who suspected him of spying - and before his capture by the Northern Alliance.

But he insists he was not involved in fighting. His arrest by US forces in one sense was lucky. He was only injured during the violent suppression of an uprising at the fort while hundreds of other inmates died - an incident that rights campaigners say British and US forces have yet to adequately explain their role in.

But he was soon experiencing torture and torment behind the Guantanamo prison camp's sun-baked walls on the island of Cuba, Odizhev says. "They beat us up, took our copy of Holy Quran away from us and threw it..., broadcast the US anthem many times a day, even during prayers," Odizhev said in Kabardino-Balkaria's capital Nalchik.

Eventually, as Washington came under pressure to end the legal limbo of hundreds of foreign inmates held at Guantanamo, Odizhev was transferred to Russian custody this spring.

Russia has appeared at pains to align itself with the US-led anti-terrorism campaign that began with the September 11, 2001 attacks, in what some critics see as an exchange for a more lenient attitude by Washington to abuses by Russian forces in Chechnya.

But Odizhev's experience suggests there are strains in the relationship. A commitment by Russian authorities to pursue criminal proceedings against him and six other Guantanamo inmates evaporated after they had spent four months at the White Swan prison in the Caucasian town of Pyatigorsk.

All seven were released on June 22, angering US officials who say they are still pursuing the matter. "We obtained assurances that there would be a trial," a US embassy official in Moscow said under condition of anonymity. "We are continuing to seek clarifications about this case."

Russian prosecutors retort that they have no grounds to prosecute the men. "What grounds are there for saying that they are dangerous and should be detained?" prosecutor general's spokesman Alexander Vasilyev said. "They are not prisoners of war." -AFP