KABUL An Afghan journalist detained for 11 months at the main US military base at Bagram alleged on Monday that his captors kicked him, forced him to stand barefoot in the snow and didnt allow him to sleep for days.
Jawed Ahmad, who was working for CTV, a Canadian television network, was handed over to Afghan authorities Sunday, said Capt. Christian Patterson, a spokesman for the US-led coalition.
The U.S. designated him an enemy combatant earlier this year and had accused him of having contact with Taliban leaders, including possessing their phone numbers and video footage of them, according to a complaint filed by Ahmads lawyers earlier this year in US District Court in the District of Columbia.
Ahmad said that while in prison, US interrogators accused him of being a Taliban fighter, supplying weapons to the militants and of being an intelligence agent for Pakistan.
What they blamed me for was not true. If it was true they would not have released me, Ahmad told The Associated Press at a hotel in Kabul on Monday.
Patterson said Ahmad was released because he was no longer considered a threat.
The 21-year-old was detained Oct. 26, 2007, at a Nato base near the southern city of Kandahar.
Ahmad estimated that he met with US investigators around 100 times. They repeatedly showed him pictures of Taliban fighters and asked him if he knew them. He always said no.
Ahmad worked as a translator for US Special Forces for 2 1/2 years, starting in 2002. He quit after the second time he was wounded in a Taliban attack, he said.
He says he hopes to learn why the U.S. detained him, saying the experience destroyed his life.
Financially they destroyed me. My mom is in the hospital in Pakistan taking her last breath, he said. Ahmad readily admits that he had contact with Taliban fighters.
As a journalist you have the right to talk to any organization. You are the eyes of the world, he said.
Yes, I talked to the Taliban like any other reporter. I traveled with them. I did stories with them. They are not my uncles or brothers, they are the Taliban. I talked to them just like I talked to Nato. If you know only one party, you are useless.
Rights campaigners compared Ahmads case to that of Bilal Hussein, an Associated Press photographer who spent more than two years in US military custody in Iraq. Hussein initially was accused of working with Iraqi insurgents but was released in April after Iraqi judges closed his case.
Ahmad said that despite the ordeal, he will continue working as a journalist.
I will most definitely be a journalist. I have more energy than before, he said.
With economic stabilisation yet to translate into tangible improvement in living standards, the country’s leaders are finding it increasingly difficult to ignore demands for relief.
For the government, the economy may be more stable now than it was three years ago, but for manufacturers and exporters, it is still difficult to do business.
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