Nation & World: Sunday, February 08, 2004
Detained Afghan teen got good food, few questions at Guantánamo
By Noor Khan
The Associated Press
NAW ZAD, Afghanistan — A 15-year-old Afghan boy released after spending a year at the U.S. prison for terror suspects in Cuba says he underwent almost no questioning while in detention but got plenty of schooling, prayer and good food.
Mohammed Ismail Agha was reunited last week with his family in Durabien, a remote southern Afghan village, after a year as one of the youngest inmates in Guantánamo Bay, a high-security prison holding about 650 suspected al-Qaida and Taliban fighters.
Agha was one of three Afghan boys freed Jan. 29. Military officials said the boys had provided useful intelligence but had no further value and were no longer a threat to the United States.
Agha, who was seized about a year after a U.S.-led coalition ousted the governing Taliban, said he and a friend had left their farming community in search of work when Afghan militiamen stopped them.
"They said, 'Come and join us,' but we told them we are poor people, jobless, and we don't want to join the militia, we want to earn money," Agha said. "Then they said, 'You are Taliban.' "
Agha said he was handed over to U.S. soldiers, who first took him to the southern city of Kandahar and then to Bagram, where he was held in solitary confinement. He lost track of his friend, Mohammed Wali, in Kandahar and has not seen him since.
He said U.S. forces interrogated him at Bagram Air Base, north of the capital, Kabul, about whether he was a Taliban supporter. Yet once he reached Cuba, there were few questions.
"At first I was unhappy with the U.S. forces. They stole 14 months of my life," Agha said. "But they gave me a good time in Cuba. They were very nice to me, giving me English lessons.
"For two or three days I was confused, but later the Americans were so nice with me, they were giving me good food with fruit and water for ablutions before prayer."
Besides teaching him to read and write English, the military provided books in his native Pashto language and a Quran, Islam's sacred book.
He was housed with two other Afghans he identified as Naqibullah, 15, and Hasadullah, 13, who also were released Jan. 29 and brought home last week. He never saw the other prisoners detained at Guantánamo, he said.
Agha said his family feared he was dead or had traveled to neighboring Pakistan or Iran to find work. It was not until 10 months into his detention that family members received a letter from him, through the international Red Cross, saying he was still alive.
The soldiers looking after the boys gave them a send-off dinner, taking photographs and urging them to return to school, he said.
Agha said he was too poor for that, so his search for work will resume once he visits all his relatives.
Agha denied having anything to do with the ousted Islamic militia now mounting a vicious insurgency.
"I'm not Taliban, it's not true. I'm innocent," he said.
U.S. officials said last week that one of the three Afghan boys told of being conscripted into an anti-American militia group. A second said he was abducted by the Taliban and forced to train and fight, while the third was studying in an extremist mosque and captured while preparing to get weapons.
They declined to elaborate, saying that identifying the boys could put them in danger.
Human-rights groups have long criticized the boys' detentions, saying the separation from their families would hurt them. They and some foreign governments also complained that the boys, like hundreds of adult prisoners, have not had trials or access to lawyers.
The Pentagon has insisted that age plays no role in deciding who is held as an "enemy combatant," and officials have said more juveniles are still at Guantánamo.
In related developments:
• German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer said yesterday that yielding to U.S. requests for NATO to take a larger peace-keeping role in Afghanistan could have "fatal consequences."
"The risk of failure and the potentially very serious, possibly fatal consequences for the alliance absolutely must be taken into consideration," Fischer told the gathering in Munich of leading security officials and experts from about 50 countries. Fischer said such a move poses the danger of overstretching the alliance.
• Fighting between rival Afghan warlords — possibly over drugs — left one person and perhaps as many as 20 dead in remote northern Afghanistan, officials said yesterday.
Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company
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