Foreign Correspondence

[Amaunet]

“Commander” Abdullah Mehsud held as a terrorist suspect at the US military detention centre at Guantanamo Bay in 2001 has been released by the United States and is now causing problems between Pakistan and China, much to the delight of the United States, I would imagine.

-Am

Leader of China kidnappers in Pakistan says was released from Guantanamo
(Reuters)

11 October 2004

ISLAMABAD - A militant tribesman in his twenties who says he leads a group that has threatened to kill one of two
kidnapped Chinese engineers in Pakistan was among a group of 26 detainees released by the United States in March.

“Commander” Abdullah Mehsud had been held as a terrorist suspect at the US military detention centre at Guantanamo Bay in 2001.

He arrived in Kabul in March with a group of 22 detainees after a Pentagon official announced, “They’re no longer a threat to the United States. They have no intelligence value.”

Yet after his release, the black-bearded militant, who wears a prosthesis on the lower part of his left leg, made his way to Pakistan’s wild tribal region bordering Afghanistan where hundreds have died in battles between security forces and foreign and local Al Qaeda-linked Islamic militants since March.

It is at least the second time in recent months that evidence has emerged of someone released from Guantanamo linking up with militants in Pakistan or Afghanistan, raising questions about US intelligence capabilities in the war on terror.

Last month, Afghan officials said a senior Taleban commander, Mawlavi Ghafar, killed by Afghan forces in the central province of Uruzgan, was a former Guantanamo Bay inmate, although the guerrillas insisted at the time he was unhurt.

Officials said Ghafar became the Taleban’s senior commander for Uruzgan and neighbouring Helmand provinces after his release by the United States.

Hundreds of Taleban and Al Qaeda suspects were taken to Guantanamo by US forces after the Afghan war in late 2001 and Washington has been under pressure from governments to free them.

Interviewed by this correspondent after his release in Kabul Abdullah -- distinctive for his heavyset physique, pale complexion and crinkly black hair, as well as his false leg -- gave his name only as Mohammad and said he was from the southern Afghan province of Helmand.

ANGERED BY GUANTANAMO CONDITIONS

He said he was 27 years old and had been captured by forces of pro-government Afghan warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum in 2001 and handed to the Americans.

Abdullah complained that prisoners were psychologically and physically tortured at Guantanamo, where seven of his ”innocent” friends remained, and were treated worse than animals.

“The treatment was so bad I can’t find words to explain it,” he said. “The psychological torture was worse than the physical.

“There was no respect for our culture and religion -- animals were treated better than us. If we did not follow their orders, they would beat us.”

Abdullah said one US officer had tried to provoke him by saying US forces had gone to Afghanistan to end the Taleban’s confinement of women in their homes, and beautiful women could now be seen walking openly in the streets of Kabul.

He accused the United States of targeting Islam and declined to say whether he had sympathies with the Taleban or Al Qaeda. “This is not an issue of the Taleban or Al Qaeda, it is a matter of Islam,” he said.

Asked what he thought of the Americans and their presence in Afghanistan, Abdullah replied: “I do not want to talk about my personal feelings towards the Americans -- it is in my heart.”

Speaking to a group of local journalists on Sunday in Spinkai Raghzai, near the Chagmalai area where the hostages were being held, he said the Chinese would not be safe until the kidnappers and the Chinese engineers reached him.

Dressed in a camouflage jacket and traditional shalwar kameez, he described his men as “oppressed people” who were ”fed up of the cruelty of the government” and accused Pakistan of conducting its campaign in the tribal area at the behest of the Americans.

“We are the nation’s army, the tribals are the nation’s army,” he said. “They should stop serving the Americans. Pakistan should become independent, it should withdraw its forces. Then, inshallah (God willing) there would be peace.”

“They are killing our people, destroying our houses and have finished our business,” he said.

“When the Chinese are kidnapped they are worried,” he said of the Pakistani people. “They were not worried when their own people were being killed.”


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