Prisoner transfer underway in Afghanistan

SHEBERGHAN, Afghanistan -- Abdul Khalil leaned back behind his steel desk and fanned himself with a red fly swatter. Khalil, the director of the infamous Sheberghan prison, is being relieved of some of the facility's most controversial inmates -- hundreds of alleged Taliban fighters whose detention in the squalid jail has drawn international criticism.

"They said: 'We either want to be released, or we want to die now,' " he said.

Four days after they called a hunger strike, more than 800 so-called political prisoners at the overcrowded jail won an agreement from the government Monday to be transferred to a prison being renovated near Kabul, the capital.

The decision marks a step toward resolving the fate of thousands of alleged Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters who have languished in US and Afghan custody since the campaign on terror began in late 2001.

Like its US allies, the Afghan government has been criticized for failing to rectify the prisoners' legal status and the cruel conditions of their captivity.

The move could also help improve relations with moderate members of the former Taliban regime, whom President Hamid Karzai is trying to bring into the fold, and signal to Pakistan, which has about 400 citizens among the Sheberghan prisoners, that the government is trying to address the issue.

The transfer comes at a sensitive time as the United States investigates its treatment of prisoners in Iraq and in Afghanistan. While Sheberghan is under Afghan control, US intelligence officials have interrogated prisoners there. There have been no allegations of abuse by Americans at the prison.

About 270 inmates had been transported to the Pul-i-Charki jail, north of Kabul, by yesterday evening and more busloads were due to follow. Karzai's spokesman, Jawed Ludin, said the government was continually reviewing the prisoners' status and those not "considered a threat" eventually would be freed.

On Tuesday, in a rank courtyard lined with tiny cells near Khalil's spartan office, a group of Afghan and Pakistani prisoners gathered to wait for buses. Many carried their possessions in rough bundles or plastic bags.

They laughed and chatted with a visiting journalist, excited by the prospect of leaving the grim penitentiary.

Darow Khan, an inmate from the southern province of Helmand, said some of the prisoners would continue their hunger strike until everyone had been moved out. Wealthy inmates had paid their way out of jail, he said, "but we poor people who can't afford that are stuck here, and we can't take it any more."

Appalling conditions at the prison drew international fire in late 2001, after thousands of men who surrendered or were captured in a fierce battle between the Taliban and US-backed Northern Alliance were locked up there.

The captives were transported in shipping containers to Sheberghan and a nearby military fort, both controlled by the powerful commander Abdul Rashid Dostum, and many allegedly suffocated en route. Dostum has denied any captives died in the containers.

But the prisoners' plight was eclipsed by that of other Taliban and Al Qaeda suspects in the US detention center in Guantanamo Bay and news that the Afghan government was periodically releasing prisoners from other Afghan penitentiaries sharpened the inmates' sense of abandonment, they said.

"I think it's mainly about the feeling that they've been forgotten here" that inspired the hunger strike, said Kate Rowlands, Afghanistan director for Emergency, a nonprofit organization that runs a clinic inside the prison.

Rowlands said conditions were terrible when she started visiting the prison two years ago. She and Khalil said prisoners now had better food, largely thanks to Emergency provisions and more space, but Rowlands said they still had poor sanitation and suffered respiratory, intestinal, and skin diseases, and psychiatric problems.

Ludin said yesterday the government decided "conditions were not suitable for prisoners" after a delegation visited Sheberghan, about 80 miles west of Mazar-e-Sharif, to investigate the hunger strike. Prisoners interviewed complained of abuse, torture, and extortion by the Afghan prison guards, though Akram Murur, a local human rights representative, said he was not aware of any such allegations. One prisoner said inmates had to pay off guards to allow them to leave their cramped cells and stand in the sunshine.

Inmates said they hoped the transfer to Pul-i-Charki would mean better conditions -- the prison is in the process of being renovated and is less isolated than Sheberghan -- and greater hopes of release. The prisoners have been interrogated on several occasions by Afghan and American authorities but have not been formally charged.

"These people should be taken to court and either sentenced or released," Murur said. With so many suspects, Afghanistan's ineffectual judicial system would be hard pressed to handle the cases in a timely fashion.

Faizullah, the intelligence chief for Jowzjan province, of which Sheberghan is the capital, said he believed about 80 of the inmates were "real" Taliban and the rest farmers who took up arms.

Abdul Qanar, a farmer with a flowing gray beard from the southern province of Zabul, said he was among those who were forced to fight. "Any regime that takes power in Afghanistan forces soldiers to join up."

Khalil said he expected all the Taliban and Al Qaeda suspects to be gone from the prison in the next few days. He smiled as he measured lengths of chain to bind the prisoners' hands and feet for the ride. They will leave behind a few dozen criminal inmates and a handful of bored guards drinking tea and chatting outside the imposing metal doors.