Memoirs from Guantanamo

Sharifullah Sherzad spent seven years in the US military prison Guantanamo without ever being told why he was arrested in Nangarhar in 2003. His testimony.

“Once they accused me of links to Taleban. Then they said I was with Al-Qaeda. Next time it was the Haqqani network.

Sharifullah Sherzad spent seven years in the US military prison Guantanamo without ever being told why he was arrested in Nangarhar in 2003. His testimony.

“Once they accused me of links to Taleban. Then they said I was with Al-Qaeda. Next time it was the Haqqani network. Another time I was accused of links with Hezb Islami of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. From the start to the end I was never told on what charge I was arrested,” says Sherzad, 32, who insists he was much too young to have been a member of any of the groups he was accused of being linked to.

Originally from Sherzad district, he had returned to Afghanistan from Pakistan hoping to find a job after the fall of Taleban in end-2001. One night in January 2003 he was attending a feast in the home of a relative with strong links to the government. “I along with a friend called Ghorzang was at the house of a government commander. The external forces came and arrested us. The foreigners were speaking in English. There were Afghan forces too. They beat us with guns, put us in Datsun cars and took us to Nangarhar airport,” he says.

Sherzad and his friend were tied up back-to-back, and cartons put over their heads so they could not see. Then they were endlessly interrogated and beaten.

“The interpreter kept asking me if I was okay. I kept shaking my head, I could not speak. They asked me if I knew Taleban or Al-Qaeda. They asked me to show them members of Al-Qaeda and Taleban. But what could I tell them? I did not know Taleban. They kicked us in the abdomen with their big army shoes; they did horrible things to my body,” he says.

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For the three days they were in Nangarhar airport, they were not allowed to pray. After three nights, the foreign soldiers and Afghan forces took Sherzad out of the room. He could hear the sound of a helicopter. The soldiers kept him waiting in the bitter cold for half an hour before putting him in the helicopter and flying him to Bagram air base.

“I thought my innocence would soon be apparent and I would be released but they put us in prison clothes, took photographs of us and locked us up in single cells,” Sherzad says.

For one and a half months, Bagram was his home. He was with hundreds of prisoners but separated from his friend Ghorzang. “We would stay silent. We didn’t know any one; we were not allowed to speak to each other. We had no idea what was to happen to us,” he says.

Gross abuse

One day the chief jailor asked Sherzad if he had heard of Guantanamo. To his complete surprise the chief told him he was to be taken there. A day came when his legs and hands were shackled in manacles, a mask put over his head so he could not see and he was taken to Guantanamo. “We traveled about 20 hours to get to Guantanamo. Once we reached, we prisoners were kept together in a room before being transferred to single cells.”

Sherzad says prisoners were horribly tortured, but he was spared the worst abuse. “Some of the prisoners died in prison and some committed suicide. But I ask myself how could they have killed themselves when there was nothing with which they could end their lives?” he says.

The only torture he experienced was sleep deprivation, forced to remain naked and interrogated in biting cold weather.

The conditions in jail were harsh but not more than what the body could tolerate. Sherzad says prisoners were permitted to say prayers but there was no recreation until “later on (when) a big ground was constructed.”

All he wanted was to return to his family. “The jail was terrifying. We dreamt of being set free. Sometimes I even saw my family in my dreams,” he says.

The ICRC (International Committee of Red Cross) was permitted to meet prisoners. Sherzad says through the ICRC he wrote a letter to his family after many months.

Freedom

In 2010, he was brought back to Afghanistan from Guantanamo. When the ICRC told him he was to be released, he was thrilled. But leaving Guantanamo was not easy. The Americans insisted he signed a letter promising not to help the Taleban again. Sherzad refused. “I will sign only when you give me a letter saying that though I was innocent I was jailed for many years. I can use it to tell the Afghan government and my people that I was always innocent,” he says.

Sherzad was put on a boat with 12 other prisoners, four of whom including him were Afghans (two others were from Kandahar and one from Ghazni), six from Yemen and two from Somalia. They were driven out of Guantanamo in a bus with dark windows. The boat took them to an unknown island, where he was put on a plane to Dubai. From Dubai he was flown to Khwaja Rawash airport in Kabul, and taken by Afghan security to Pol e Charkhi jail. After 35 days in jail, he was given 500 Afs (7 USD) for transportation home and released.