Exactly seven years ago this week in Kandahar, southern Afghanistan, a 26-year-old Syrian Kurd who had spent the previous two years being tortured by the Taleban begged me to ask the newly arrived US troops in the city to help him.

The Americans did come — and sent Abdul Rahim Abdul Razzak al-Ginco to Guantánamo Bay. Today he is still imprisoned there. He claims that after being taken into US custody he was subjected to stress positions, sleep deprivation and threatened with dogs. He arrived in April 2002 and has never been charged.

Mr al-Ginco is on medication for severe mental health disorders. In court papers he has given his account of what had happened to him since we last met, an account of what the War on Terror has meant for him. Parts of it have been corroborated, others not. It is now before a judge in a civilian court in Washington.

In December 1999 Mr al-Ginco, who was living with his family in the United Arab Emirates after they had moved from Syria, fell out with his strict father. He left home without his passport. He says that a friend told him that if he could get to Afghanistan he could travel to Europe as a refugee.

He made it but in January 2000, he says the Taleban captured him and forced him to work at one of the training camps as a wood chopper and water carrier. After 18 days he begged them to let him go. He was arrested, accused of being a spy for the Americans and Israel, and was sent to Kabul.

For three months he was tortured and beaten by the Taleban and al-Qaeda, given electric shocks, and had the soles of his feet beaten. They filmed a confession from him that he was a Mossad spy. The torture was overseen by Mohammed Atef, the military chief of al-Qaeda who was killed by a US airstrike in Kabul in November 2001. The confession was published on Arabic television in Abu Dhabi.

In about May 2000 Mr al-Ginco was transferred to the squalid, vermininfested Kandahar jail, filled with more than 2,000 prisoners of the Taleban. He continued to be beaten regularly. He stayed there for the next 16 months. Then, a world away, the September 11 attacks occurred. He could not know it at the time but that terrible day would change his life radically once more.

In January 2002, shortly after the Taleban had fled Kandahar after the US-led invasion of Afghanistan, I arrived in the city. Amid the chaos and confusion there was a bizarre scene playing out in the jail. The entire prison had been emptied except for five men who had chosen to stay there because they had nowhere else to go. There was a man from Manchester called Jamal Udeen, two Saudis, a student from Tartarstan — and Mr al-Ginco. They became known as the “Kandahar Five”. I still have my notebook, full after several visits to the jail to hear their stories, including Mr al-Ginco’s scrawled signature. A call to the British Embassy in Kabul to tell them about Mr Udeen ascertained that officials knew about him and were about to send him back to Britain.

The group’s members were insistent about one thing: could I ask the Americans to help them? A French colleague, on a visit to the US base at Kandahar airport the next day, told an American officer about the men.

A few days later two Americans, one in uniform and a civilian, arrived at the jail and took photographs of the five. On January 24 they returned with armed soldiers and took the men to the US jail in Kandahar airport, from where the first detainees in the newly declared War on Terror had begun to be flown to Guantánamo Bay.

During a raid on the house of Mohammed Atef, the US military unearthed a videotape. It included footage of Mr al-Ginco. His lawyers insist that it was part of a confession to the Taleban. John Ashcroft, the US Attorney-General at the time, believed otherwise. On January 17, 2002 Mr Ashcroft held a press conference naming and showing pictures of five men sought as potential terrorists. One he called “Abd al-Rahim” — Mr al-Ginco. On January 28 Time magazine published an article containing Mr al-Ginco’s picture and the allegation that he was a terror suspect.

The magazine article found its way to the US jail in Kandahar airport. Suddenly, Mr al-Ginco says, the Americans’ attitude towards him changed. He was accused of being a terrorist. He was subjected to long periods of stress positions, sleep deprivation and snarling dogs. In May 2002, after two years of being called an Israeli spy by the Taleban and al-Qaeda, Mr al-Ginco was sent to Guantánamo Bay, now accused of being al-Qaeda and a US enemy.

When I met Mr al-Ginco in January 2002, he was a quiet character but lucid and hopeful that things would get better. Today he is being treated inside Guantánamo for post-traumatic stress disorder. He now has civilian lawyers, as do most of the other inmates after a US Supreme Court ruling in June 2008 gave them the right to challenge their detention in a federal courtroom.

Here at Guantánamo Bay, in the glaring heat of the Caribbean sun, there is a strange disconnect between the US Naval Base which has existed under a lease agreement with the Cuban Government since 1903, and the controversial detention facility.

The base is several miles from the prison, separated by hills. The base has a Starbucks, McDonald’s, restaurants and bars. It is one of the most sedate US military postings in the world.

Mr al-Ginco is held in one of the camps where prisoners who are considered to be a low-level threat are incarcerated. For meetings with his lawyers he is taken to Camp Echo — where “high-level” prisoners are held in 8ft by 10ft windowless concrete cells.

Like many of the detainees Mr al-Ginco has access to books, magazines and the chance to exercise. There are even movie nights.

Barack Obama has been unequivocal in his vow to close Guantánamo. Mr al-Ginco’s story is just one of the many inside this prison that the President-elect now has to contend with.

The Kandahar Five

— Abdul Hakim Bukhary Saudi citizen. Travelled to Afghanistan after 9/11 when the Taleban called for a holy war, and later imprisoned. Turned over to the Americans in 2002, he told a tribunal that his treatment at the Guantánamo centre had been “paradise”. Repatriated last September

— Saddiq Turkistani Ethnic Uighur born in Saudi Arabia. Spent four-and-a-half years as the Taleban’s prisoner, turned over the Americans and, he claims, tortured at Guantánamo. Released in 2006, now lives in his native Taif, planning to marry and start his own business

— Jamal Udeen British web designer and convert to Islam. Says that he was in Pakistan at a religious retreat in October 2001 when he was taken to Afghanistan and handed over to the Taleban. Claims then to have been tortured at Guantánamo. Released in March 2004. He is living in Manchester

— Airat Vakhitov Former imam from the Russian region of Tatarstan. Says that Uzbek rebels forced him to accompany them to Afghanistan, where he was handed over to the Taleban. Arrived at Guantánamo in June 2002. Released in February 2004. Recently emerged from hiding in Russia, working as a journalist, writer and editor

— Abdul Rahim Abdul Razzak al Ginco Syrian Kurd. Says that he travelled to Afghanistan seeking asylum in 2000. Held at a prison in Kandahar, then taken to Guantánamo, where he remains. Taking medication for severe mental disorders

Source: Times archives

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