Zaeef was kidnapped – called rendition – by Pakistani intelligence elements and was literally dragged from his bed and handed over to US troops. To the Pakistani government, it was a landmark in their cooperation with the US. For Zaeef, it was a nightmare and his nightmare is shared by hundreds of Muslims arrested the same way and jailed in Guantanamo.

 

 

The US created Guantanamo to celebrate its victories in the so called war on terrorism. Guantanamo is the very reason why this war on terror failed because the US practiced ‘state terrorism’ with the detainees and this did not go down well with the Muslims in Guantanamo. It emboldened the Muslims and now the stories of torture, abuse and disrespect for Islam is now surfacing.
The story of Taliban’s Ambassador to Pakistan Abdul Salam Zaeef was one of the prisoners at Guantanamo. After his release, he did not remain silent and now declares to everyone that he meets that he is certain the US is the enemy of Islam.
Asked by www.mcclatchydc.com website whether his time at Guantanamo had changed him, Zaeef said that it only further convinced him that America was the enemy of Islam. He spent 1000 days at Guantanamo and this did not break him or turn him into a pro-American Afghan.
Zaeef was kidnapped – called rendition – by Pakistani intelligence elements and was literally dragged from his bed and handed over to US troops. To the Pakistani government, it was a landmark in their cooperation with the US. For Zaeef, it was a nightmare and his nightmare is shared by hundreds of Muslims arrested the same way and jailed in Guantanamo.
The epitaph of Washington’s aggression against Islam did not stop there. Zaeef recalls that abuse, torture and the non-respect of detainee’s rights were rife under US detention. It is unbelievable that a country like the US can carry out such abuses and expect to get away with it, like in ancient Rome.
Zaeef was flown from Pakistan to a warship where he was then transported to a local base in Afghanistan but he was kept in a very small cell that reminded him of a dog kennel, he said.
"I was afraid about what would happen to me," Zaeef said in an interview in Kabul, wearing slightly crooked gold-rimmed glasses and speaking in a near-whisper. "I didn't know if it was a dream or not. I never imagined this would happen to me."
At the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Zaeef became a leader again. He helped orchestrate hunger strikes and exploit the missteps of a U.S. detention system that often captured the wrong men, mistreated them, and then incarcerated them indefinitely without legal recourse, wrote the website.
Zaeef was also made to collect plastic buckets the prisoners used as toilets to throw the contents in a large metal drum. He was made to do that in order to show the Muslims that a Taliban leader was of no value in Guantanamo where the US was master.
"Every time the buckets filled up with urine or feces, the guards told Mullah Zaeef to go empty it," said Mohammed Omar, a teenage Pakistani who was held at Kandahar in early 2002. "They made him and another big Taliban guy do this."
If U.S. soldiers could make a Taliban mullah lug everyone else's feces to the "burn buckets," the foul-smelling drums used to dispose of human waste, there could be no question about who was in charge added the newspaper.
The Taliban ambassador was often beaten up by US soldiers and in one instance he was beaten in the neck because he did not respond to the soldiers while leading a prayer with other Muslim prisoners. They came behind him while he in prayer and put their boots on his neck and beat him up.
Before he was sent to Kandahar, Zaeef spent a month or two in detention at Bagram Air Base, and he said he was treated brutally there, too.
"The cursing, the punching, the kicking, it was continuous," he said.
When he arrived at Guantanamo in the spring or summer of 2002, Zaeef was exhausted from the harsh treatment he'd received at Kandahar and Bagram.
The rules at Guantanamo, Zaeef said, reminded him of Bagram. The men weren't supposed to talk in their cells. They were supposed to say "please" and "sir" when they addressed the guards. In Guantanamo, however, the guards weren't beating the men, he said, and prisoners could speak up.
"After a month, we decided we could not accept these extremist measures. We must react," Zaeef said. "So we began shouting to each other. The soldiers came and asked if we were talking to each other. We said, 'Yes, we are not dogs.' We began throwing water at them, spitting at them; we said, 'If you want to kill us, fine.' "
A high-ranking officer came and spoke to the detainees, Zaeef said. The rules were rescinded. It was a victory in a game of inches.
At one time, reports were circulating in the jails that guards had mistreated the Quran. There was a hunger strike.
Zaeef claimed to a reporter that he'd witnessed several instances of Quran abuse. The hunger strikes were reported all over the world. Aid groups and defense lawyers pointed to them as proof of Guantanamo's appalling conditions.
Eventually, officials at Guantanamo handed out surgical masks for detainees to hang from the walls of their cells as cradles for their Qurans, to keep them off the floor. Guards were ordered to be quiet during prayers, and orange cones with the letter "P" were placed in corridors during prayer time. Detainees were allowed to wear skull caps, as prescribed by Islamic tradition. Guards were told never to touch prisoners' Qurans and to log every allegation of abuse.

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