Delivered Into Enemy Hands - Human Rights Watch

physically abused in Peshawar, but he said the food was bad, the lights were on all the
time, there was just a mat on the floor, he was alone in the cell, and they threatened to
bring his wife there and rape her. Although he was not physically harmed, he heard other
people screaming in the basement.
Islamabad
After about 40 days in Peshawar, Mehdi said he was taken to Islamabad, where he was
held for another two and a half months. Approximately 8 to 10 other prisoners were there.
After about two weeks, the same American woman who interrogated him in Peshawar did
so in Islamabad as well. She interrogated him several times with an interpreter. One of
these times there was another woman there who was young, in her twenties, had black
hair, and had some sort of malformation in her teeth. His face was not covered during
these interrogations.
Mehdi said he was physically assaulted by Pakistani authorities numerous times. Sometimes
they beat him using a broomstick on various parts of his body and other times they
slapped him. They also forcefully took away his clothes, leaving him naked. No beatings
occurred in the presence of US interrogators, he said, but the Pakistanis told him they had
“no problem with him, it was the US that had the problem.”
The first time he saw his American interrogator in Islamabad, he told her the Pakistanis
were beating, him but she accused him of lying. She kept threatening to take him to a place
where he would “begin talking right away” if he did not begin to provide more information.
She kept insisting that he had been living in Waziristan, along Pakistan’s border with
Afghanistan in its Federally Administered Tribal Areas, and knew people there, but he said
had been living in Peshawar and was only on his way to Waziristan when he was arrested. 246
Afghanistan
Mehdi said that one night in June the guards entered his cell, told him he was leaving, and
drove him—handcuffed and with his face covered—to an airport about 15 minutes away.
On the plane there were both American and Pakistani guards, but when he spoke Urdu, the
246 Mehdi said it was not safe in Peshawar anymore, so he sent his family to Waziristan ahead of him and was on his way
there to meet them when he was arrested.
85 HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH | SEPTEMBER 2012