Delivered Into Enemy Hands - Human Rights Watch

Pakistanis responded in Pashto. He thought other
prisoners were there with him, but he was not sure. They
landed after about half an hour at what he believes was
Kabul or Bagram. He told Human Rights Watch,
“I was scared. I knew that the worst was coming
now. I knew I was going to face worse than what I
had before. It was true. I was right. That’s when
the nightmare began.”
He said that at the detention facility, two people took him to a cell, put his hands up
against the wall, and then cut off his clothes with scissors. They put his bare feet in
shackles and then chained him by one arm to the cell wall. His arm was positioned so that
the bottom of his elbow was just about four fingers from the floor. He could stand up but
only by bending over, forcing him to either sit or lie down. “It was like torture in medieval
times,” he said. He remained in this position, totally naked, for about two months. After
two months his captors gave him some pants and, a month later, a shirt. After the fifth
month, they stopped handcuffing him to the wall and he was able to move around inside
his cell.
The guards there were all wearing what he described as “black special forces” uniforms.
They were masked and wore black jackets that had four pockets in the front. They wore
black boots made out of a Gore-Tex-like fabric and black gloves. He thinks the guards were
a mix of Americans and Afghans, but he could not be sure. They never spoke to him, but
only communicated with signs and signals. Sometimes when his cell door was opened to
bring him food, he would hear guards speaking in English. And when he was taken out of
his cell for washing, he sometimes heard Dari- or Pashto-style music coming from what he
believed were the guards’ rooms.
His cell was approximately 2 x 2 meters. The lights were kept on, along with cameras with
microphones, 24 hours a day. He also heard loud noises playing all the time from loudspeakers,
as well as the sound of a loud generator or turbine that never stopped. According
to Mehdi, the noise made it difficult for prisoners to speak to each other: “They used loud
music there, but it only appeared to be to punish prisoners. The guards were very strict
DELIVERED INTO ENEMY HANDS 86
“I was scared. I knew that
the worst was coming
now. I knew I was going
to face worse than what I
had before. It was true. I
was right. That’s when
the nightmare began.”