From Reuters, with thanks to Mediawatch:
WASHINGTON – The United States has sent home 17 Guantanamo prisoners to Afghanistan and another to Turkey, and some of the Afghans said upon arrival in Kabul on Tuesday they had been mistreated by their American jailers.
“They used extreme type of tyranny against us,” said Abdul Rahman, who appeared to be in his mid-30s and was among three men allowed to speak to reporters after being handed over to Afghan
authorities.
Alas, the poor wretched fellow! Extreme tyranny, no less! I wonder what that means? Were they restricted from attacking the guards? Maybe they were oppressed by having to eat three times a day and pray five? Maybe they suffered the extreme tyranny of being given a Qur’an to read but not being able to fight jihad? What could have been more frustrating?
Some said they had been in detention since the 2001 fall of Afghanistan’s former Taliban rulers in a U.S.-led invasion.
The 18 who were released in the largest single exodus from the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, since last September were among 38 detainees who the Pentagon had decided no longer were considered enemy combatants.
Maj. Michael Shavers, a Pentagon spokesman, said another 15 detainees who also no longer were classified as enemy combatants remained at Guantanamo awaiting transfer to their home countries. Five others previously were released.
The United States still holds approximately 520 prisoners at Guantanamo after freeing 167 to their home countries and sending 65 more to their home governments for continued detention, the Pentagon said. Many detainees have been held for more than three years.
Human rights activists have accused the United States of condemning Guantanamo prisoners to indefinite detention in a “legal black hole,” and note that some former detainees have said they were tortured by U.S. personnel at the base…
Torture allegations, of course, are right out of the Al-Qaeda playbook.