Ahmed, Shafiq Rasul, and Asif Iqbal were boyhood friends on their way to a wedding in September 2001. Iqbal was to be married in Faisalabad, Pakistan. The wedding was arranged by his parents. Ahmed was to be best man.
But it wasn’t to be. Afghan warlord and U.S. ally Rashid Dostum labeled them al Qaeda operatives and arrested all three. At the time, Dostum and others from the Northern Alliance were rounding prisoners up to hand over to the US as proof of their allegiance to US forces.
Along with what they say were hundreds of other detainees, the three were forced into containers so tight their chests pressed against their knees. Bullets pierced the walls, Ahmed says, killing some prisoners but allowing enough air in to keep others alive.
Mass graves found near Mazar-e-Sharif have since revealed that hundreds of prisoners captured by Dostum died before they ever made it into US custody. Stories of mass suffocation are not unique.
Today, Dostum is chief of staff to the commander of Afghanistan’s armed forces.
I’ve seen that, and quite frankly their reason for being in Afghanistan was a joke.
They were in Pakistan for a wedding and decided to go to Afghanistan because “the nan bread there is wicked innit man” and somehow ended up deep in a Taliban stronghold by mistake. Yeh right.
Try watching it again, and then listen to what they actually say instead of your misinpretation of their story.
I’m not saying they’re telling the truth (but I don’t see any reason to place more plausibility on the US Army), but their story is nowhere as ridiculous as you make it out to be.
They were in Pakistan for a wedding and decided to go to Afghanistan because “the nan bread there is wicked innit man” and somehow ended up deep in a Taliban stronghold by mistake. Yeh right.
Funnily enough that was more or less my view of it.
The whole build up to them being in afghanistan to begin with just doesn’t wash with me. I’m still not necessarily sure that it warrants being sent to guantanamo for 3 years without trial but I definitely came out of that programme far less convinced that they were just in the wrong place at the wrong time than I was before hand.
