Witnesses testify about inhumane conditions, beatings and torture in an Afghan prison. But the Afghan-Dutch director of that detention center denies: “I no longer know who I am.”
Sleepless nights. Flashbacks to his friends from then who did not survive prison. Nearly forty years later, Afghan Abdel Wadood is still haunted by his time spent in the infamous Pul-e-Charki prison near Kabul, nicknamed The Slaughterhouse, in the 1980s. “You carry psychological torture with you for the rest of your life,” he told the court in The Hague on Wednesday. Wadood, when a student, was detained for political activism. “I wanted freedom for my country.”
Five meters away in the courtroom is the man who is considered partly responsible for the suffering of Wadood: the then commander of the prison. Die Abdul Razaq A. (or R., but more on that later), is on trial for the inhumane treatment of prisoners in Afghanistan in the 1980s. He looks straight ahead and says he knows nothing more about it.
200 people in a cell
There were 200 people in a small cell, so you had to take turns sleeping. The food sometimes consisted of rice with meat in which the intestines of a sheep were still filled. There was one toilet in the hallway. Those who had diarrhea had to make do with a plastic bag. Those who protested were locked up for a day in a ventilation shaft and beaten by the guards. Sometimes people came back from interrogation whose nails had been pulled out. “You wouldn’t even keep your cattle like that,” said another prisoner.
Hundreds of political opponents of the then communist regime were imprisoned. Some were imprisoned for six years without trial. Others were suddenly taken away and executed.
The man who would have been one of the commanders of that prison between 1983 and 1990 is now on trial in the Netherlands. He himself fled from Afghanistan to the Netherlands in 2001, reported here under a different name and was granted asylum and Dutch nationality. Finally, the police tracked him down, now Abdul Razaq A. has to answer for war crimes. Or as a third witness says: “He was the mastermind behind the beatings and torture.”
I don’t remember where I was born. I know I’m not the man you say I am
A., a short, bald, slender man, is now 76 years old and in fragile health. The public prosecutor drives him into the courtroom in a wheelchair. The Afghan did not want to come and would rather have remained in prison. But the judge decided, after a doctor’s examination, that he is fit enough. A. says that he is sick and dizzy and that he is unable to speak. Nor can he remember anything. “I don’t remember where I was born, I don’t know who I am. I know I am not the man you say I am.”
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Justice spoke with eighteen former prisoners who now live all over the world, including in the Netherlands. Also among the witnesses: two relatives of former Afghan president Amin. He was deposed and killed by the Russians in Kabul in 1979. Female relatives ended up in Pul-e-Charki.
In 2012, the Dutch police started an investigation because, through information from blogs, they think that the former prison commander of Pul-e-Charki from that period now lives in the Netherlands. After a while, suspicion falls on a man from Kerkrade who is registered as Abdulrazaq R. His phone is tapped and he is arrested at the end of 2019, he has been detained ever since.
Document forged
The investigation shows, among other things, that the Afghan ID that the suspect handed over to the IND immigration service when he arrived in the Netherlands was probably tampered with. On that document, the surname A. may have been changed to R. Both surnames are very similar. A document found in his house in Kerkrade states ‘position: officer’. The police have tapped his telephone: to Afghans who call, he introduces himself with the surname A. People also address him with the communist term ‘comrade’.
During the hearing, A. does not want to answer anything. He refers to his lawyer. He previously told the police that he was a mathematics and physics teacher in Kabul. He is also said to have only been a passive member of the People’s Democratic Party Afghanistan and fled to the Netherlands because he had problems with the Islamic mujahideen fighters. After the communists had to relinquish power, those fighters waged a long, mutual struggle for power in Kabul.
The lawsuit will continue tomorrow, then the Public Prosecution Service will issue a sentence. Previously, Afghan asylum seekers in the Netherlands who were part of an Afghan intelligence service under communist rule were given up to twelve years in prison.
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