Author:
Publication: The Asian Age
Date: October 1, 2001
Taliban supreme commander Mullah
Mohammed Omar's former bodyguard has said in a newspaper interview that
the "Taliban is full of Pakistanis" and the militia's training camps within
Pakistan are being run by the Pakistani military.
Hafiz Sadiqulla Hassani, who served
several years with the Taliban secret police, also revealed it is Saudi-born
exile Osama bin Laden who finally runs Afghanistan and not the Taliban
leader.
Hassani, in an interview published
in Sunday Telegraph from London, said he had attended training camps run
by the Taliban twice and that both were run by Arabs as well as Pakistanis.
"The first one I went to lasted 10 days in the Yellow Desert in Helmand
province, a place where Saudi princes used to hunt, so it has its own airport,"
Hassani was quoted as saying by the Sunday Telegraph.
"It was incredibly well guarded
and there were many Pakistanis there, both students from religious schools
and military instructors," he said. "The Taliban is full of Pakistanis."
Among instructions and equipment
he was given were blank marriage certificates that entitled him to take
home and rape women of those he saw as enemies of Islam.
Hassani, who later became Omar's
bodyguard, said: "He's of medium height, slightly fat with an artificial
green eye which doesn't move. He would sit on a bed issuing instructions
and giving people dollars from a tin trunk. He doesn't say much, which
is just as well as he's a very stupid man. He knows only how to write his
name 'Omar' and sign it."
"It is the first time in Afghanistan's
history that the lower classes are governing and by force. There are no
educated people in this administration - they are all totally backward
and illiterate."
He, however, said the Taliban are
not really in control. "We laughed when we heard the Americans asking Mullah
Omar to hand over Osama bin Laden." "The Americans are crazy. It is Osama
bin Laden who can hand over Mullah Omar - not the other way round," Hassani
reportedly said.
He revealed the notorious torture
tactics the Taliban practised, which he too had practised for years as
an officer of the regime's secret service. Hassani escaped to Pakistan
last week. He reportedly had instructions "to find new ways of torture
so terrible that the screams would frighten even crows from their nests.
If the person survives, he will never again have a night's sleep."
He reportedly joined first night
patrols to seek out people watching videos, playing cards or keeping caged
birds. Men without long enough beards were to be arrested, as was any woman
who dared venture outside her house. Even owning a kite became a criminal
offence, he said.
Hassani reportedly said: "Basically
any form of pleasure was outlawed, and if we found people doing any of
these things we would beat them with staves soaked in water - like a knife
cutting through meat - until the room ran with their blood or their spines
snapped. Then we would leave them with no food or water in rooms filled
with insects until they died."
"We always tried to do different
things: We would put some of them standing on their heads to sleep, hang
others upside down with their legs tied together. We would stretch the
arms out of others and nail them to posts like crucifixions."
Sometimes, he said, he would throw
bread to them to make them crawl. "Then I would write the report to our
commanding officer so he could see how innovative we had been." (IANS)
