Salt Pit Victim, Gul Rahman, Once Rescued Hamid Karzai

In a follow-up on its story on Gul Rahman’s death in the Salt Pit in November 2002, AP reports that Rahman may have rescued Hamid Karzai from imprisonment by Afghan intelligence in 1994.

After Soviet forces withdrew in 1989, Afghanistan descended into civil war as the Islamic groups that ousted the Soviets fought each other for control of the capital, Kabul.

During fighting in 1994, Karzai, then deputy foreign minister, was arrested by Afghan intelligence, by some accounts because he was in contact with Hekmatyar and other militia leaders to end the conflict.

[snip]

According to Habib Rahman, his brother, Gul Rahman was sent to fetch Karzai by Hekmatyar, whose forces had long been suspected of firing the rockets at the building. Gul Rahman carried a letter for Karzai from Hekmatyar, saying he had been sent to rescue him at the request of Karzai’s father, the brother said.

Habib Rahman said his brother took Karzai to a safe house in Kabul, then drove with him to the Pakistani city of Peshawar, where Karzai was hospitalized for two days.

Mind you, this story is based on what Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and Rahman’s brother, Habib, say; Karzai has refused to comment on the story. Hekmatyar raised the incident last year to criticize Karzai. And Hekmatyar, who is back in negotiations with Karzai at the moment, may have his own reasons to escalate this story.

Nevertheless, given the claims that DOJ avoided charging anyone in Rahman’s death because it claimed the US did not control the Salt Pit when he died, the story adds an extra level of irony and legal intrigue.

The Salt Pit was the top-secret name for an abandoned brick factory, a warehouse just north of the Kabul business district that the CIA began using shortly after the United States invaded Afghanistan in October 2001. The 10-acre facility included a three-story building, eventually used by the U.S. military to train the Afghan counterterrorism force, and several smaller buildings, which were off-limits to all but the CIA and a handful of Afghan guards and cooks who ran the prison, said several current and former military and intelligence officers.

The CIA wanted the Salt Pit to be a “host-nation facility,” an Afghan prison with Afghan guards. Its designation as an Afghan facility was intended to give U.S. personnel some insulation from actions taken by Afghan guards inside, a tactic used in secret CIA prisons in other countries, former and current CIA officials said.

The CIA, however, paid the entire cost of maintaining the facility, including the electricity, food and salaries for the guards, who were all vetted by agency personnel. The CIA also decided who would be kept inside, including some “high-value targets,” senior al Qaeda leaders in transit to other, more secure secret CIA prisons.

“We financed it, but it was an Afghan deal,” one U.S. intelligence officer said.

In spring 2004, when the CIA first referred the Salt Pit case to the Justice Department for possible prosecution, the department cited the prison’s status as a foreign facility, outside the jurisdiction of the U.S. government, as one reason for declining to prosecute, U.S. government officials aware of the decision said.

Karzai was Interim President when Rahman died. Either his Administration or the US was in charge of the prison. If the US was in charge, then Rahman’s death can be prosecuted. If Karzai’s Administration was in charge, then he bears legal responsibility for his rescuer’s death.

And I would imagine Hekmatyar is well aware of this dynamic.

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38 replies
  1. klynn says:

    Wow. This will be quite interesting. Not in a good way either.

    I think it will come out that the US was in charge.

    • emptywheel says:

      I don’t think we’ll ever know all the details.

      BUt I do imagine taht Karzai, given his apparent desire to distance himself from the Americans, may well CLAIM the US was in charge.

    • afghan says:

      You Guys are just talking and don’t know the Real Story.
      u see afghan Parliament they were all involved in Jihad and now they are not involved in fight so was Gul Rehman.
      he was selling wood in a refugee camp since 1996 please read the other posts about him as well.
      he was a mujahid before 1996 and his importance that why was he sent to rescue Karzai at that time was that he was a brave man and a person who was trustful for his honesty for hikmatyar see Dr.Ghairat bahir he is son in law of Hikmatyar and is free after 6 years cause he know more people than Gul Rehman. Gul Rehman was a simple and a brave and honest guy if he was very important hikmatyar captured more Americans and French in last 8 years why he didn’t exchange him with Gul Rehman cause he was not as important for him as Ghairat bahir what you guys think was he more dangerous than khalid shaikh mohammad the planner for WTC who is in a prison with US he is in prison and will face the charges or any other punishment by court why was’nt Gul Rehman taken to court if he was more dangerous so they should punished him for life time prison or even more harder than that but killing him and not telling his family for almost 8 years is not in Human Rights and still CIA is not confirming the Death and not giving the Death body this is another confusion for his family they are now thinking is he still alive or what happened that CIA is not giving the Death body and not saying any thing about Gul Rehman.
      and i think this is why Karzai threatening that he will join Taliban if the pressure of US builds more on him he was even not able to know about the Death of the one who rescued him in 1994. so why he should not say i am going to join taliban.

  2. klynn says:

    …given his apparent desire to distance himself from the Americans, may well CLAIM the US was in charge.

    Yep.

    Imagine it is a busy day for some folks creating intel to show otherwise.

  3. bmaz says:

    If the Americans were exercising dominion and control over a particular portion of the Salt Pit complex, and so far it appears clear they were, I do not see how they avoid applicability of the Special Maritime and Territorial Jurisdiction provisions.

    • BoxTurtle says:

      Well, who’s going to bring up charges based upon that? The DoJ? Perhaps congress will appoint a special prosecutor? And naturally, if one of our foreign allies were to start their own judicial proceedings, we would fully cooperate, including during discovery and with any extradition requests, right?

      That’s how they’ll avoid it.

      Boxturtle (And it’s worked very well so far)

  4. Mary says:

    Sorry – but a bit more OT on the wikileaks video
    http://www.courierpress.com/news/2010/apr/05/gritty-video-baghdad-firefight-confirmed/?partner=yahoo_headlines

    Apparently part of what the military was selling on this attack is that it was OK to kill everyone, even though none were engaged in any hostile actions, bc the cameras (that are never noted as being cameras in the video) could have been being used as weapons – kinda

    “It is worth noting the fact that insurgent groups often video and photograph friendly activity and insurgent attacks against friendly forces for use in training videos and for use as propaganda to exploit or highlight their capabilities,” the [July 19,2007 summary of the military investigation]concludes.

    So the cameras could have been being used by “insurgents” to video insurgent attacks. Or, worse?, they could have actually been used to photograph “friendly activity.”

    You know, like a man hearing screams for help and driving his van and children over to try to rescue the wounded.

  5. Mary says:

    Back to the post – they have a quote up from a then Human Rights Watch member, who says of Karzai’s escape:

    “How Karzai got out of Kabul and through the front lines to Peshawar was always mysterious to us,” said Zifiri, who now works for Amnesty International. “We always just wondered as to how he did that. That was the question for us: Unless he had high level contact, how did he get through these front lines?”

    It helps with the myster and the “high level contact” point even more to note how often Hekmatyar is noted as being tied in with Pak Intel.

    I’d lay good money and odds on the US, v. Karzai, being wholly in control, but I think that Karzai might start getting some hard questions on what he knew and when he knew it, depending on how much pressure Hekmatyar and Pak want to put on. If Hekmatyar was making public statments as recently as last year, wondering why Karzai had not released Rahman (and it’s hard to think H didn’t know it was bc R was dead at the time) he’s been lining this up as a pressure point.

    No one looks good, letting his rescuer (even if the rescuer was tied in with some pretty bad guys) be tortured to death and not pushing for any accounting. Even those who don’t like H and his crew can’t see much honorable in Karzai if he does nothing at this point.

    Rahman’s brother and the article note that Rahman’s children, all 4 girls, are in school and the oldest is finishing high school. It sounds as if the *terrorist’s* brother has, percentage wise, done a much better job making sure Afghan women receive an education that Petraeus, McChrystal, Bush and Obama.

    How sad is that?

    • emptywheel says:

      Well, two more points on that. Remember that Rahman was captured w/Hekmatyar’s physician/son-in-law at the s-i-l’s house, which is the same place the brother told his story to the AP. It’s the s-i-l that first named Gul Rahman in the first place. Now, we know that the s-i-l can’t just be making up that it was Gul Rahman that died, bc that named appeared in the CTC declination. The declination was out before the AP learned the name, but Hekmatyar was using the name last year, so it’s not like they just glommed on the to the name.

      Nevertheless, this does look like a slow-release from Hekmatyar’s camp at a critical time. Why couldn’t he have had the brother at the house when he first told AP of the story, for example?

  6. readerOfTeaLeaves says:

    I have no clue what happened here, and no intention whatsoever or raining on the parade.

    But a few observations:

    During fighting in 1994, Karzai, then deputy foreign minister, was arrested by Afghan intelligence, by some accounts because he was in contact with Hekmatyar and other militia leaders to end the conflict.

    Question #1: If this is true, then who didn’t want the conflict ended? And why not? (I assume drug lords and/or foreign interests, but that’s only a random guess.)

    The 10-acre facility included a three-story building, eventually used by the U.S. military to train the Afghan counterterrorism force, and several smaller buildings, which were off-limits to all but the CIA and a handful of Afghan guards and cooks who ran the prison, said several current and former military and intelligence officers.

    The CIA wanted the Salt Pit to be a “host-nation facility,” an Afghan prison with Afghan guards. Its designation as an Afghan facility was intended to give U.S. personnel some insulation from actions taken by Afghan guards inside, a tactic used in secret CIA prisons in other countries, former and current CIA officials said.

    Now, what I understand of Afghanistan is that it appears to be primarily tribal social networks at this point. So that leads to Question #2: what tribe(s) were the ‘guards’? Same tribe as the prisoners? Not bloody likely.
    Ditto the cooks.

    Question #3: how many of these ‘guards’ or ‘counterintel’ forces are literate, in their native language let alone second languages? I don’t mean to insult Afghanis, I’m pointing out that even into the 1990s, many areas in the world did not have the kind of K-12 educational institutions that are ‘assumed’ to be the norm by most Americans.
    So did these ‘guards’ know how to read?
    It’s an important question, because if they weren’t at least reasonably literate then the kind of butt-covering b.s. documents that were coming out of OLC are probably just viewed by tribal people as some strange, bizarre American Game that the CIA or others ‘played’ to pretend to themselves that they bore no responsibility for whatever sh!t would go down.
    Illiterates are not stupid.
    In fact, sometimes they see bullshit, and call it that, a lot faster than a DC lawyer — who get paid to create it. (Not intending to wound legal egos around these parts, who seem to be admirable, very smart folk.)

    But this is my favorite part. Allow me the indulgence of highlighting the family or personal relationships here:

    According to Habib Rahman, his brother, Gul Rahman was sent to fetch Karzai by Hekmatyar, whose forces had long been suspected of firing the rockets at the building. Gul Rahman carried a letter for Karzai from Hekmatyar, saying he had been sent to rescue him at the request of Karzai’s father, the brother said.

    H sends R to fetch K.
    Why?
    These sure look like tribal and clan relationships.
    (And I’m not clear about the clan relationships between Karzai and Hekmatyar, but it’s a fair guess that if it were graphed there would be thousands of linkages.)

    If the US was in charge, then Rahman’s death can be prosecuted. If Karzai’s Administration was in charge, then he bears legal responsibility for his rescuer’s death.

    And I would imagine Hekmatyar is well aware of this dynamic.

    I don’t know much about Hekmatyar; don’t know where he sits in the drug trades, or the tribal and clan structures, but I agree that Karzai is probably thinking in clanship terms.

    What I also think is that the US has its head so far up its ass that we may never recognize daylight again.

    Basically, it sure looks to me as if we overlook the critical psychological, cultural, intellectual, and cognitive factors of literacy. Which means that we try to tell ourselves sweet lies and stumble blindly.

    Illiterates don’t conceive of a ‘justice’ system in the way we do.
    Why would they?
    They don’t have ‘documents’ or ‘files’.
    They have personal relationships in tribal and clan structures, based on birth, marriage, and other factors.

    No matter what the US says or claims about who was ‘in charge’ or ‘responsible’, if you don’t have literacy you will not have a concept of a larger justice system. You’ll have something closer to Sharia, where the ‘judges’ are tribal leaders and/or religious leaders. You take people to the ‘elders’ and they make a judgment, and it is socially enforced.

    This is a culture clash of the first order, from what I read here.

    No doubt I am missing a great deal, but the notion that ‘the CIA’ doesn’t appreciate the basics of literacy makes to too irritated for patience.

    • Mary says:

      This profile (from the Jamestown ngo, so keep in mind the source) has some of the Hekmatyar affiliations info

      I’ve seen info that he is Kharoti tribe and it is a part of the Ghilzai confederation of tribes.

      Part of the profile about him includes the story of his refusal to shake hands with Reagan, even while taking the lion’s share of the US money going into the Afghan fight against the Soviets.

      fwiw

            • Mary says:

              EPU’d

              That too. There’s a karmic law that prohibit Glen Beck and I from being located in the same square mile, bc the crazy meeting the crazy may rip the fabric of existence.

              @30 – and if Karzai feels himself slipping, he might be willing to align with, even pass some significant power to, a strongman like Hekmatyar. That was apparently tried by someone else earlier, who offered up the lion’s share to H, but he didn’t bite. Now he might be ready to – or not.

              @32 – I think you’re right, in some version at least.

              @33 – Obviously, we have some communications issues, but for this, “why was’nt Gul Rehman taken to court if he was more dangerous” I would agree with you. I think most would.

      • bobschacht says:

        Thanks, Mary. This looks like a good source, to me. So Karzai and Hekmatyar are both Pashtun, but you are right to bring his tribal confederation into the picture. The article also mentions that both of his wives are from the same tribe, which is also important (One of the things that has helped Osama bin Laden is that he married into several Afghan tribes.)

        But here’s the telling point:

        Hekmatyar’s communist ideology was also affected by an extremist version of Islam.

        Anyone who can achieve that combination has an agile intellect, since Communism is atheistic.

        He speaks Dari (Farsi), Pashto, English, Urdu and Arabic.

        These are all of the critical languages in the borderlands. I’ll bet he has met face to face with all of the power players in the region, and has spoken with them in their own languages.

        Here’s another telling quote:

        …since he was so selfish and hungry for power most of the jihadi leaders did not like him, though they needed him,” said Mujda. Mujda quoted Mawlawi Khalis as saying “I pray to god to let Hekmatyar live among us in Pakistan, but I don’t want him with us in Afghanistan because he would not let anyone, other than himself, become the country’s leader.”

        A lot of people have thought they could manage Hekmatyar. ISTM they have all been wrong. Anyone, including Karzai or our Ambassador to AfPak Richard Holbrooke, who thinks they can is probably wrong.

        Bob in AZ

    • bobschacht says:

      I don’t know much about Hekmatyar; don’t know where he sits in the drug trades, or the tribal and clan structures, but I agree that Karzai is probably thinking in clanship terms.

      You gotta know that in dealing with Hekmatyar, nothing is so simple as just tribe & clan. That SOB would make a deal with Satan against Beelzebub. You just can never be sure whose side he’s really on. But people keep trying to make deals with him anyway.

      Bob in AZ

  7. klynn says:

    Not to go OT but the Vatican has done it again…

    Now it’s a hate campaign. The Pope is the victim and it’s all the anti family, gay marriage, pro-choice people who are spewing lies.

    My deep regrets to all church related sexual assault and rape victims. Again.

  8. arlopear says:

    Is there information on the persons who abused and allegedly killed Rahman? It seems Dana Priest’s first story says the Salt Pit manager (CIA) ‘ordered’ Afghan guards to abuse him, and the guards then left him o/n to freeze. The recent stories more closely indicate that it was done by CIA persons, not Afghan guards, and this would be more consistent with other Salt Pit prisoners’ accounts of Afghan guards on the perimeter, but US personnel on the inside. Then there was MW’s (?) comment this weekend that the AP writers heard the perpetrators were CIA contractors, but could not confirm. Is there more information on the perps, even if speculation?

    • emptywheel says:

      No, not the AP. I heard that the perps might have been contractors. But others were unable to find any support for that.

      They guy they’re discussing was the manager of the Salt Pit.

      • bmaz says:

        As long as the conduct was directed by the CIA, and I have seen nothing to date to detract from that, it is a distinction impertinent to culpability of the person(s) directing the acts. Some of those may well be on the other end of a satellite or fiber optic cable.

  9. thatvisionthing says:

    o/t to mod: What happened to yesterday’s diary on the Seminal wondering where toxic assets went, who bought them? The link now goes to nowhere: http://seminal.firedoglake.com/diary/39101 It had a good flow chart attached that helped me “see” how mortgages-CDOs-CDSs flow… ? (Much easier for me to grasp than text.) I apologize for this interruption.

  10. afghan says:

    first think and than leave comments
    You Guys are just talking and don’t know the Real Story.
    u see afghan Parliament they were all involved in Jihad and now they are not involved in fight so was Gul Rehman.
    he was selling wood in a refugee camp since 1996 please read the other posts about him as well.
    he was a mujahid before 1996 and his importance that why was he sent to rescue Karzai at that time was that he was a brave man and a person who was trustful for his honesty for hikmatyar see Dr.Ghairat bahir he is son in law of Hikmatyar and is free after 6 years cause he know more people than Gul Rehman. Gul Rehman was a simple and a brave and honest guy if he was very important hikmatyar captured more Americans and French in last 8 years why he didn’t exchange him with Gul Rehman cause he was not as important for him as Ghairat bahir what you guys think was he more dangerous than khalid shaikh mohammad the planner for WTC who is in a prison with US he is in prison and will face the charges or any other punishment by court why was’nt Gul Rehman taken to court if he was more dangerous so they should punished him for life time prison or even more harder than that but killing him and not telling his family for almost 8 years is not in Human Rights and still CIA is not confirming the Death and not giving the Death body this is another confusion for his family they are now thinking is he still alive or what happened that CIA is not giving the Death body and not saying any thing about Gul Rehman.
    and i think this is why Karzai threatening that he will join Taliban if the pressure of US builds more on him he was even not able to know about the Death of the one who rescued him in 1994. so why he should not say i am going to join taliban.

  11. alabama says:

    Westerners, from Alexander the Great, to Obama bin Laden, Leonid Breshnev and George Bush, have gone to Afghanistan to sharpen their skills in warfare, and with good reason, since the Pathans are the greatest warriors on earth (not that this part of the world doesn’t have other things to offer). But why would a country–any country–want to sharpen its skills in warfare? At what point does this become the country’s overriding goal, its raison d’être? And at what price? When do we forget that governments have other things to do?

    Borges somewhere says (pardon my imprecision here, the text is not at hand) that “building walls and destroying libraries are the chief occupations of princes”. He doesn’t explain why we ask them to do this.

  12. nusayler says:

    The name of the Salt Pit CIA manager (Mr. Z) was for a while inadvertently posted on the internet in a DOJ file on the OLC investigation. It was in a footnote (#28) and had not been redacted…that is until 4/2/2010 when the they woke up and caught their mistake.

    I’m not an insider, so maybe I’m in the dark here. Is this guy’s name widely known but not mentioned for fear of prosecution. Jane Mayer said she was not going to post the name for fear of CIA retribution but didn’t seem to mean LEGAL consequences.

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