'Voice of Taliban' tells jailhouse tales

KABUL: It has been a long journey for Abdul Salam Zaeef, the former Taliban envoy who became one of the most visible faces of Afghanistan's Islamic government after the September 11 attacks, holding daily news conferences at which he defended the Taliban's determination to fight rather than give up Osama bin Laden.
Nearly four years later, much of it spent in American detention, he has returned to Afghanistan a more subdued man, who no longer uses his title of mullah, but wears the same thick black silk turban and long beard that are the hallmarks of the Taliban.
Zaeef, 37, was living in Islamabad when he was arrested there in January 2002. Since then, he said, he has been through detention in Pakistan, a week in a cell on an American warship, months at American air bases in Afgh-anistan and, finally, more than three years at the Guantanamo Bay camp in Cuba.
He was released early this month. In an interview in a government safe house in Kabul, he said his American guards at Guantanamo had told him that he was no longer considered a danger. "They said, 'You are not guilty, and to be in prison for so long is not right'," he said.
"They said that to me a lot." The chief spokesman for the American military in Afghanistan, Col James Yonts, confirmed that Zaeef was released in early September. Stephen Had-ley, the American national security adviser, said Zaeef was taken into custody because he was on the administration's terrorist list.
Speaking at a news briefing in Kabul on Monday, he said the release of Zaeef and others was being decided on a case-by-case basis, depending on their role in the Taliban, the extent to which they have cooperated in ending terrorism, and the effect their return will have on bringing others into the reconciliation process.
Sebaghatullah Mojadeddi, the chief of the Afghan government's Peace and Reconciliation Commission, said Zaeef had not been charged during his time at Guantanamo.
"In my opinion, he had no sin," Mojadeddi said of Zaeef. "And if he was guilty, he spent enough time there." Mojadeddi said the American military was gradually releasing the remaining 102 Afghan detainees at Guantanamo.
Zaeef is now living at the Afghan government's expense in a rented house, where he was reunited with his family.
NYT News Service