The forgotten suspects - inside an Afghan prison

Mohammed Zubair doesn't imagine himself to be a terrorist. A round-faced, short man whose deep redwood skin tone kept him from blending in with the Afghans, he came from the Punjab region of Pakistan. Two years ago he was studying in madrassah, or religious Islamic school, when the mullah at the mosque said that all able men should go to Afghanistan to fight in the jihad.

This, he was told, was his religious duty. He learned that it would be a crime if he didn't help his fellow Muslims fight the Russians and then the American invaders.

When Mr. Zubair got here, he was disappointed to find that the Afghans were not fighting infidels in any jihad. They were simply fighting among themselves.

"It was propaganda," says Zubair. "When I got here, I realized it was all Muslims, and I didn't want to fight against them, but I stayed anyway," he says. He came for jihad, he says, but he was not a member of Al Qaeda. Now, he just wants to get home to his wife and daughter.

Nasar Ahmed Zarif, one of the interrogators, guides Zubair back to his cell and shuts the steel door. "Listen," he says when the door is shut. "Whether they admit it or deny it, all these men were members of Al Qaeda."

Some of the men in the cells look a bit old, too old to be toting guns in Al Qaeda training camps. Do not be fooled, the interrogators say. Many of them were mullahs who preached for Al Qaeda and motivated the men to fight.

Others look very young, like Mohammed Ishfaq, who came from Lahore to open a hotel in Kabul.

"I was looking for a job for two or three days when I got arrested," says Mr. Ishfaq. "They said, 'Where are you from?' I said 'Pakistan,' and they arrested me."

Mr. Zarif, the investigator, lets out a laugh and shakes his head. "He's lying because you know that all of the people in Afghanistan have to go to Pakistan to work, not the other way around." Though this has normally been the direction of the labor flow, international observers here say it is possible some of the prisoners could actually be innocent Pakistanis swept off the streets.

"They have no evidence to prove that I was a fighter before," whispers Ishfaq. "I miss Pakistan very much. It's very cold here. My parents are very old and they need me. God knows what will happen. I hope to be released."

"They say different things, but some of them were arrested with weapons. We know that none of them were civilians. We've proven that already," says Ahmed Jawed, another investigator here.

"Most of them say they came here for work. They try to absolve themselves like this. If they don't admit their crimes, then we will force them," says Jawed, noting that "some pressure" may be used on them. He is not sure whether he will have to resort to the use of "instruments."

Zarif, his partner, agrees. "Once we start investigating them, they will say why they came. It takes time to get them to tell the truth," he says. When the investigations are done, he says, the detainees will be sent away to a regular prison facility.

"I don't think it's worthwhile to be angry at them," he gestures back toward the locked rooms. "But if there was a war in your country for all these years and you had a chance to catch the criminals..." he stops, and starts again. "If you lost many family members in that war, how would you feel about these people?"

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