ISLAMABAD, Dec 11 (AFP): A Pakistani detained at Afghanistan's infamous Bagram jail, where he was beaten and threatened with dogs, told AFP that a damning US report on the brutal treatment of terror detainees will do nothing to return the five years he lost to the ordeal.
The US Senate report released Wednesday revealed grim details about how prisoners were treated at so-called "black sites", facing torture ranging from rectal feeding to being suspended from the ceiling by their wrists.
At least one inmate died of hypothermia at one such site known as "Salt Pit", in addition to two already documented deaths in Bagram.
The detention centre north of Kabul, once dubbed the Afghan Guantanamo Bay, became highly controversial for the way detainees were treated.
Afghan authorities took control of Bagram, renamed Parwan, in March 2013, but the US retained control of foreign prisoners, worried the Afghans might release them back onto the battlefield.
Former inmate Kamil Shah told AFP that the report, which has triggered worldwide condemnation, was little comfort for the five years he spent in Bagram.
"What's the benefit of the report? Will the US compensate the victims?" Shah said by telephone.
"They arrested innocent people, put them in dark cells and tortured them for five, 10, 15 years and now they are saying they were wrong."
Shah said that in 2004, aged 17, he crossed into Afghanistan to seek treatment for a sick friend in the southern city of Kandahar, the heartland of the Taliban. But on his way there he was arrested by American forces.
They did not believe his story and he was thrown into Bagram as a suspected Taliban or Al-Qaeda militant, though he was eventually released with no charges and nothing tying him to any suspected wrongdoing.
Shah's time at Bagram consisted of a mixture of violent and non-violent forms of torture, he recalled, ranging from being locked in a pitch black cell for days on end to being beaten until his interrogators were exhausted.
"They used to beat me for hours with sticks and guns, they would go on beating me until they got exhausted," he said.
"Sometimes they would interrogate me for nine, ten hours, that was the most horrible thing."
