ianstone
07-18-2010, 11:01 AM
Briton in Afghan Alcatraz FREED: Family reunion for former Army officer jailed in Kabul on trumped up charges
By Nadene Ghouri (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/search.html?s=y&authornamef=Nadene+Ghouri)
Last updated at 1:13 AM on 18th July 2010
Comments (13) (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1295611/Briton-Afghan-Alcatraz-FREED-Family-reunion-Army-officer-Bill-Shaw-jailed-Kabul-trumped-charges.html#comments)
A Briton told last night how he was shackled and had his head forcibly shaved during a four-month ordeal in an American-run prison in Afghanistan.
Bill Shaw, who was freed this month after charges of corruption against him were dropped, sobbed as he recalled his humiliation at the hands of US guards, saying he had reached the ‘lowest point’ in his life and felt he had ‘lost everything’.
The former Army major was held in three separate prisons, but said he had endured his worst moments in the US-run Counter Narcotics Judicial Centre near Kabul, to which he had been moved after threats from other inmates.
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2010/07/18/article-1295611-0A78B47A000005DC-623_468x645.jpg Delighted: Bill and Liz Shaw yesterday with their grandchildren Caius, five, and Madeleine, eight
He was eventually transferred from there to Poli Charki, the notorious Afghan equivalent of Alcatraz, where he grew a beard to blend in with other prisoners.
Now, once again clean-shaven, he is back in England with his wife Liz and their three children and two grandchildren.
The US-run prison was set up last year to house Afghan drug barons. ‘The American guards told me on day one they couldn’t make any exceptions for me,’ said Mr Shaw, talking exclusively to The Mail on Sunday.
‘I was put in leg shackles and chains to be transported. Around your stomach is a chain to which your hands are attached. They took away my bag and all my possessions and made me wear brown prison pyjamas. All they left me with was a pair of undies and my toothbrush.
‘They tried to take my comb but I kicked off. I always keep my hair tidy and neat. I really wanted my comb.’
He was taken to a ‘sterile’ cell, where the lights were on 24 hours a day. ‘You were not allowed to cover your face with a blanket because the guards wanted to walk past and see you at all times,’ he said. ‘In that place, I was stripped of my identity.’
With typical military understatement he added: ‘That’s when I started to get really upset and fraught.
‘We were allowed to exercise for two hours a day in what I can only describe as a dog run. It was 20 paces long by three paces wide and held seven detainees at a time.’
Mr Shaw recalled being taken to the barber. ‘This is so hard to talk about,’ he said. ‘The guards told me the barber was going to shave my head. I have this thing about keeping my hair tidy so I tried to refuse. But they held me down and he shaved me. That was probably the lowest point of my life.
‘Can you imagine? There I was, a 51-year-old educated man, being held down by Afghan prison guards and having my head forcibly shaved. At that point I felt I’d lost everything.’
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2010/07/18/article-1295611-0A4F0F25000005DC-929_233x409.jpg Almost free: Bill Shaw awaits the verdict during his appeal in Kabul this month
He said he would have just about coped with his two-year sentence in either the first jail in which he was kept – the holding prison at Kabul police HQ – or even the notorious Poli Charki, to which he was finally moved. But he would have ‘totally cracked up and gone doolally’ in the US facility, which was ‘sterile, silent, eerie and terrifying’.
Mr Shaw, a former instructor at Sandhurst military academy, has been awarded the MBE for a 28-year Army career. He retired in 2004 and, in 2008, took a job as a senior manager with G4S, a private security company.
His role was to guard the British Embassy and all Foreign Office staff in Kabul, making him responsible for up to 600 expat and local workers.
In October last year, Mr Shaw was told that an armoured vehicle owned by G4S had been stopped on a busy main road by the intelligence wing of the Afghan police force, the NDS.
The incident occurred after Afghanistan’s President Karzai, who has often openly voiced his dislike for foreign security companies, ordered a crackdown on their activities.
The President’s initiative coincided with the British Government publicly ordering him to take a stronger stance on corruption, and Mr Shaw, from Leeds, appears to have become a victim of the political posturing.
Mr Shaw said: ‘The NDS had pulled over several Afghan cars and a Humvee as well as our car. I tried to reason with the commander and showed him the paperwork. All our vehicles were registered with the interior ministry. He got angry and then threatened to take away both vehicles.’
When Mr Shaw electronically disabled the vehicles, the commander started shooting at them.
‘He fired six or seven rounds,’ recalled Mr Shaw. ‘One of the Afghan pick-ups had a heavy-duty machine gun mounted on it and it was pointed at a crowd who had gathered. I was terrified he would start killing people, so we let him take the vehicles.’
Mr Shaw filed a report to his head office and to the British Embassy, and lodged a complaint with the Afghan interior ministry. But G4S was told it would take weeks to get their vehicles back.
An Afghan member of staff offered to try to speed up the process. ‘We were told that if we paid $10,000 dollars per vehicle as a release fee we could get them back,’ said Mr Shaw. G4S refused, and the price went up to $12,500.
‘It was extortion,’ said Mr Shaw. ‘But we believed it was how the system worked. So we went ahead.’
When Mr Shaw went to make the transaction, he took an Afghan member of his staff and another man he was told was a police officer.
Mr Shaw waited outside the building while the two men went in to negotiate.
Though he had ordered them not to pay the cash until they had received the documents, they came out with the vehicles but not the paperwork.
‘I wasn’t very happy and tried to go back in to get a receipt without success,’ said Mr Shaw. ‘You’re in their hands and you have to trust what you are being told.’
Later, Mr Shaw discovered that the police officer was, in fact, a private broker.
By Christmas, the NDS had confiscated more vehicles and was asking for more money. Mr Shaw again complained to the authorities.
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2010/07/18/article-1295611-0A776FCF000005DC-72_468x416.jpg A letter from Madeleine asking the Queen to help her free 'pop'
But in March he was visited by staff from Afghanistan’s new anti-corruption unit, an organisation funded by the British taxpayer. Its aim is to tackle the corruption which is rife within the Afghan Government, but no Afghan has yet been convicted.
Despite warnings from the British Embassy that he was about to be arrested, Mr Shaw co-operated with the authorities.
‘I had done nothing wrong so had nothing to hide,’ he said. ‘I emphasised that I was the complainant in this case, so how could I be guilty? But I suppose, in a way, I volunteered my own arrest.’
Mr Shaw was charged with bribing a public official. He was taken to the holding prison in Kabul and placed in a cell with ten beds and 17 other prisoners.
‘It was a wet March day. People were huddled in the corridors, some with blankets, some without,’ he said. ‘You had to step over bodies to get to the cells. They were Afghan prisoners who didn’t have a cell.’
The prison, designed for 150 people, was crammed with 550 inmates. ‘The toilets were filthy and overflowing and there was the constant stink of sewage,’ said Mr Shaw.
‘I was still thinking the whole thing had been a mistake and that I would be released in a couple of hours.’
But he stayed there for about six weeks. ‘The next day, the Embassy staff came to see me and told me they could not get involved, that they had to let the Afghan justice system take its course,’ he said. ‘I felt completely let down. I had always kept them informed and I was innocent.
‘The prison food was disgusting. We had rice and potatoes for lunch and were given bread for dinner and breakfast. The bread was left in a bag overnight where cockroaches and mice ran over it. So I didn’t eat breakfast.
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2010/07/18/article-1295611-0A4F09A5000005DC-358_224x321.jpg
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2010/07/18/article-1295611-0A776E2C000005DC-120_224x320.jpg
Broken man: Bill Shaw in court in Kabul, left, and in the Army, right
‘At one point some Pakistani Taliban came in and ordered the other prisoners not to talk to me and said they would kill me. But my friends all stood up for me and told them to leave me alone.
‘There were lots of fights between prisoners. When that happened the guards would handcuff them to the showers and beat their feet with hosepipes.’
After his first court hearing, the threats against Mr Shaw intensified. ‘My story was in the local papers,’ he said. ‘I had told other prisoners that I was an engineer for my own safety, but now they knew that I had been a British soldier. The Taliban inmates really wanted to get me.’
For his protection, the British Embassy arranged to have Mr Shaw moved to the US-run Counter Narcotics Judicial Centre. On April 26, he was taken back
to court. ‘It was a kangaroo court,’ Mr Shaw said. ‘Nothing was translated for me and I couldn’t understand a word.
‘I knew from the judge’s body language that I was going down. My lawyer was shouted down when she tried to speak.’
He was found guilty of bribery and sentenced to two years in prison plus a $20,000 fine.
Mr Shaw was dragged out in chains before he even had a chance to say goodbye to his supporters and taken back to his cell.
‘It hit me that night,’ he recalled.
‘I couldn’t sleep. All I could think about was my wife and kids and the grandkids. I felt I’d let them down.’
A few weeks later, Mr Shaw was transferred to Poli Charki. ‘I was terrified – I had heard so many horror stories,’ he said.
But, in fact, the prison authorities, who had seen his case on TV, were sympathetic towards him. The prison governor ordered his leg chains to be taken off.
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2010/07/18/article-1295611-0A776E38000005DC-745_468x321.jpg Family support: Bill's wife Liz and daughter Lisa visit him in jail in Kabul
‘I was allowed to walk the 200 yards to my block. I was without chains for the first time in months and it was an amazing feeling. They gave me back my radio and my shampoo. I almost cried with relief, just to be allowed a few possessions again.’
Despite the little privileges, he describes the notorious Poli Charki as ‘one of the most dangerous places in Afghanistan’. ‘Al Qaeda have almost full control inside,’ he said. ‘The guards go through the motions of guarding them, but you get the sense the guards have to obey the prisoners.
‘They aren’t supposed to have mobile phones, yet they walked the corridors freely using them. I was even told attacks were planned and ordered from inside. All night long you’d hear the sound of light bulbs popping – they charged their phones by wiring them up to the bulb sockets.’
He said he believed that the Taliban had placed a $10,000 bounty on his head because he was both British and an ex-soldier, and that he had been moved into solitary confinement for his own protection.
By now, he said, he had resigned himself to ‘life in hell’, but his lawyer secured an appeal and the judge acquitted him of all charges.
Mr Shaw said: ‘I broke down as cameras were thrust in my face, with reporters asking how I felt. I could only reply that I wanted my family and a glass of Rioja.’
Remarkably, Mr Shaw says he is not bitter about what he has been through.
‘I’m disappointed rather than bitter,’ he said. ‘I tried to help the Afghan judicial system and it completely backfired on me.’
Perhaps even more remarkable is that he hasn’t ruled out going back. ‘In countries like that there’s a lot of work to be done and a lot of people who need support,’ he said. ‘But for now I need to put my family first.’
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1295611/Briton-Afghan-Alcatraz-FREED-Family-reunion-Army-officer-Bill-Shaw-jailed-Kabul-trumped-charges.html#ixzz0u2veBxuv
By Nadene Ghouri (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/search.html?s=y&authornamef=Nadene+Ghouri)
Last updated at 1:13 AM on 18th July 2010
Comments (13) (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1295611/Briton-Afghan-Alcatraz-FREED-Family-reunion-Army-officer-Bill-Shaw-jailed-Kabul-trumped-charges.html#comments)
A Briton told last night how he was shackled and had his head forcibly shaved during a four-month ordeal in an American-run prison in Afghanistan.
Bill Shaw, who was freed this month after charges of corruption against him were dropped, sobbed as he recalled his humiliation at the hands of US guards, saying he had reached the ‘lowest point’ in his life and felt he had ‘lost everything’.
The former Army major was held in three separate prisons, but said he had endured his worst moments in the US-run Counter Narcotics Judicial Centre near Kabul, to which he had been moved after threats from other inmates.
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2010/07/18/article-1295611-0A78B47A000005DC-623_468x645.jpg Delighted: Bill and Liz Shaw yesterday with their grandchildren Caius, five, and Madeleine, eight
He was eventually transferred from there to Poli Charki, the notorious Afghan equivalent of Alcatraz, where he grew a beard to blend in with other prisoners.
Now, once again clean-shaven, he is back in England with his wife Liz and their three children and two grandchildren.
The US-run prison was set up last year to house Afghan drug barons. ‘The American guards told me on day one they couldn’t make any exceptions for me,’ said Mr Shaw, talking exclusively to The Mail on Sunday.
‘I was put in leg shackles and chains to be transported. Around your stomach is a chain to which your hands are attached. They took away my bag and all my possessions and made me wear brown prison pyjamas. All they left me with was a pair of undies and my toothbrush.
‘They tried to take my comb but I kicked off. I always keep my hair tidy and neat. I really wanted my comb.’
He was taken to a ‘sterile’ cell, where the lights were on 24 hours a day. ‘You were not allowed to cover your face with a blanket because the guards wanted to walk past and see you at all times,’ he said. ‘In that place, I was stripped of my identity.’
With typical military understatement he added: ‘That’s when I started to get really upset and fraught.
‘We were allowed to exercise for two hours a day in what I can only describe as a dog run. It was 20 paces long by three paces wide and held seven detainees at a time.’
Mr Shaw recalled being taken to the barber. ‘This is so hard to talk about,’ he said. ‘The guards told me the barber was going to shave my head. I have this thing about keeping my hair tidy so I tried to refuse. But they held me down and he shaved me. That was probably the lowest point of my life.
‘Can you imagine? There I was, a 51-year-old educated man, being held down by Afghan prison guards and having my head forcibly shaved. At that point I felt I’d lost everything.’
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2010/07/18/article-1295611-0A4F0F25000005DC-929_233x409.jpg Almost free: Bill Shaw awaits the verdict during his appeal in Kabul this month
He said he would have just about coped with his two-year sentence in either the first jail in which he was kept – the holding prison at Kabul police HQ – or even the notorious Poli Charki, to which he was finally moved. But he would have ‘totally cracked up and gone doolally’ in the US facility, which was ‘sterile, silent, eerie and terrifying’.
Mr Shaw, a former instructor at Sandhurst military academy, has been awarded the MBE for a 28-year Army career. He retired in 2004 and, in 2008, took a job as a senior manager with G4S, a private security company.
His role was to guard the British Embassy and all Foreign Office staff in Kabul, making him responsible for up to 600 expat and local workers.
In October last year, Mr Shaw was told that an armoured vehicle owned by G4S had been stopped on a busy main road by the intelligence wing of the Afghan police force, the NDS.
The incident occurred after Afghanistan’s President Karzai, who has often openly voiced his dislike for foreign security companies, ordered a crackdown on their activities.
The President’s initiative coincided with the British Government publicly ordering him to take a stronger stance on corruption, and Mr Shaw, from Leeds, appears to have become a victim of the political posturing.
Mr Shaw said: ‘The NDS had pulled over several Afghan cars and a Humvee as well as our car. I tried to reason with the commander and showed him the paperwork. All our vehicles were registered with the interior ministry. He got angry and then threatened to take away both vehicles.’
When Mr Shaw electronically disabled the vehicles, the commander started shooting at them.
‘He fired six or seven rounds,’ recalled Mr Shaw. ‘One of the Afghan pick-ups had a heavy-duty machine gun mounted on it and it was pointed at a crowd who had gathered. I was terrified he would start killing people, so we let him take the vehicles.’
Mr Shaw filed a report to his head office and to the British Embassy, and lodged a complaint with the Afghan interior ministry. But G4S was told it would take weeks to get their vehicles back.
An Afghan member of staff offered to try to speed up the process. ‘We were told that if we paid $10,000 dollars per vehicle as a release fee we could get them back,’ said Mr Shaw. G4S refused, and the price went up to $12,500.
‘It was extortion,’ said Mr Shaw. ‘But we believed it was how the system worked. So we went ahead.’
When Mr Shaw went to make the transaction, he took an Afghan member of his staff and another man he was told was a police officer.
Mr Shaw waited outside the building while the two men went in to negotiate.
Though he had ordered them not to pay the cash until they had received the documents, they came out with the vehicles but not the paperwork.
‘I wasn’t very happy and tried to go back in to get a receipt without success,’ said Mr Shaw. ‘You’re in their hands and you have to trust what you are being told.’
Later, Mr Shaw discovered that the police officer was, in fact, a private broker.
By Christmas, the NDS had confiscated more vehicles and was asking for more money. Mr Shaw again complained to the authorities.
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2010/07/18/article-1295611-0A776FCF000005DC-72_468x416.jpg A letter from Madeleine asking the Queen to help her free 'pop'
But in March he was visited by staff from Afghanistan’s new anti-corruption unit, an organisation funded by the British taxpayer. Its aim is to tackle the corruption which is rife within the Afghan Government, but no Afghan has yet been convicted.
Despite warnings from the British Embassy that he was about to be arrested, Mr Shaw co-operated with the authorities.
‘I had done nothing wrong so had nothing to hide,’ he said. ‘I emphasised that I was the complainant in this case, so how could I be guilty? But I suppose, in a way, I volunteered my own arrest.’
Mr Shaw was charged with bribing a public official. He was taken to the holding prison in Kabul and placed in a cell with ten beds and 17 other prisoners.
‘It was a wet March day. People were huddled in the corridors, some with blankets, some without,’ he said. ‘You had to step over bodies to get to the cells. They were Afghan prisoners who didn’t have a cell.’
The prison, designed for 150 people, was crammed with 550 inmates. ‘The toilets were filthy and overflowing and there was the constant stink of sewage,’ said Mr Shaw.
‘I was still thinking the whole thing had been a mistake and that I would be released in a couple of hours.’
But he stayed there for about six weeks. ‘The next day, the Embassy staff came to see me and told me they could not get involved, that they had to let the Afghan justice system take its course,’ he said. ‘I felt completely let down. I had always kept them informed and I was innocent.
‘The prison food was disgusting. We had rice and potatoes for lunch and were given bread for dinner and breakfast. The bread was left in a bag overnight where cockroaches and mice ran over it. So I didn’t eat breakfast.
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2010/07/18/article-1295611-0A4F09A5000005DC-358_224x321.jpg
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2010/07/18/article-1295611-0A776E2C000005DC-120_224x320.jpg
Broken man: Bill Shaw in court in Kabul, left, and in the Army, right
‘At one point some Pakistani Taliban came in and ordered the other prisoners not to talk to me and said they would kill me. But my friends all stood up for me and told them to leave me alone.
‘There were lots of fights between prisoners. When that happened the guards would handcuff them to the showers and beat their feet with hosepipes.’
After his first court hearing, the threats against Mr Shaw intensified. ‘My story was in the local papers,’ he said. ‘I had told other prisoners that I was an engineer for my own safety, but now they knew that I had been a British soldier. The Taliban inmates really wanted to get me.’
For his protection, the British Embassy arranged to have Mr Shaw moved to the US-run Counter Narcotics Judicial Centre. On April 26, he was taken back
to court. ‘It was a kangaroo court,’ Mr Shaw said. ‘Nothing was translated for me and I couldn’t understand a word.
‘I knew from the judge’s body language that I was going down. My lawyer was shouted down when she tried to speak.’
He was found guilty of bribery and sentenced to two years in prison plus a $20,000 fine.
Mr Shaw was dragged out in chains before he even had a chance to say goodbye to his supporters and taken back to his cell.
‘It hit me that night,’ he recalled.
‘I couldn’t sleep. All I could think about was my wife and kids and the grandkids. I felt I’d let them down.’
A few weeks later, Mr Shaw was transferred to Poli Charki. ‘I was terrified – I had heard so many horror stories,’ he said.
But, in fact, the prison authorities, who had seen his case on TV, were sympathetic towards him. The prison governor ordered his leg chains to be taken off.
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2010/07/18/article-1295611-0A776E38000005DC-745_468x321.jpg Family support: Bill's wife Liz and daughter Lisa visit him in jail in Kabul
‘I was allowed to walk the 200 yards to my block. I was without chains for the first time in months and it was an amazing feeling. They gave me back my radio and my shampoo. I almost cried with relief, just to be allowed a few possessions again.’
Despite the little privileges, he describes the notorious Poli Charki as ‘one of the most dangerous places in Afghanistan’. ‘Al Qaeda have almost full control inside,’ he said. ‘The guards go through the motions of guarding them, but you get the sense the guards have to obey the prisoners.
‘They aren’t supposed to have mobile phones, yet they walked the corridors freely using them. I was even told attacks were planned and ordered from inside. All night long you’d hear the sound of light bulbs popping – they charged their phones by wiring them up to the bulb sockets.’
He said he believed that the Taliban had placed a $10,000 bounty on his head because he was both British and an ex-soldier, and that he had been moved into solitary confinement for his own protection.
By now, he said, he had resigned himself to ‘life in hell’, but his lawyer secured an appeal and the judge acquitted him of all charges.
Mr Shaw said: ‘I broke down as cameras were thrust in my face, with reporters asking how I felt. I could only reply that I wanted my family and a glass of Rioja.’
Remarkably, Mr Shaw says he is not bitter about what he has been through.
‘I’m disappointed rather than bitter,’ he said. ‘I tried to help the Afghan judicial system and it completely backfired on me.’
Perhaps even more remarkable is that he hasn’t ruled out going back. ‘In countries like that there’s a lot of work to be done and a lot of people who need support,’ he said. ‘But for now I need to put my family first.’
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1295611/Briton-Afghan-Alcatraz-FREED-Family-reunion-Army-officer-Bill-Shaw-jailed-Kabul-trumped-charges.html#ixzz0u2veBxuv