"They put a bag on my head and tied my limbs together'

Taliban critics and rebel collaborators’ face torture in Afghan prisons under the hardline Islamist regime, survivors say

- MAHBOB SHAH MAHBOB & ARPAN RAI

As a former official in Afghanistan's democratically elected government, Mustafa* knew that if the Nato-backed administration collapsed he would have to flee. But like many others, he was unable to do so, and in July last year fell into Taliban hands. They threw him inside a small cage with dogs inside.

“They captured me, suffocated me by placing a plastic bag on my face and tied my limbs together,” he tells The Independent in a phone call from Afghanistan. The Taliban accused him of continuing to collaborate with the hardline Islamist government’s enemies even after the fall of Kabul in August 2021 – in their minds, being a rebel.

When he was finally taken out of the cage after 30 hours, Mustafa was unable to stand and collapsed to the ground. Over the next 17 months, the Taliban’s prison guards and officials assaulted him with sticks and pipes, he says, and fed him scraps.

He is one of 38 interviewees in a new body of research by Afghanistan International, a TV station run by journalists covering the country from exile. They seek to document allegations of systemic torture and abuse meted out by the Taliban to detainees, and have presented their findings to the UN special rapporteur for Afghanistan, Richard Bennett.

The Taliban denies the allegations and claims journalists are welcome to visit its prison facilities to see conditions for themselves, though the Islamist regime has also banned media from airing criticism of its policies – part of what the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) calls “draconian media restrictions... dragging Afghanistan back to the Stone Age”.