As with the Koran abuse, this isn't the first time the detainee's claims that they ended up at Guantanamo after being sold by the Taliban or Northern Alliance or Mujahdeen have surfaced.

In May, 2004, we wrote about released British detainee Tariq Dergoul. His full story is told by the Observer, here and here:

After the 11 September attacks, he and two Pakistani friends had an idea for what, in hindsight, was one of the worst-judged business ventures of all time. With war looming, they thought many Afghans would want to flee their homes. Dergoul had £5,000 in cash, which he pooled with his friends' savings. 'The plan was to buy some property away from where the bombing was. We thought we could buy it very cheap, then sell it at a profit after the war.'

They travelled to Jalalabad and looked at several empty homes. On the verge of signing a deal, Dergoul and his friends spent the night in a villa. While they were asleep, he said, a bomb landed on it - killing his friends. He went outside and was hit by another bomb, sustaining shrapnel wounds.

For at least a week, unable to walk, he lay among the ruins, drinking from a tap that still worked, and living on biscuits and raisins he had in his pocket. Exposed to the freezing weather, his toes turned black from frostbite. At last he was found by troops loyal to the Northern Alliance. They treated him well, taking him to a hospital where he was given food and three operations. However, after five weeks he was driven to an airfield and handed over to Americans, who arrived by helicopter. Dergoul said the Americans paid $5,000 for him - according to Human Rights Watch, this was the standard fee for a 'terrorist' suspect. They flew him to the US detention camp at Bagram airbase, near Kabul. (emphasis supplied.)

In September, 2004, we wrote about prisoners being released from an Afghan prison.

The last 368 Pakistani prisoners who were jailed 3 years ago for aiding the Taliban in its fight against the U.S. have been freed from jail in Afghanistan and returned home. Originally, there were 2,500 of them. They were kept in deplorable conditions. Many died.

Many of the prisoners originally were religious students who were sold by their "mullahs"--spiritual teachers--as mujahideen (holy warriors) to the Taliban. Here is the story of 22 year old Amir Khan, as told to Reuters:The mullahs in my area said that as Muslims we should go to Afghanistan to fight a jihad....I can not deny this was my intention. I arrived in Afghanistan in October. I spent three days in Kabul and then went to Mazar-i-Sharif. I was captured the day after I arrived there." Like many of his comrades, Khan said he had received no military training and insisted he was a religious student who had been "misled" by the mullahs. "They sold us," he said. "We learned later that for every 10 mujahideen (holy warriors) that they sent, they would receive 5,000 rupees ($100)." (emphasis supplied)

30 year old Mohammed Afriqi was among a group of 50 that surrendered. Only 20 survived: He was initially held at the notorious Shiberghan prison, where Dostum's forces are accused of killing hundreds of prisoners or allowing them to die because of overcrowding. In September 2002, Dostum issued a formal statement acknowledging that "approximately 200 prisoners died, but mostly of wounds suffered in the fighting, disease, suffocation, suicide and general weakness." Afriqi showed Reuters scars on his chest he said came from wounds caused by being whipped with electric cable.

The prisoners said the past 18 months of their captivity had been much better than the initial stage, and Sunday they all looked clean, fit and healthy."

[my comment]: No one ever decided whether these men were prisoners of war. They were the 'Joe Shmoes' of the opposition. The captured fighters that were perceived to have value to the U.S. were shipped to Guantanamo.

On a related note, tapes of the abuse have been acknowledged to exist.

Now, however, Dergoul has revealed a means of proving the claims of violence at Guantanamo, potentially as dramatic as the Abu Ghraib photographs. Every time an ERF squad was deployed, he said, the entire process was recorded on digital video: 'There was always this guy behind the squad, filming everything that happened.'

Last night Lieutenant Colonel Leon Sumpter, the Guantanamo Joint Task Force spokesman, confirmed the videos existed, saying that all ERF (Extreme Reaction Force) actions were filmed so that they could 'be reviewed by the camp commander and the commanding general'. All of them, he said , were kept in an archive at Guantanamo.

Isn't it time to release them so we can see whether Bsh's "absurd" claim is true?