Prison holding Taliban fighters overcrowded

SHIBERGAN, Afghanistan -- Hafiz Ihsan Saeed pointed to the untreated, infected shrapnel wound in his chest, his bare feet on the freezing concrete and his empty stomach and pleaded Sunday for help on behalf of all the Taliban inmates at Shibergan prison.

"We have not eaten in 22 hours," he said. "We have a lot of weakness. Just standing I feel dizzy."

The 3,000 captured fighters at the prison, about 75 miles from the northern Afghan city of Mazar-e-Sharif, are jammed into a facility meant to hold 200 prisoners.

Many are sick. Most are cold. All are hungry.

Journalists visiting the prison Sunday were allowed to go no farther than a courtyard bordering three large concrete cell blocks, each filled with hundreds upon hundreds of prisoners huddled under blue Red Cross blankets. There was no sign of an American military presence.

From the other side of the bars, open to the freezing Afghan winter, the prisoners described conditions.

They said about 30 inmates are packed into each 6-by-9-foot cell, with others jamming hallways. Prisoners have to sleep sitting on the concrete floor, because of the lack of room and beds, they said.

The wooden roof has holes in it and leaks freezing water when it rains. Many of the prisoners have no shoes. Latrines at the back of each cellblock empty directly into huge, open-air swamps.

"Everyone's ill. Everyone's got diarrhea," said Omer Niseer, a 20-year-old Pakistani, who has been at the prison for a month.

Niseer, and several other prisoners interviewed separately, complained they get only one tiny meal a day. On Saturday, that was some bread that Niseer said he had to split with three other inmates.

Two meals a day

On Sunday, the prisoners had not yet eaten by afternoon, they said.

Gen. Bek Gorabic, the prison warden, insisted there is plenty of food and the inmates are served two large meals a day. He then showed off seven huge vats of steaming rice.

The prisoners said they eat well only when Red Cross officials are visiting, as they were Sunday.

Gorabic apologized for the overcrowded conditions but said there was little he could do.

"There are a lot of Taliban and it's difficult to find enough room for them," he said.

It was unclear what will happen to the prisoners. Red Cross officials spoke of a deal to hand the foreigners -- roughly one-third of the inmates -- over to the United States. Pentagon officials expressed interest in taking some of the prisoners but said they were unaware of any agreement to accept the non-Afghans en masse.

The prisoners are among 7,000 people held in Afghanistan on suspicion of having ties to the Taliban and Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network, a spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition against terrorism said Friday.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said the detainees are being screened to determine who they are and what they know.