If you’re looking for pieces on Jack Idema and his team, please click on this link.

This just in and I may have to either update this post later, or put more thoughts together in another post.

At Tawab Keef prison near the US Embassy in Kabul, cells 2 and 10 await. The previous occupants, about 20 Afghans, were cleared out about two days prior to the dinner at Pulacharke with the Commandant. And everyone at Tawab Keef knew who the two Americans were who were about to arrive.

The dinner with the Commandant at Pulacharke was supposed to include Jack Idema. But Jack didn’t feel well, after he’d been on the phone with the American Embassy and he’d been without sleep. So the dinner didn’t go very well, because their guest of honor, never arrived. They repeatedly called him during the course of the evening, urging him to join them. Jack Idema was supposed to be at that dinner the night. Brent ended up going in Jack’s place.

Brent had a nagging suspicion that he was about to be ‘ambushed’, and called Jack. Jack told him to try and make his way back. Brent called back, saying they wouldn’t let him. Jack tried to leave and noticed there were big locks on the gates, put there by a Taleban mullah, the leader of the block. So he was unable to go and help his friend. And then…all hell broke loose. Brent was surrounded by about 25 soldiers that he’d never seen before, and soldiers started swarming into Jack’s block.

Now, Kim Richter, a State Department representative, called Brent’s family and said that Brent had their names taken off for the State Department to call. She said that Brent wasn’t ‘handed over to terrorists’. She said Brent’s family is not getting ‘correct information’, that Brent had a plane ticket to go home, he was handcuffed by the Embassy because ‘he had a loan from the Embassy.’ In light of the following, I can only imagine that ‘loan’ was for his plane ticket home, considering that the Embassy has charged these men to receive mail from home. The State Department’s story and version of events is highly suspect. Why they would further obfuscate the facts to a family awaiting word of their loved one is disturbing.

You see, these men were ‘released’ weeks and months before. Karzai has been trying to give them ‘amnesty’, but he’s also been requiring Jack Idema to sign either a statement of guilt, or an affadavit denouncing the Northern Alliance and Massoud’s United Front Military Forces, which he will not do. So there has been a lot of behind-the-scenes negotiating, with no success. It appears as though the American Embassy in Kabul is determined to hand them from one prison to another, with absolutely no communication with their families as to their whereabouts or safety. One is not left to wonder why; they may never be heard from again.

In my opinion, this is absolutely cruel and unusual punishment directed at loved ones awaiting word in the United States.

The United States Embassy in Kabul ordered the Afghans to continue holding them after their March 2005 “innocent” verdict. The Afghan Embassy in Washington, D.C. told the women in blue burkas who demonstrated for their release this past September 11th that their continued imprisonment was ‘political’ and that the American Embassy would be responsible for their release. But the American Embassy had all along been denying them water, denying them attorney-client privileged correspondence, denying them mail to and from their families, and denied them passports when they were requested over a year ago. The American Embassy is treating them as though they’re not even citizens; and what’s worse; not giving them what is due them according to the Constitution, the Geneva Conventions, and all the rest. When I contemplate this story, I am appalled that we’re talking about the American Embassy’s treatment of United States citizens in a foreign country here. It doesn’t seem possible. A United States Embassy in a foreign land is supposed to be a safe haven for United States citizens. But here, it simply isn’t the case.

Now, apparently, because Banderas and Bennett wouldn’t sign the ‘amnesty’ agreement, that Karzai has been offering- it was agreed with Afghan prison officials they could come and go from Pulacharke as long as they came back and slept there at night; a kind of ‘loose’ arrangement that I would imagine Martha Stewart would have. This was a trust agreement; although Banderas and Bennett would never leave Jack Idema; that much has become clear over time. These comings and goings weren’t publicly acknowledged and were kept secret because if the American Embassy knew about it, they would be imprisoned, and some felt, taken back to Saderat Extreme Interrogation facility in Kabul–where they had spent their first four months tortured, starved, beaten, and as a result of those beatings, lost teeth, had torn rotators cuffs, torn retinas, endured dance with the scorpion, boiling water poured between their legs, and more.

Apparently this was the entire purpose of the dinner at the Commandant’s. The Embassy had been to Pulacharke before to ‘have a meeting’ with Jack and Brent, but they knew, under the circumstances, there were way too many security personnel in attendance for it to be a ‘friendly meeting’. They were there to ‘take custody’ of them. And as long as Jack and Brent are in Afghanistan, that can only mean one frightening thing: Saderat. I’ll explain how we know this in a second.

So here are some of the events leading up to Brent’s leaving Pulacharke prison under duresse.

Around September 27, Jack was invited to have dinner with the Security Commandant of the prison. This was a relatively common event for Jack, as he’s been treated more or less like a celebrity since his arrival from Saderat. It usually occurs on Thursday or Friday, during the muslim holiday. What is unusual is that a prisoner would have dinner with the commandant. To my knowledge, this is not a common occurence at any prison. The prisoner is behind bars, the commandant is not. But as we’ve seen, these are unusual men, unusual circumstances, and the Northern Alliance has control of Pulacharke and are grateful for all that Jack and Brent have done for them and for Afghanistan. They were the ones that stopped the torture of these men at Saderat and brought them to Pulacharke, after their first ‘guilty’ verdict in September of 2004.

Now I’m confused as to the timing of this, or the day that it actually occurred–but Jack had been on the phone with the Embassy, and wasn’t feeling up to par after listening to the Embassy threaten the Commandant ‘to do something’ about Jack and Brent ‘faster’. So Brent went to dinner that night, in Jack’s stead. Repeatedly Jack resisted the suggestion to join them at dinner, each time turning down the invitation. Brent somehow managed to call Jack, saying he had a strange feeling he was about to be ‘ambushed’, that people were acting strange. Jack told him to make his way back, and Brent called him back, saying they wouldn’t let him. Jack tried to leave his cell block to get to Brent and help, and the gates had giant locks on them, put there by the new block commander, a former Taliban mullah. Jack heard someone yelling ‘go, go buro buro!’ in English. And that’s when the proverbially shit hit the fan.

Brent was surrounded by soldiers he’d never seen before–about 25 of them. And while this was going on, and Jack was hearing Brent in pashtu and dari over the radio, and hearing “American Embassy” in dari from soldiers–another 25+ soldiers began swarming into Jack’s cell block, the number growing to around 40, trying to break into the inside gates.

Having had over a dozen attempts on their lives by the Taleban and Al Qaeda in the past two years, Jack Idema had managed way beforehand to take some precautions to slow down someone who would break into his cell block with murder on his mind. The new General’s nephew, Nabi-Gul went running up the stairs with his body guards pointing their AK-47’s at Jack. Two unlit molotov cocktails were tossed through the gate. Then Jack kicked a large can of gasoline into the air and lit his zippo. As the gas poured down the stairs, Nabi-Gul and his goons ran like hell in retreat.

The standoff lasted all night. Banderas was outside the prison now, trying to get help. He finally reached some of the NA Generals at about 0630 at the national mosque, who, after prayers, made some ’stern phone calls’, and Pulacharke immediately became a ghost town.

The plan, to take these men away from Pulacharke, unbeknownst to their families, to an undisclosed location, and leave their possessions as a reward or a bribe for General Sidiqi and Nabi-Gul, didn’t pan out.

But wait. It’s not an ‘undislosed’ location anymore. Because we now know, according to several reliable sources, that it is Tawab Keef prison near the United States Embassy, where “the Americans want to take you back and forth at night to Saderat when no one can see,” said one source inside the prison. The Department of Justice, through the FBI, finances and oversees Saderat torture facility.

One empty cell at Tawab Keef prison in Kabul is being kept ready for Jack Idema’s arrival, on the orders of Ambassador Ronald Neumann.

It is solitary confinement cell #10.