http://www.portal.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2001/09/30/wtal30.xml

In an astonishing interview with Christina Lamb, the Afghan leader's

former bodyguard reveals the full brutality of the

fundamentalist regime sheltering Osama bin Laden

"YOU must become so notorious for bad things that when you come into an

area people will tremble in their sandals. Anyone can

do beatings and starve people. I want your unit to find new ways of

torture so terrible that the screams will frighten even crows from

their nests and if the person survives he will never again have a

night's sleep."

These were the instructions of the commandant of the Afghan secret

police to his new recruits. For more than three years one of

those recruits, Hafiz Sadiqulla Hassani, ruthlessly carried out his

orders. But sickened by the atrocities that he was forced to

commit, last week he defected to Pakistan, joining a growing number of

Taliban officials who are escaping across the border.

In an exclusive interview with The Telegraph, he reveals for the first

time the full horror of what has been happening in the name of

religion in Afghanistan. Mr Hassani has the pinched face and restless

hands of a man whose night hours are as haunted as any of

his victims. Now aged 30, he does not, however, fit the militant Islamic

stereotype usually associated with the Taliban.

Married with a wife and one-year-old daughter, he holds a degree in

business studies, having been educated in Pakistan, where he

grew up as a refugee while his father and elder brothers fought in the

jihad against the Russians. His family was well off, owning

land and property in Kandahar to which they returned after the war.

"Like many people, I did not become a Talib by choice," he explained.

"In early 1998 I was working as an accountant here in

Quetta when I heard that my grandfather - who was 85 - had been arrested

by the Taliban in Kandahar and was being badly

beaten. They would only release him if he provided a member of his

family as a conscript, so I had to go."

Mr Hassani at first was impressed by the Taliban. "It had been a crazy

situation after the Russians left, the country was divided by

warring groups all fighting each other. In Kandahar warlords were

selling everything, kidnapping young girls and boys, robbing

people, and the Taliban seemed like good people who brought law and

order."

So he became a Taliban "volunteer", assigned to the secret police. Many

of his friends also joined up as land owners in Kandahar

were threatened that they must either ally themselves with the Taliban

or lose their property. Others were bribed to join with

money given to the Taliban by drug smugglers, as Afghanistan became the

world's largest producer of heroin.

At first, Mr Hassani's job was to patrol the streets at night looking

for thieves and signs of subversion. However, as the Taliban

leadership began issuing more and more extreme edicts, his duties

changed.

Instead of just searching for criminals, the night patrols were

instructed to seek out people watching videos, playing cards or,

bizarrely, keeping caged birds. Men without long enough beards were to

be arrested, as was any woman who dared venture

outside her house. Even owning a kite became a criminal offence.

The state of terror spread by the Taliban was so pervasive that it began

to seem as if the whole country was spying on each other.

"As we drove around at night with our guns, local people would come to

us and say there's someone watching a video in this

house or some men playing cards in that house," he said.

"Basically any form of pleasure was outlawed," Mr Hassani said, "and if

we found people doing any of these things we would beat

them with staves soaked in water - like a knife cutting through meat -

until the room ran with their blood or their spines snapped.

Then we would leave them with no food or water in rooms filled with

insects until they died.

"We always tried to do different things: we would put some of them

standing on their heads to sleep, hang others upside down

with their legs tied together. We would stretch the arms out of others

and nail them to posts like crucifixions.

"Sometimes we would throw bread to them to make them crawl. Then I would

write the report to our commanding officer so he

could see how innovative we had been."

Here, sitting in the stillness of an orchard in Quetta sipping tea as

the sun goes down, he finds it hard to explain how he could

have done such things. "We Afghans have grown too used to violence," is

all he can offer. "We have lost 1.5 million people. All of

us have brothers and fathers up there."

After Kandahar, he was put in charge of secret police cells in the towns

of Ghazni and then Herat, a beautiful Persian city in

western Afghanistan that had suffered greatly during the Soviet

occupation and had been one of the last places to fall to the

Taliban.

Herat had always been a relatively liberal place where women would dance

at weddings and many girls went to school - but the

Taliban were determined to put an end to all that. Mr Hassani and his

men were told to be particularly cruel to Heratis.

It was his experience of that cruelty that made Mr Hassani determined to

let the world know what was happening in Afghanistan.

"Maybe the worst thing I saw," he said, "was a man beaten so much, such

a pulp of skin and blood, that it was impossible to tell

whether he had clothes on or not. Every time he fell unconscious, we

rubbed salt into his wounds to make him scream.

"Nowhere else in the world has such barbarity and cruelty as in

Afghanistan. At that time I swore an oath that I will devote myself

to the Afghan people and telling the world what is happening."

Before he could escape, however, because he comes from the same tribe,

he spent time as a bodyguard for Mullah Omar, the

reclusive spiritual leader of the Taliban.

"He's medium height, slightly fat, with an artificial green eye which

doesn't move, and he would sit on a bed issuing instructions

and giving people dollars from a tin trunk," said Mr Hassani. "He

doesn't say much, which is just as well as he's a very stupid

man. He knows only how to write his name `Omar' and sign it.

"It is the first time in Afghanistan's history that the lower classes

are governing and by force. There are no educated people in this

administration - they are all totally backward and illiterate.

"They have no idea of the history of the country and although they call

themselves mullahs they have no idea of Islam. Nowhere

does it say men must have beards or women cannot be educated; in fact,

the Koran says people must seek education."

He became convinced that the Taliban were not really in control. "We

laughed when we heard the Americans asking Mullah Omar

to hand over Osama bin Laden," he said. "The Americans are crazy. It is

Osama bin Laden who can hand over Mullah Omar - not

the other way round."

While stationed in Kandahar, he often saw bin Laden in a convoy of

Toyota Land Cruisers all with darkened windows and

festooned with radio antennae. "They would whizz through the town, seven

or eight cars at a time. His guards were all Arabs and

very tall people, or Sudanese with curly hair."

He was also on guard once when bin Laden joined Mullah Omar for a bird

shoot on his estate. "They seemed to get on well," he

said. "They would go fishing together, too - with hand grenades."

The Arabs, according to Mr Hassani, have taken de facto control of his

country. "All the important places of Kandahar are now

under Arab control - the airport, the military courts, the tank

command."

Twice he attended Taliban training camps and on both occasions they were

run by Arabs as well as Pakistanis. "The first one I

went to lasted 10 days in the Yellow Desert in Helmand province, a place

where the Saudi princes used to hunt, so it has its own

airport.

It was incredibly well guarded and there were many Pakistanis there,

both students from religious schools and military instructors.

The Taliban is full of Pakistanis."

He was told that if he died while fighting under the white flag of the

Taliban, he and his family would go to paradise. The soldiers

were given blank marriage certificates signed by a mullah and were

encouraged to "take wives" during battle, basically a licence to

rape.

When Mr Hassani was sent to the front line in Bagram, north of Kabul, a

few months ago, he saw a chance to escape. "Our line

was attacked by the Northern Alliance and they almost defeated us. Many

of my friends were killed and we didn't know who was

fighting who; there was killing from behind and in front. Our commanders

fled in cars leaving us behind.

"We left, running all night but then came to a line of Arabs who

arrested us and took us back to the front line. One night last

month I was on watch and saw a truck full of sheep and goats, so I

jumped in and escaped.

"I got back to Kandahar but Taliban spies saw me and I was arrested and

interrogated. Luckily I have relatives who are high

ranking Taliban members so they helped me get out and eventually I

escaped to Quetta to my wife and daughter.

"I think many in the Taliban would like to escape. The country is

starving and joining is the only way to get food and keep your

land. Otherwise there is a lot of hatred. I hate both what it does and

what it turned me into."