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Bondage, beatings and a few questions from the governor
The prisoner who called himself Saifullah was reluctant to speak. He watched warily as a foreign journalist visited the crumbling stone cell block where suspected Taliban are held in Kandahar.
Among the detainees in the national-security wing of Sarpoza jail in 2007, he was the most hostile to the idea of conversation.
The palace guards covered his face, tied his hands and heaved him into the back of a vehicle, he said. They covered him with blankets and two men sat on top of him during the long drive into the city, a trip so painful that he wept.
"When they reached the governor's palace, they threw me into a room like luggage," he said, and the torture started immediately. "They asked my name, where I was from, and started hitting me with their hands and kicking me with their soldier's boots.
"I was bleeding from the nose, ears and mouth."