Rehan Afridi, a bounty exchange39 Below is Rehan Afridi’s brother Siraj’s account of how he learned Rehan had been captured in Afghanistan in 2005. We spoke to him at the end of May in 2012. Rehan remained enrolled in school until class eight, but could not continue his studies further. All government institutions were shut down due to military operations in our area, so Rehan started working from the age of 16 or 17, taking on odd jobs. He then asked my father for permission to travel to Karachi for better work opportunities, and left home sometime in May 2005. We did not hear from him for some 20 to 30 days until the ICRC contacted us and told us he is in Bagram. “We later found out – through Rehan’s friend’s cousin – he had actually crossed the Torkham border in FATA and entered Afghanistan. Another friend had apparently promised Rehan and his friend Riaz work in Afghanistan. But it later turned out they had been set up, and were arrested by an Afghan officer about 30 kilometres across the Torkham border. This cousin also told me that Rehan’s friend and the Afghan officer received a lot of money – dollars – for handing him over. Our father was extremely angry and upset with Rehan for lying and saying he was going to Karachi. He did not speak to him or forgive him for a very long time. In December 2013, JPP investigators went to Central Jail in Peshawar and met Rehan for the first time, along with five other detainees, including Salim Khan (see page 20). The purpose of such initial meetings was to hear first-hand accounts of abduction, as well as to understand the process of repatriation and subsequent detention in Pakistan, in order to litigate for their complete release. Rehan said he travelled to Peshawar for two weeks in 2005 to look after a cousin who was ill and had been admitted to Lady Reading Hospital. While there, he described how he met a few young men who were there looking after their grandmother; they became friends. He learned that they were from a place called Ghani Khel near Jalalabad in Nangarhar Province of Afghanistan. They said it was a hill station – beautiful, with freshwater lakes – more beautiful than any place in Pakistan. As a bus conductor, Rehan said he had already seen most of Pakistan, and so he agreed to travel with his new friends and holiday for a short while.  In ‘Closing Bagram,’ Omran Blehad writes about the American practice of paying bounties for DFIP and Guantonomo captives, which led to the exploitation of enmities between Pakistanis and Afghans in personal and business relationships. The use of such practices as part of the war on terror have been verified by human rights organizations such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. 39 24