The So Called 'War on Terror'

Three years on, Guantánamo detainee, 78, goes home

Hero's welcome for ex-Mujahideen commander with failing eyesight and a walking frame

It's hard to picture Haji Nasrat Khan as an international terrorist. For a start, the grey-bearded Afghan can barely walk, shuffling along on a three-wheeled walking frame. His sight is terrible - he squints through milky eyes that sometimes roll towards the heavens - while his helpers have to shout to make themselves heard. And as for his age - nobody knows for sure, not even Nasrat himself. "I think I am 78, or maybe 79," he ventures uncertainly, pausing over a cup of green tea.

Yet for three and a half years the US government deemed this elderly, infirm man an "enemy combatant", so dangerous to America's security that he was imprisoned at Guantánamo Bay.

Arrested in early 2003, Nasrat - or "detainee 1009" as he was officially known - always insisted he was innocent. But recently his hopes started to slide and he feared dying far from his home in the mountains of eastern Afghanistan.

Perhaps the 'War on Terror' should be renamed 'The War on the Elderly', this just makes me so angry and shows how stupid the Bush Junta are when it comes to dealing with terrorism and the perversion that is Guantanamo Bay and the fact they are using torture and ignoring every intertional law there is.