RUSSIA: The mother of a Russian citizen held by the United States at the Guantanamo Bay military prison said yesterday she would prefer her son to remain in captivity in Cuba than face rough justice and a jail term back home, writes Daniel McLaughlin in Moscow.
Ms Amina Khasanova said her son dreaded the thought of spending years in one of Russia's decrepit prisons, where brutality and rampant disease mean many inmates die behind bars.
"He told me in his last letter they would be sending him back against his will," she said of her son, Mr Aryat Vakhitov, who was sent to Camp X-Ray from Afghanistan.
"I haven't seen him for four or five years but I'm terribly afraid of Russian jails, so much so that even I think it may be better to stay over there. I worry for him, of course, but Russian jail is worse than hell."
A senior Moscow official said last week that he expected the US to send eight Russian nationals home "in the near future to face judicial proceedings". More than 600 people from 42 countries are being held without trial at Guantanamo Bay.
Ms Khasanova said her son fled to Afghanistan in 1999 after police in his native republic of Tatarstan came to arrest him. She said the arrest was part of a politically motivated crackdown on Muslims ahead of presidential elections and the return of federal forces to Chechnya, where a separatist rebel movement overlaps with radical Islam.
She told The Irish Times her son was imprisoned and beaten by the Taliban after entering Afghanistan, and was only released in late 2001 as the regime fell under attack from US forces and their allies.
Ms Khasanova said she expected her son to return home, but then came the first of several letters from Guantanamo, with much of his writing blanked out by US censors.
"He had no complaints, and said the food was alright and he was being treated well. He had been in a Russian prison before, and said Guantanamo was like a sanatorium compared to that." She said his letters suddenly stopped last summer, and that her notes to him kept being returned in the post.
In 1999, police pursued Mr Vakhitov and several other men associated with a mosque in his hometown of Naberezhnye Chelny, for allegedly preaching a violently anti-Russian message.
If he stands trial in Russia, he faces a potential three-year jail term for illegally crossing international borders.
"They could put him in jail for as long as they want," his mother said. "This is a political question now."