US forces in Afghanistan freed 81 suspected Taliban fighters from military jails across the country Sunday and some of the released men said they had been mistreated and tortured in custody.

Aged between 19 and 64, looking pale and exhausted, the bearded men smiled and waved as they left the Afghan Supreme Court to begin their journeys home.

"They have been released from Bagram," Chief Justice Fazl Hadi Shinwari told reporters, referring to the main American base in Afghanistan, north of the capital Kabul.

"We will give them clothes and then send them home."

At a brief hearing before their release, Shinwari warned the men not to talk about their imprisonment, saying it could harm the prospects of those still held, but some still spoke out.

"I was picked up on the basis of wrong information," Shah Alim, a 19-year-old from the eastern province of Kunar, said.

"They poured water on me, deprived me of sleep and beat me during detention as part of their torture."

Accusations of mistreatment of prisoners have dogged US military jails from Iraq, to Afghanistan and its base in Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

"I have very bad memories of the interrogation because they were torturing us," said Abdul Manan, 35, also from Kunar.

"But after the interrogation period was over, everything was all right," he told reporters outside the Supreme Court.

Kuwaitis freed

The first 12 Kuwaitis released also arrived home after midnight yesterday in good health, according to a Kuwaiti lobbying for the release of detainees from this Gulf state.

Nasser al-Mutairi, 26, was captured in Afghanistan three years ago.

Khaled al-Odah, who heads a group that has been lobbying for the release or fair trial of Kuwaitis, said that al-Mutairi returned to Kuwait aboard a government-owned plane.

Al-Mutairi's family insists he was teaching English in Afghanistan, not supporting that country's ousted Taliban regime or the al-Qaida terrorist network responsible for the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States.

Al-Odah, al-Mutairi's younger brother, Nayef, and several Kuwaiti Government officials greeted the government-owned private plane after it returned the freed Guantanamo to an airport, the identity of which was not revealed.

(China Daily January 17, 2005)