Tough Crowd

Badr Zaman Badr and his brother Abdurrahim Muslim Dost spent three years in Guantanamo and other U.S. prisons after the fall of the Taliban. Even after releasing the men, U.S. authorities still say their imprisonment was justified. But the brothers say their only crime was writing satires of the religious authorities that governed Afghanistan. Shortly before U.S. forces attacked Afghanistan, they say they were warned by Roh Ullah, the brother of one mullah they had lampooned, to stop their attacks. Ten days later, Pakistani intelligence seized them and later turned them over to the U.S. The Ullah family denies any role in their seizure. But Newsday reports Ullah has been accused of using contacts with Pakistani intelligence to have several opponents seized. The brothers say they were interrogated by U.S. officials hundreds of times, and those officials seemed most interested in a satire they wrote after Bill Clinton put a $5 million bounty on Osama Bin Laden. Dost suggested Afghanistan retaliate by putting up 5 million Afghanis—about $113—for the arrest of Clinton. He says the proposal made fun of the poor state of the economy under the Taliban, but Americans never got the joke.