KABUL, Aug 23 (AFP) - Three Americans charged with jailing, kidnapping and torturing prisoners in Afghanistan are to reappear in court Monday after their trial was dramatically halted last week when the FBI returned seized evidence to Afghan authorities.
Judge Abdul Baset Bahktiari adjourned the trial for a week on August 16 to allow the Americans and their four Afghan co-accused time to study the evidence, which prosecutors said had been held by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation for more than 20 days.
The defendants, arrested in July for allegedly running a private prison and counter-terrorism operations in Kabul, had earlier accused the FBI of withholding evidence proving their links to US authorities.
Jonathan Keith Idema and two other US citizens, Brent Bennet and Edward Caraballo, face jail sentences along with their Afghan partners of between 16 and 20 years if found guilty.
Idema claims the group was working with the full knowledge of US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to hunt down terrorist suspects and had foiled bomb plots to assassinate senior government leaders and US troops.
Both the US and Afghan governments have disavowed any ties with Idema's outfit.
However, Idema did have contact with both the US military and multinational peacekeepers in Afghanistan prior to his arrest.
Since he was arrested in early July, NATO-led peacekeepers have admitted that they provided Idema's group with bomb disposal services, while the US military said they took a detainee arrested by Idema into custody.
The man was released by US troops after a month when they found that he was not the wanted militant Idema had said he was.
Both NATO-led peacekeepers and US forces said they were duped into helping Idema, believing him to be a legitimate special forces operative because of the way he behaved and the US-style military uniform he wore.
The case has shone a spotlight on the shadowy world of security and counter-terrorism in a country where US-led forces and international peacekeepers stay close to their bases, leaving a wide swathe for private security contractors to operate.
Earlier this week a UN official working on Human Rights in Afghanistan called on US officials to open their detention facilities to independent inspection.
Afghan human rights groups said Idema's case has highlighted the lack of transparency surrounding the jailing and detention of suspected militants.
Idema, who has spent time in Afghanistan since 2001, claims ties with Northern Alliance forces who threw the hardline Taliban regime from power and denies reports that he was a bounty hunter.
The former US Army soldier spent three years in jail in the 1980s for fraud charges.