KABUL (Afghanistan) - AN AFGHAN journalist detained for 11 months at the main US military base at Bagram has alleged that his captors kicked him, forced him to stand barefoot in the snow and didn't allow him to sleep for days.

Mr Jawed Ahmad, who was working for CTV, a Canadian television network, was handed over to Afghan authorities on Sunday, said Captain Christian Patterson, a spokesman for the US-led coalition.

The US designated him an 'enemy combatant' earlier this year and had accused him of having contact with Taleban leaders, including possessing their phone numbers and video footage of them, according to a complaint filed by Mr Ahmad's lawyers earlier this year in US District Court in the District of Columbia.

Mr Ahmad said on Monday that while in prison, US interrogators accused him of being a Taleban fighter, supplying weapons to the militants and of being an intelligence agent for Pakistan.

'What they blamed me for was not true. If it was true they would not have released me,' Mr Ahmad told The Associated Press at a hotel in Kabul on Monday.

Capt Patterson said Mr Ahmad was released because he was no longer considered a threat.

The 21-year-old was detained on Oct 26, 2007, at a Nato base near the southern city of Kandahar.

Mr Ahmad said an American military public affairs officer called him to come to the base, and he was taken into custody in the US Special Forces compound.

During his Kandahar detention, Mr Ahmad alleges he was kicked, that his head was slammed into a table and that he wasn't allowed to sleep for nine days.

US officials threatened to send him to Guantanamo for years, he said. His head was shaved, he was made to wear an orange jumpsuit and flown to the main US base at Bagram.

He said soldiers there forced him to stand for six hours on the snowy runway with no shoes. He said he passed out twice and was forced to stand back up.

Capt Kaymberley Juradl, a spokesman for the US-led coalition, said Mr Ahmad had access to routine medical treatment while at Bagram, met with the International Committee of the Red Cross, and that Mr Ahmad didn't make any reports to officials that he was abused.

'We take those kind of allegations seriously and our people are trained to respect everybody, and we don't abuse people like that,' she said.

Mr Ahmad worked as a translator for US Special Forces for 2 1/2 years, starting in 2002. He quit after the second time he was wounded in a Taliban attack, he said.

He readily admits that he had contact with Taleban fighters.

'As a journalist you have the right to talk to any organisation. You are the eyes of the world,' he said.

'Yes, I talked to the Taleban like any other reporter. I traveled with them. I did stories with them. They are not my uncles or brothers, they are the Taleban.

I talked to them just like I talked to NATO. If you know only one party, you are useless.' -- AP