I recall when they changed this. Somewhere end 90's/early 2000's it was a subtle subject in a WT-study, but one bro in our hall who had spend several years in jail because he wasn't allowed to do alternate service (or he would be DF'd, while HIS choice would've been to do alternate serivce) nearly exploded when this came along. He was soooo upset, like you are now, and he stood up and really burst out in anger and shouted through the hall in the midst of the WT-study asking 'who they thought they were, playing with people's lives like this!' He asked who was going to give him back the years he had lost because of the earlier stand of the WTS, which appeared to be wrong now...
And I felt for him, as I do for you now. It must be so hard to know that you've 'done time' for nothing, because of some assholes that made a decision over everybody's heads and later decided to change it. It's frustrating. My ex-FIL had the same thing, he also spent 2,5 years in jail, but he was pretty submissive to the GB so he didn't blink an eye when they flipflopped to accepting alternate service all of a sudden, calling it 'a matter of conscience'...
It was one of the things that made me question if this really was the 'Truth'...