- Kindly post the following news articles about US's torture
and disregard to basic human rights in Afghanistan.
-
- People are sickened of the US and her claims of humanity
when in reality they represent nothing but torture, murder, indignity and
inhumanity.
-
- The world has seen the true America, and people worldwide
realize that America only understands its own brand of medicine, namely
violence.
-
- There is no shortage of youngmen in the Muslim World
to volunteer for violence. These young men used to listen to the speeches
of radical perons in their enclaves and were not sure if what these radicals
claimed were true, however, with the US's invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq
and the unconditional support of Israel against the daily slaughter of
Palestinians along with tortures committed by US soldiers in Afghanistan
and Iraq, these young men do not need to listen to any speech to learn
about US's atrocities. After all these young men see the daily horrors
committed by American soldiers and agents in their backyard.
-
- So, people in this country should not wonder and ask
"why they hate us?" or "why us?" or for that matter,
"why terrorism?".
-
- If the people of this country thought terrorism or the
shadowy--creature-- Al-Qaida, is defeated, they better think twice. In
fact, this country is more vulnerable today than it has has ever been.
Lets hope, this country would not need another disaster to come to its
senses!!
-
- Sincerely,
-
- Mohammed Daud Miraki, MA, MA, PhD
- Director Afghan DU & Recovery Fund
- www.afghandufund.org
- mdmiraki@ameritech.net
-
-
- Please, read the following articles:
-
- Afghan Detainees Routinely Tortured And Humiliated
By US Troops
- By Duncan Campbell and Suzanne Goldenberg
- The Guardian - UK
- 6-23-4
-
- Detainees held in Afghanistan by American troops have
been routinely tortured and humiliated as part of the interrogation process,
in the same way as those in Iraq, a Guardian investigation has found.
-
- Five detainees have died in custody, three of them in
suspicious circumstances, and survivors have told stories of beatings,
strippings, hoodings and sleep deprivation.
-
- The nature of the alleged abuse indicates that what happened
at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq was part of a pattern of interrogation that
has been common practice since the US invasion of Afghanistan.
-
- Yesterday, in an attempt to stem charges that senior
officials in the Bush admin-istration condoned the use of torture in the
war on terror, the White House released hundreds of pages of documents
outlining its internal deliberations on interrogation.
-
- The memos, which originated at the Pentagon, the White
House and the justice department and date from January 2002 to April last
year, were intended to show that the president and his aides insisted that
detainees at Guantánamo Bay should be treated humanely.
-
- But one such memo leaked earlier this month said that
Mr Bush had the legal authority to allow torture, giving new impetus to
a campaign by human rights organisations and Democrats.
-
- Senator Patrick Leahy, the Democratic member of the Senate
subcommittee on foreign operations, told the Guardian that prisoners in
Afghanistan "were subjected to cruel and degrading treatment, and
some died from it".
-
- "These abuses were part of a wider pattern stemming
from a White House attitude that 'anything goes' in the war against terrorism,
even if it crosses the line of illegality."
-
- Syed Nabi Siddiqi, a former police officer, said he was
beaten and stripped. "They took off my uniform. I showed them my identity
card from the government... Then they asked me which of those animals -
they made the noise of goats, sheep, dogs, cows - have you had sexual activities
with?"
-
- A second detainee, Noor Aghah, said he was forced to
drink bottles and bottles of water during his interrogation.
-
- Another prisoner, Wazir Muhammad, was held for nearly
two years, firstly in Afghanistan and then at Guantánamo Bay.
-
- "At the end of my time in Guantánamo, I had
to sign a paper saying I had been captured in battle, which was not true,"
he said. "I was stopped when I was in my taxi with four passengers.
But they told me I would have to spend the rest of my life in Guantánamo
if I did not sign it, so I did."
-
- Parts of an inquiry by Brigadier General Chuck Jacoby
into allegations of abuse in custody are to be made public next month by
the head of the US forces in Afghanistan, Lieutenant General David Barno.
-
- Gen Barno said: "I will tell you without hesitation
that intelligence procedures have got to be done in accordance with the
appropriate standards _ all our forces will treat every detainee here with
dignity and respect."
-
- The network of US detention centres around Afghanistan
has largely avoided scrutiny, yet, according to the coalition forces last
week, more than 2,000 people have been detained there since the war.
-
- "In some ways the abuses in Afghanistan are more
troubling than those in Iraq," said John Sifton of Human Rights Watch.
"While it is true that abuses in Afghanistan often lacked the sexually
abusive content of the abuses in Iraq, they were in many ways worse.
-
- "Detainees were severely beaten, exposed to cold
and deprived of sleep and water. Five are known to have died [two of natural
causes]."
-
- Torture, Abuse In US Secret Network Of Afghan
Jails
- By Duncan Campbell and Suzanne Goldenberg
- The Guardian -UK
- 6-23-4
-
- 'They said this is America . . . if a soldier orders
you to take off your clothes, you must obey'
- We know about Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib but until
now Bagram and America's secret network of Afghan jails have come under
little scrutiny. In a major investigation, Duncan Campbell and Suzanne
Goldenberg discovered a familiar pattern of violent abuse and sexual humiliation
-
- Syed Nabi Siddiqi, a 47-year-old former police officer
with piercing eyes and a long black beard, is lying with his face pressed
to the floor, his arms stretched painfully behind his back. He is demonstrating
one of the milder humiliations and interrogation techniques that he says
happened to him after he was arrested by the Coalition forces in Afghanistan
last year as part of Operation Enduring Freedom.
-
- During the course of the next hour he will recount how
American soldiers stripped him naked and photographed him, set dogs on
him, asked him which animal he would prefer to have sex with, and told
him his wife was a prostitute. He will tell also of hoods being placed
over his head, of being forced to roll over every 15 minutes while he tried
to sleep, and of being kept on his knees with his hands tied behind his
back in a narrow tunnel-like space, unable to move.
-
- An in-depth investigation by the Guardian, including
interviews with former Bagram prisoners, senior US military sources and
human rights monitors in Afghanistan, has uncovered widespread evidence
of detainees facing beatings, sexual humiliation and being kept for long
periods in painful positions. Detainees, none of whom were ever charged
with any offence, told of American soldiers throwing stones at them as
they defecated and being stripped naked in front of large groups of interrogators.
One detainee said that, in order to be released after nearly two years,
he had to sign a document stating that he had been captured in battle when,
in fact, he was arrested while driving his taxi with four passengers in
it.
-
- At least five men have died while under detention, three
of which were classified as homicides. Two deaths at Bagram airbase have
been classified as homicides and autopsies have indicated "blunt-force
injuries". An investigation into allegations of abuse and the deaths
in custody has just been completed by Brigadier General Chuck Jacoby, the
second highest-ranking US officer in Afghanistan, and parts of it are due
to be made public next month.
-
- While the treatment of prisoners at Guantánamo
Bay and Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq has come under the spotlight of the international
media as well as US investigators, Bagram and the network of 19 US detention
centres and "fire bases" around Afghanistan have largely avoided
scrutiny. Until recently, human rights groups investigating alleged abuses
in Afghanistan were not even sure how many of the secretive facilities
existed. While Bagram is visited regularly by the International Committee
of the Red Cross, witness testimonies suggest that much of the abuse took
place at these satellite bases. Siddiqi's story and others like it involving
incidents from the end of the 2001 war to the present day indicate that
what has been happening in Abu Ghraib is not an isolated occasion of rogue
junior soldiers acting independently, but part of an apparent strategy
of interrogation that was in place long before the invasion of Iraq.
-
- "In some ways, the abuses in Afghanistan are more
troubling than those reported in Iraq," said John Sifton, the Human
Rights Watch representative in the area. "While it is true that abuses
in Afghanistan often lacked the sexually abusive content of the abuses
in Iraq, they were in many ways worse. Detainees were severely beaten,
exposed to cold and deprived of sleep and water.
-
- "Moreover, it should be noted that the detention
system in Afghanistan, unlike the system in Iraq, is not operated even
nominally in compliance with the Geneva conventions. The detainees are
never given an opportunity to see any independent tribunal. There is no
legal process whatsoever and not even an attempt at one. The entire system
operates outside the rule of law. At least in Iraq, the US is trying to
run a system that meets Geneva standards. In Afghanistan, they are not."
-
- A 'human sifting station'
-
- An hour's drive from Kabul, on a dusty plain beneath
the majestic, snow-topped Panjshir mountains, sits Bagram airbase. Outside
the heavily guarded and sandbagged main gate is a gaggle of small boys,
hustling DVDs of The Passion of the Christ and the Baywatch satire, Son
of the Beach, to GIs. Fleets of trucks delivering fuel to the base wait
in the sun for clearance. Built in 1976, Bagram, formerly a military centre
for the Soviet forces, consists of three main hangars, a control tower
and various other single-storey buildings, of which the detention centre
is one.
-
- Prisoners describe the cells as five by 10 metres, with
a large bucket serving as a toilet in the corner of each cell and blankets
for beds. The cells, which house between 10 and 15 prisoners, are separated
from each other with wire fencing. They occupy the middle of what one detainee
called a "factory-like" space, with armed US guards in corridors
on each side. Prisoners are taken from there to an interrogation facility,
where they are interviewed by both military and CIA personnel and, according
to one detainee, they are filmed during this process and watched by other
interrogators in another room.
-
- Some of the detainees are released after a few weeks;
others stay for many months; some are transferred to Guantánamo
Bay; still others are subjected to what is referred to by one human rights
organisation as "RPing", or "Rumsfeld Processing".
These are the prisoners whom the Pentagon refuses to acknowledge, and whose
names do not appear in the records kept at Bagram. Sometimes, according
to this organisation, the detainees may be "rendered" to Egyptian
intelligence or other foreign services for interrogation.
-
- Well before the establishment of the interrogation facilities
at Guantánamo Bay and in Iraq, there had been an acknowledgement
within the Pentagon - as early as October 2001 - that America's war against
al-Qaida and the Taliban might lead to the use of torture. Soon after the
start of the Afghan war, lawyers at the Pentagon - specialists on the Geneva
convention, international law and interrogation - were asked to explore
the legal issues involved in the prosecution of this new war.
-
- "There was a kind of sub rosa [secret] thought process
during at least the first few months of the prosecution of the war on terror,"
a former Pentagon official told the Guardian. Legal experts began quietly
discussing what methods could be used to extract information from captured
fighters in Afghanistan. "It did not include electric probes in the
genitals. But there were certainly a range of psychological measures,"
the official said. But that was in the upper echelons of the Pentagon.
On the ground, military intelligence officials were developing their own
sets of rules.
-
- In those early stages, it was never envisaged that America
would preside over a large prisoner population in Afghanistan. Bagram was
supposed to be a giant human-sifting station, with a swift turnover of
detainees. Its primary aim was to provide immediate battlefield intelligence,
and to select a relatively small number of detainees thought to have strategic
information about al-Qaida, who would be sent on for more detailed interrogation
to Guantánamo.
-
- In practice, Bagram has become a more permanent facility,
a repository for al-Qaida and Taliban suspects and a dumping ground for
people who ended up there often because an enemy had maliciously told the
authorities that they were al-Qaida or Taliban members. The gathering of
intelligence has proceeded extremely slowly.
-
- "Once we were there six months, people began saying,
'We don't have Osama bin Laden, we don't have Ayman al-Zawahiri.' All of
a sudden it was like, 'We are going to pressure interrogators,' "
said a retired senior military intelligence official. When America went
to war on Afghanistan, it had a severe shortage of experienced interrogators,
and it was desperately short of Pashtu translators. But the Pentagon demanded
results. Interrogators were set a target number for completed interrogations,
and advised to limit each session to under an hour. "Unless you were
going to come out with a good report that you were going to find a nuclear
bomb in the desert or Osama bin Laden in a cave, they really didn't really
want to devote the time," said the official.
-
- During the second half of 2002, Captain Carolyn Wood
of the 519th military intelligence battalion was the officer demanding
results. Wood, who was in charge of the Bagram Collection Point, the main
screening area, was redeployed to Abu Ghraib last year, where she was also
in charge of interrogations. US military spokesmen have said she laid down
the same procedures that had been established at Bagram.
-
- "In Afghanistan, they had some interrogation rules
of engagement. When they deployed to Iraq, she brought those rules with
her," one spokesman said. "Those rules were modified to make
sure the right restraints were in place." Last month, Pentagon officials
described to the Senate armed services committee Wood's instructions for
interrogating prisoners at Abu Ghraib, a supposedly more moderate version
of her guidelines for Bagram. The captain's rules of engagement included
sleep and sensory deprivation, stress positions, dietary manipulation,
and the use of dogs.
-
- Attorneys for soldiers charged in the Abu Ghraib scandal
believe that Wood was instrumental in setting policy for interrogations
at the Iraqi prison - just as she did in Afghanistan. "We do think
she is an important element in this case," said Gary Myers, the lawyer
for Staff Sgt Ivan Chip Frederick, who goes on trial in Baghdad this week.
"She was present, and we are thinking she has knowledge."
-
- However, a former member of the 205th military intelligence
brigade, which was in charge of Abu Ghraib prison at the time of the abuse,
said an officer of Wood's rank would not have had a free hand in setting
policy either at Bagram or Abu Ghraib, but would be following orders from
a higher command. An army spokeswoman said yesterday that Wood was on an
advanced course at Fort Huachuca in Arizona, the training centre for US
military interrogators. She faces no charges in connection with the Abu
Ghraib scandal. She has, however, been assigned a military lawyer.
-
- The policeman's story
-
- The journey to Syed Nabi Siddiqi's home in the village
of Shaikhan, near Gardez, a city about 60 miles to the south of Kabul towards
the Pakistan border, takes you past the tanks of Coalition forces on the
outskirts of Kabul, past the Kochi nomad camel trains, strolling languidly
across the highway, past the cemeteries with their traditional fluttering
green, purple and yellow banners, through almost biblical scenes of 10-year-old
goatherds and their charges, past the mine-clearers whose long blue armoured
tunics and helmets make them look like medieval warriors, through the Tera
Pass and into the crowded, dusty chaos of Gardez, which has seen regular
warfare for much of the last quarter of a century.
-
- Siddiqi, who has nine children, had a job as a policeman
- he offers proudly to change into his uniform - and had been promoted
to the post of deputy head of the crime department and the deputy in charge
of operational officers in Gardez at the time of his arrest. However, he
had had problems with his senior officers. The day before his arrest, he
said, he had a meeting with his superior that turned into an argument.
-
- "I said that there should be no corruption,"
said Siddiqi, offering tea and sultanas. "I said that every week there
should be a visit to the jail which is under the control of the security
commander." Siddiqi said that the local commander "knew nothing
of how to deal with prisoners. He was an illiterate man; he put people
in prison because he got money to do so."
-
- The following day, when he returned to work, he was told
that he was dismissed and was arrested by four soldiers, two Afghan and
two from the Coalition forces. He told the troops that he had a breathing
problem for which he needed medicine, so he was taken to the pharmacy where
the pharmacist was promptly arrested, too, for no other reason, insists
Siddiqi, than that they spoke to each other. Both men were blindfolded
and taken to the Coalition detention centre in Gardez, one of 20 such centres
across the country.
-
- An interpreter wearing a mask then told him to cooperate
and asked him if he knew Burhanuddin Rabbani, the former president of Afghanistan.
He said he did, but had not seen him since he returned to his village.
He was then asked if he knew Abdul Rasul Sayyaf, the founder of the Islamist
party, Ittehad-e-Islami. "I said I had heard about him but had not
met him."
-
- After three or four days, he was taken away blindfolded,
he said, by a group of Americans. "They were kicking me and beating
me and shouting like animals at me. They took off my uniform. I requested
them several times - 'If you don't respect me, please respect my uniform.'
I showed them my identity card from the government of President Karsai.
Then they asked me which animals - they made the noise of goats, sheep,
dogs, cows - I had had sexual activities with. They laughed at me. I said
that such actions were against our Afghan and Islamic tradition, but they
again asked me, 'Which kind of animals do you want to have sex with?' Then
they asked me to stand like this [he indicates being bound to a pole] and
beat me with a stick from the back and kicked me. I still have pains in
my back as a result. They told me, 'Your wife is a prostitute.' "
-
- "All the time I kept saying, 'Why are you doing
such things?' and they laughed," he said. He and other prisoners were
then placed in a structure, 25m long by 2m wide. Siddiqi demonstrated how
they were made to kneel with their hands handcuffed behind their back in
great discomfort. "I saw many other people - young, old, different
ages." After he had been detained for 22 days, an American soldier
wrote the number 22 on his hand. He was told to make sure the number was
not erased or he would not be released. They were taken outside, where
he and other prisoners, still handcuffed behind their backs, were dumped
face first in two helicopters, some piled on top of prisoners already in
the helicopter, he said. "I asked for water and my medicines and they
kicked me again."
-
- They were flown to Kandahar, where, once they had been
taken out of the helicopters, he begged again for water. "I was saying,
'Oh, mister, give me some water!' Nobody cared. At the back of every detainee
there was an American standing.
-
- "Then they brought dogs close to us, they were biting
at us," he said, demonstrating how he and the other prisoners had
cowered and tried to protect themselves from the dogs. "Then we were
taken into another room and they took off our trousers. Then they just
beat us. They took off my watch. In another room, they took our photographs
without any clothes on. They asked me, 'Are you al-Qaida or Taliban?' I
said, 'No, I am a policeman.' Then they gave us a blue uniform." He
points out the colour from part of the pattern on the carpet where we are
sitting. "They blindfolded me and shackled my hands and legs. It was
very painful. Again they started kicking me. Then they began to open my
legs and my arms." He demonstrated being spreadeagled. He said he
was beaten with a stick.
-
- After his blindfold had been taken off, he found himself
with around 15 to 20 other prisoners, aged, he said, from teenagers to
the elderly. The prisoners were not allowed to converse, but one man told
him that he was an Afghan soldier who had been wrongly reported as being
a member of a Pakistani militia. They were told that they had to go to
the toilet in front of everyone else and American troops jokingly threw
stones at them while they did.
-
- "One American soldier said, 'Why are you ashamed
to show your backside? Why are you so shy? See my backside.' and he showed
it to us." Here he paused. "You know that we are Muslim. According
to Muslim tradition, if a person tells lies, he is not a real Muslim. Everything
I say is true."
-
- Siddiqi said that they were made to roll over in the
night every 15 minutes or so in order that they could not sleep. Then the
interrogations started again. "It was always, 'Are you Taliban or
al-Qaida?'"
-
- A civilian interrogator, whom Siddiqi described as wearing
black jeans, treated him sympathetically. "He was a nice man. I told
him that I am an innocent person and he told me I would forget what had
happened. I said I would not forget it." After 12 days in Kandahar,
he was taken by helicopter to Bagram. He was again made to lie on the floor,
he said, once again demonstrating how his face was forced on to the ground.
"Then an American asked, 'Who is the policeman?' and they got me up
and took my blindfold off. I saw computers and American flags on the wall.
-
- "They asked me, 'Do you know where you are now?'
I said no. They said, 'This is America. Do you accept American laws and
rules?' I said: 'If this is America, I will accept and obey the rules.'
They said, 'If a soldier orders you to take off your clothes, you must
obey.' Then they took off our clothes and with gloves on they touched us
everywhere they wanted." He said that fingers were stuck in his anus.
(While the detainees we spoke to described these incidents as humiliating,
the Coalition authorities maintain that they are standard search techniques
to ensure that prisoners do not bring weapons into jails.) After 11 nights
at Bagram, he was asked at two in the morning if he wanted to see his family
and if he missed them.
-
- "Then they said, 'Do you forgive and forget?' I
told them, 'I will forgive all of you if you punish those people who reported
me to you wrongly.' I told them that the reports came from people who had
links with the government of the former communist regime and that they
should not accept such reports. They promised me they would punish those
people. They gave me a bottle of water and a box of biscuits and asked
me to take them to my children."
-
- In total, he was held for 45 days before being returned
to his family. "When I returned, my children who were studying at
school had left their lessons and were working in the bazaar in the city
because there was no one to feed them."
-
- The driver's story
-
- Out in the wheat fields, not far from Siddiqi's home,
a young man is helping to build a mud wall. Noor Aghah is 35, a father
of four. Wearing a kolla, the traditional hat, he comes down from the wall
to talk and we sit in a field watched intently by a teenage boy with a
slingshot, who breaks off momentarily to fell a bird perched in a nearby
tree. Lighting a cigarette, Aghah tells his story.
-
- He had applied for a job as a driver for a local militia
commander at the end of 2001, working first in Gardez and then in Kabul
before returning to Gardez. Then the commander was arrested as a suspect
and, six days later, so was Aghah. After one month's detention at the Coalition
centre outside Gardez, a complex of fort-like mud buildings and modern
metal warehouses, he was sent to Bagram, where he was to spend the next
four months.
-
- "They said, 'Tell us what sort of work [the commander]
used to do,' " he said of his initial detention in Gardez. "I
said I hadn't seen anything. Then they forced me to drink 12 bottles of
water and they didn't allow me to go to the toilet." The interrogation
continued along the same lines for one month, he said, with questions being
asked all the time about his commander.
-
- Along with other prisoners, he was handcuffed and kept
kneeling in a narrow open space between two high walls with direct sun
coming down on them for 10 hours during the day. This continued for 20
days until an American doctor instructed that a covering be put over the
space and that the prisoners be given blankets and pillows. "Every
minute in Gardez they were beating us. Mostly they kick me," he said.
-
- "At Bagram, we were totally forbidden to talk to
other prisoners and when we were interrogated we were blindfolded,"
he said. "Americans interrogated me with an interpreter. Twice a woman
asked questions but it was mostly men. They interrogated me every day in
Bagram for one month and then only every 20 days or so. They asked me if
I was Taliban or al-Qaida. In Gardez and also in Bagram, we were asked
to take off our clothes and everyone saw us without clothes, six or seven
people."
-
- Eventually, he was released. "In Bagram, they apologised
and gave me a letter." (This pro forma letter declares that someone
has been released from detention and is not a suspect, although it adds,
'This certificate has no bearing on future misconduct.') He knew of two
other men who had suffered similar treatment.
-
- "I was surprised and confused because I was innocent,"
said Aghah. "Why should a person not involved in crime go to jail
and be treated like this?" He is unusual in being prepared to speak
about what happened to him, although he does not want some of the more
humiliating things that were done to him to be reported. "Maybe if
they read your report, they will arrest me again," Aghah said, with
a laugh. "Maybe you won't know."
-
- 'A culture of impunity'
-
- Fahim Hakim, a quietly spoken, thoughtful man, is the
deputy head of the Independent Human Rights Commission set up in June 2002
as part of the Bonn agreeement signed by prime minister Hamid Karzai. Its
330 members of staff across the country have the task of both promoting
human rights and investigating abuses, and it has been Hakim's job to analyse
the many complaints arising from the detentions. The commission had received
60 complaints, he said, some from the detainees themselves, and some from
the families of men who are still inside.
-
- He said that the complaints had come mainly from Gardez,
Jalalabad and Kandahar. "It was really shocking. We had this kind
of mistreatment during the communist regime - mass arrests, mass graves,
killing of people, torture - but in a country where there is a low rate
of literacy and where we haven't had a well-trained and professional national
police, this could be expected. But from those who are well trained and
professional, who are talking about human rights and democracy, it is a
great shock."
-
- The complaints he had heard, he said, were to do with
the stripping of prisoners, with the feeling of their genitals, with their
being made to defecate in front of the Coalition forces, and with beatings.
"There were a group of people kept naked in one room and given a bucket
in the one room and asked to use that and it was traditionally, culturally,
socially not possible for them and, to their surprise and shock, Coalition
forces would come and say, 'It's very easy, aim at that.' "
-
- "There was taunting language - 'Do you know what
is happening next door? Your wife is naked there. Our colleagues are playing
with her,' " said Hakim. "There was deprivation of sleep and
being made to kneel was the common complaint. There were complaints, too,
of beating and kicking. They came here to liberate us, to make us free
of this intimidation and oppression, but this will be overshadowed by this
sort of behaviour."
-
- His colleague, Zia Langari, said, "Traditionally,
[detainees] do not want to make this sort of thing known because of the
shame involved. If a man says that he has had to be naked, he gets a bad
name for himself, so, because of the fear and shame, they will not disclose
this to the public. Some of them ask that the sexual abuse they suffered
not be disclosed."
-
- Langari said that all the detainees interviewed said
that they had received sexual abuse. This may in many cases have been strip
searches involving anal and genital examinations and which US officials
have argued were necessary to ensure that weapons were not brought into
jails. "Maybe the Americans say that this is part of an investigation
technique practice everywhere, but for Afghans it is not acceptable,"
said Langari. "They could x-ray them if they are suspicious of them."
-
- Horia Mosadiq, an Afghan human rights worker who has
interviewed many former detainees, said that many felt humiliated. Some
told of having their pubic and underarm hair shaved by female US soldiers,
she said.
-
- The International Committee of the Red Cross has access
to Bagram every two weeks, but it is part of its established policy that
it does not release details of its reports. It has not been able to gain
such access to the other detention centres where many of the alleged abuses
have taken place. Other human rights organisations have also failed in
their attempts to visit them. "We have asked for access many times
but in general there has been no response," said Nazia Hussein of
Amnesty International, "so it is very difficult to determine what
conditions are like."
-
- Davood Moradian, an Afghan who lectures at St Andrews
University's international relations department, said: "Bagram seems
to be run with exactly the same culture of impunity as the [Afghan] warlords
run their private prisons. My impression is that the detainees are mainly
poor people who do not have connections and footsoldiers, rather than the
top people."
-
- The Americans are now, in the wake of the revelations
of Abu Ghraib, conducting an investigation. Earlier this month, General
Barno, speaking at the sandbagged Coalition HQ, said that a "top to
bottom" review of detention facilities was being undertaken by his
deputy, General Chuck Jacoby. Barno said that much of the intelligence
gleaned from these interrogations had been "extremely useful"
in safeguarding the lives of Coalition soldiers and identifying targets.
"That said, regardless of any intelligence value, I will tell you
without hesitation that intelligence procedures have got to be done in
accordance with the approriate standards . . . All our forces will treat
every detainee here with dignity and respect."
-
- Last week a US spokesman in Kabul said procedures at
US-run detention centres in the country had been changed as a result of
Brig Gen Jacoby's interim findings, but he would not say how.
-
- The deaths of three prisoners in custody are also being
reviewed. Two died in Bagram in December 2002. A death certificate for
a man, known simply as Dilawar, aged 22, from Yakubi in eastern Afghanistan,
and signed by Major Elizabeth Rouse, pathologist with the Armed Forces
Institute of Pathology in Washington, states that the cause of death was
"blunt-force injuries to lower extremities complicating coronary artery
disease". Another prisoner, Mullah Habibullah, brother of a former
Taliban commander, died the same month. Two of their fellow prisoners,
Abdul Jabar and Hakkim Shah, told the New York Times last year that they
were routinely kept naked, hooded, shackled and with their hands chained
to the ceiling day and night. The circumstances of their deaths have still
to be determined, said Fahim Hakim. The third suspcious death is that of
Abdul Wali, a former commander, who died four days after he presented himself
for questioning at the request of the governor of Kunar. He died after
reportedly undergoing interrogation by a private contract employee of the
CIA.
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- It has been argued that whatever the American troops
may have done, its abuses pale into insignificance beside what the Taliban
did to their prisoners. Until 2001, public executions and amputations as
punishment were carried out at the national stadium in Kabul. However,
human rights monitors point out that the action of the Coalition forces
and their presence in the country is posited on ending "uncivilised"
behaviour and installing a system of fairness and justice. Though Bagram
and its satellite detention centres have so far been a largely hidden corner
of America's new gulag, there are signs that the treatment of detainees
there is now beginning to come under scrutiny from Washington. Senator
Patrick Leahy, the Democrat member of the Senate subcommittee on foreign
operations, who has campaigned about prison abuses in both Afghanistan
and Iraq, told the Guardian: "The abuses in Afghanistan were no less
egregious than at Abu Ghraib, but because there were no photographs - at
least, to our present knowledge - they have not received enough attention.
-
- "Prisoners in Afghanistan were subjected to cruel
and degrading treatment, and some died from it. These abuses were part
of a wider pattern stemming from a White House attitude that 'anything
goes' in the war against terrorism, even if it crosses the line of illegality.
Not only should these incidents be thoroughly investigated and the perpetrators
punished, but we need rules to prevent it from happening again."
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- Behind the wire: Bagram's secrets
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- Until recently what goes on inside Bagram, as well as
the number and identities of inmates who have been held there, has been
shrouded in secrecy. Earlier this month, in response to a question from
the Guardian, Lieutenant General David Barno, the head of US forces in
Afghanistan, revealed that more than 2,000 people have been detained at
the base since the war, and that there are currently 400 detainees being
held without charge.
-
- Last week a US spokesman in Kabul said procedures at
the prison had been changed in response to the interum findings of an internal
investigation.
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- The interpreter in Afghanistan was Noor Ahmed.
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- 'If They Apologise 100 times, It Is Not Acceptable'
- The Pharmacist
- The Guardian - UK
- 6-23-4
-
- "One night at 11pm, there was a knock on the door
and Afghan soldiers said, 'Get out,' " recalls Abdul Hadi, who lives
with his extended family in a large house near the village of Malachi in
Paktia province, where they farm and run a pharmacy. He and two brothers,
two cousins and his uncle were handcuffed, he said. American troops were
waiting for them by the river and they were taken to the detention centre
at Gardez.
-
- "We were there for three or four nights. We asked
for water and [coalition troops] wouldn't let the Afghan soldiers give
us water." They were moved to Bagram airbase, where he told his captors
that he had had a back operation in Saudi Arabia and still had problems
with his back.
-
- "They didn't care," said Hadi. "When I
tried to show them that I had had an operation, they just kicked my head
to the ground. During my interrogation they asked, 'Who are you linked
with?' I said we are only shopkeepers, I am not linked with Taliban or
al-Qaida. They continued the interrogation."
-
- Some of his interrogators were military, but most were
in civilian clothes and included some women. "Some of [the interrogators]
were nice," he said. Like other detainees, they were also made to
strip. Whenever they moved between cells, they were blindfolded.
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- "They would order the detainees to take off their
clothes, sometimes by force. If we talked to each other, we were sent into
a dark room and had our hands tied like this." He made an X shape
with his body, with his hands and legs extended. He was in custody for
a total of six months and one week. "They didn't apologise. Even if
they apologise 100 times, it is not acceptable."
-
- At this point, an elderly man with a long grey beard
and a turban came into the room. This was Hadi's 76-year-old uncle, Haji
Ramazan, who was also arrested. "Here is the senior al-Qaida member!"
they joked as he sat down. Ramazan is philosophical about his six-week
detention in Bagram. "We are Muslims, we believe maybe it was in our
destiny, that God made it come on us. But we believe the person who reported
us wrongly [to the authorities] will be punished by our god."
-
- Of his interrogations, he said: "They only asked
me about what my son [Muhammad Oman] did before - did he participate in
jihad [against the Soviet Union]? I said yes. Every Afghan did. I told
them he has a shop now . . . Some of the soldiers treated us very badly."
-
- But some soldiers, he said, intervened when their colleagues
behaved abusively, by, for example, stamping on the Koran. "We requested
of a high official that they did not do that, because Afghan people would
know that Americans were against our religion, and the soldier was disciplined."
-
- Ramazan said another of his nephews, Ghran, aged 14,
was also held for six weeks at Bagram and that his son remains in custody.
He said he did not know where he now was. "When we were in Bagram,
he was with us, but it is a long time since we received any letters, so
we don't know where he is." They had written to the US embassy in
Kabul for information and been to Bagram but had still had no news, he
said.
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- 'They would never tell us why we were being held'
-
- The Driver
- Wednesday June 23, 2004
- The Guardian (UK)
-
- Wazir Muhammad, a 31-year-old farmer turned taxi driver
from Khost province, claims he was arrested while driving his taxi on the
Khost-Kabul road. "I don't know why I was stopped - someone must have
made a false report about me," he said. He was taken to Bagram, where
he was held and interrogated. He claims the Americans used loudspeakers
on the cell block to keep prisoners awake.
-
- "We spent most of our time in our cells and we would
be taken to a room for interrogation. We were filmed while we were being
interviewed and people were watching in another room." He found the
most humiliating aspect of his imprisonment was being watched while using
the toilet. "We were not allowed to talk to any of the other prisoners
and we were punished if we did. They would never tell us why we were being
held."
-
- He was held in Bagram for 45 days before being moved
to Kandahar and then, hooded, to Guantánamo Bay, where he was to
spend 17 months. He was released after a long campaign by his brother,
Taij, who works at the military hospital in Kabul, and Amnesty International.
-
- "At the end of my time in Guantánamo, I had
to sign a paper saying I had been captured in battle, which was not true,"
he said. "I was stopped when I was in my taxi with four passengers.
But they told me I would have to spend the rest of my life in Guantánamo
if I did not sign it. So I did."
-
- And more of the same follows:
-
- 'They forced me to drink 12 bottles of water and didn't
let me go to the toilet'
-
- The Driver
- The Guardian - UK
- 6-23-4
-
- Out in the wheat fields, a young man is helping to build
a mud wall. Noor Aghah is 35, a father of four. Wearing a kolla, the traditional
hat, he comes down from the wall to talk and we sit in a field watched
intently by a teenage boy with a slingshot, who breaks off momentarily
to fell a bird perched in a nearby tree. Lighting a cigarette, Aghah tells
his story.
-
- He had applied for a job as a driver for a local militia
commander at the end of 2001, working first in Gardez and then in Kabul
before returning to Gardez. Then the commander was arrested as a suspect
and, six days later, so was Aghah. After one month's detention at the Coalition
centre outside Gardez, a complex of fort-like mud buildings and modern
metal warehouses, he was sent to Bagram, where he was to spend the next
four months.
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