Ex-detainees in Afghanistan also allege mistreatment

Ex-detainees in Afghanistan also allege mistreatment


By LISA HOFFMAN, Scripps Howard News Service
Last Updated: May 7, 2004, 08:57:00 PM PDT

(SH) - Some say they were beaten, including an elderly man whose hand was broken. Others allege they were stripped naked, doused with water and left to suffer in freezing cells. Many say they were deprived of sleep and forced to stand or kneel in awkward positions for long periods of time.

Those are some of the allegations that former detainees in Afghanistan have lodged against their American military captors, abuses that human-rights groups say were particularly common in the early days of the 2001-2002 U.S. war to oust the Taliban and al Qaeda.

In retrospect, the alleged mistreatment there amounted to an early warning sign of the same sorts of prisoner abuse that have occurred in Iraq, rights organizations now say.

But reports by Human Rights Watch and other groups over the past year received little public attention - until the scandal over the sexual, physical and psychological abuse of Iraqi detainees riveted the world's eyes on conditions in U.S.-run facilities.

"Torture flourishes in the dark," said Human Rights Watch director Kenneth Roth.

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The U.S. military has opened an investigation into allegations that an Afghan police officer was stripped naked, beaten and photographed at a U.S. base in Afghanistan, the U.S. Embassy in Kabul said Wednesday.

The alleged abuse occurred in August 2003 at the American base in the eastern town of Gardez, 60 miles south of the capital, Kabul, an embassy statement said. U.S. officials had learned of the allegations from the media, it said.

"The U.S. military has launched an immediate investigation," the statement said.

CBS News Correspondent Tom Fenton, in Kabul, reports the former police colonel, Sayed Nabi Siddiqui, 47, claims that, in a series of different prisons, he was kicked, beaten, sexually taunted and also repeatedly photographed while naked, although that might have been part of the identification process.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2001/09/11/world/main310701.shtml

By Mike Collett-White
KABUL (Reuters) - The U.S. military, facing a backlash across the Arab world for its treatment of Iraqi prisoners, announced on Wednesday it had launched an investigation into a complaint of detainee abuse in Afghanistan.

The U.S. embassy in Kabul said an Afghan police officer, reportedly held by U.S.-led forces in the city of Gardez and the U.S. base at Bagram in 2003, said he had been stripped naked, photographed, kicked and subjected to "sexual taunting."

The allegation will be of major concern to the 20,000-strong U.S.-led force in Afghanistan hunting al Qaeda and Taliban militants waging an insurgency against the government.

Until now the force has not faced the same level of resistance U.S. troops have in Iraq since toppling the Taliban regime late in 2001.

"Yesterday afternoon, coalition leaders were notified of an allegation of detainee abuse," U.S. military spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Tucker Mansager told a news briefing, apparently referring to the police officer's complaint.

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KABUL (Reuters) - Mistreatment of prisoners by American forces in Afghanistan is systemic and not limited to a few cases, Human Rights Watch has said, a day after the U.S. military in Kabul launched an investigation into abuse.

The rights body demanded the immediate release of information about two Afghans killed in U.S. custody 18 months ago. The U.S. military says the investigations are continuing.

The military said on Wednesday it had opened an inquiry into complaints by a former police officer that he was beaten, kicked, taunted, sexually abused and photographed naked during roughly 40 days in American custody in Afghanistan last summer.

The U.S.-led force of 20,000 troops hunting militants from al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan is keen to contain the damage from the latest allegations, after facing a backlash across the Arab world for abusing prisoners in Iraq.

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