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Afghans report abuse in jails { May 23 2004 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-afghan23may23,1,2080164.story?coll=la-headlines-worldhttp://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-afghan23may23,1,2080164.story?coll=la-headlines-world
THE WORLD
Afghans Report Abuse in Jails
U.S. troops are viewed favorably in the nation, but some officials fear that if the accounts are true, people may turn against them.
By John Daniszewski
Times Staff Writer
May 23, 2004
EZATKHIL, Afghanistan — The men say they were seized in the middle of the night, their hands cuffed behind them and hoods thrown over their heads. Then U.S. forces bundled them into a helicopter and flew them for several hours to one of 20 secret detention centers in Afghanistan.
Shah Mohammed, arrested last December in this Paktia province village southwest of Gardez, recalls being marched into a basement and told by a woman speaking Pashto to take off his clothes.
Mohammed is a field worker in an ultraconservative area where exposure of one's body to others is a strict taboo, and he remains bitter. "I will never forget this humiliation for the rest of my life," he said.
For five or six days, he says, he was kept awake and constantly questioned — while being forced to stand and squat wearing only an open-backed gown — about whether he knew Taliban or Al Qaeda operatives and whether he had killed anyone.
With the highest-ranking U.S. general in Afghanistan ordering "top to bottom" reviews of detention centers and the U.S. ambassador holding a high-profile meeting last week with the head of the country's human rights organization, American officials and Afghan President Hamid Karzai are hoping to minimize in Afghanistan the impact of the Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal.
But after the deaths of at least three Afghans in U.S. custody since 2001, and the decision of several former prisoners to come forward with charges that they were beaten, doused with cold water, forced to maintain painful positions for long periods and had received other harsh and humiliating treatment, human rights officials are demanding transparency and access to prisoners at U.S.-run jails in Afghanistan.
They also say Afghan prisoners should be granted protection under the Geneva Convention, which the Bush administration has argued does not apply in Afghanistan because the U.S. is fighting terrorists there.
The U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, says he and military leaders are taking the allegations "very seriously."
"We have launched investigations and are in the process of thoroughly reviewing detention facility conditions and interrogation guidelines," he said Tuesday.
But he made no promises to give Afghan rights organizations or the International Committee of the Red Cross broader access to detention facilities. The Red Cross has regular access only to prisoners at the main detention facility, at Bagram air base, and not to those at detention facilities in Kandahar, Gardez, Khowst, Asadabad or elsewhere.
The stakes are potentially high in Afghanistan, the first theater in the post-Sept. 11 U.S.-declared war on terrorism. So far, the majority of Afghans are tolerant of the U.S. presence in their country.
But "if Americans torture prisoners and refuse to change their attitudes, people will turn against them," said Rafiullah Bedaar, director of the Afghan human rights office for this district. "They will not have a good future in Afghanistan."
A fierce, low-intensity guerrilla war continues between U.S. troops and resurgent Taliban and Al Qaeda supporters in the mountains and deserts of eastern and southern Afghanistan, near the border with Pakistan. U.S. troops routinely carry out raids and make arrests based on intelligence reports, trying to pick out a murky foe from among the local population.
This war feels remote in the capital, Kabul, which may explain why reports of prisoner abuse have not had the same level of emotional effect as similar reports in recent weeks in Iraq. In addition, the low level of literacy in Afghanistan and the relative paucity of access to satellite television mean that few Afghans have seen the photographs showing abuse of Iraqi prisoners that have scandalized much of the Arab world.
Mullah Khaksar, a former Taliban deputy interior minister who has remained in Kabul, said Afghans he knew were preoccupied mostly with rehabilitating their country and rebuilding their lives. The abuse of some prisoners is not that important to them, he said, particularly because the Americans are promising to correct their behavior.
"In terms of human rights, this abuse is a very big problem. But in terms of the Afghan nation, it is not a very big problem," Khaksar said.
In Paktia province, reports of maltreatment of Afghans are common, and many people say they are angry and mystified at the conduct of U.S. forces.
The raid on Ezatkhil in December, an invasion by more than 100 soldiers that netted about 22 prisoners, was typical of what goes on in the area, according to the Afghan Independent Human Rights Organization.
Mohammed and his neighbor Abdul Raheem say U.S. helicopters with searchlights stormed the area in the middle of the night, raining bullets and rockets on their houses.
After the initial burst of weapons fire met with no resistance, the helicopters landed and other troops arrived in vehicles, Mohammed said. If the residents of the neighborhood did not come out voluntarily, their doors were blown up with dynamite, he said. Then, American soldiers roughly gathered the men and put hoods and handcuffs on them, keeping them squatting or sitting on their haunches for hours as troops conducted room-to-room searches for weapons or evidence of guerrilla sympathies.
"They spent the whole night and next day, and at 8 p.m. they put us in the helicopter and took us away," Mohammed said. "They said that we were killers and that we had weapons."
He and four other men from his household were in the helicopter with their heads covered by hoods, Mohammed said. On landing, they were pushed and shoved and told to run blindly to belowground quarters.
Once there, he said, they were stripped and inspected in the presence of female soldiers, thrown into a cold shower and then left to dry in the night air. After some hours, he said, they were given gowns that were open at the back. That started an ordeal that lasted about a week for him. Denied sleep, ordered to stand, squat, hold one leg or do calisthenics, he also was isolated from his relatives and questioned every day about the Taliban, he said. Most of the time he was hooded, and the shackles were rarely removed.
Then, just as unexpectedly as they were arrested, the men were informed that they were to be released and were flown home.
"They said that they were sorry and that they were here to build our country," Mohammed said. "Because I did not want more trouble, I did not say anything back to them."
Raheem, Mohammed's neighbor, who sells flour from a shop inside a corrugated container, said: "When the Americans came, we felt very good. But since they are punishing us, we will have hatred in our hearts."
He said he was arrested by Americans in 2002 but was not taken in the more recent raid because he had a document given him on his release saying that he was not regarded as a threat to the coalition.
Other Afghans have received harsher treatment, the Afghan Independent Human Rights Organization said. This month, two allegations of abuse have been forwarded to the U.S. military from the Gardez area.
In one case, a former policeman said he was sexually abused, photographed and humiliated. In the other, a farm worker spoke of being stripped and forced to drink large quantities of water, and said he was raised with a chain and then dropped suddenly to the ground. A former prosecutor working as an investigator for the organization in Gardez said ex-detainees had been coming forward for months, in some cases confiding that they had been sexually taunted and improperly touched. The investigator, who asked not to be identified, said he was sure they were telling the truth, because "no Afghan man can admit this" easily.
Bedaar, the director of the human rights office, said that in many cases, arrests were based on false testimony given by dubious informants as a weapon in local vendettas. U.S. soldiers then offended local sensibilities by breaking down doors and searching women and their belongings. Later, Afghan irregular soldiers accompanying the Americans beat or robbed those left behind after the men were taken away, he said.
"The coalition forces came here for a very important reason — to vanquish terrorism," Bedaar said. "But they have to respect human rights standards and the traditions of Afghanistan."
Mohammed Nazeer, a 50-year-old shopkeeper who was recently released from custody, said soldiers came to his house one evening and seized him and his two brothers.
"It is because we wear beards," said Nazeer, who has a flowing gray beard that has been colored with streaks of henna.
Nazeer showed sores on his wrists from the ropes that bound him during nine days of incarceration this month. He was not sure where he had been taken in the helicopter that evening because he was hooded, but he believed that it might have been to a U.S. outpost in southern Afghanistan.
"Tell the Americans who capture us that they should at least say why," he said. "They don't say their reason. They just say that you have weapons or that you are Al Qaeda, and they take you."
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