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Rights group accuses us of abuses in afghanistan { March 8 2004 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
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Human rights group accuses US of abuses in Afghanistan
By Victoria Burnett in Islamabad
Published: March 8 2004 4:00 | Last Updated: March 8 2004 4:00
US forces hunting Taliban and al-Qaeda sympathisers in Afghanistan have beaten and psychologically abused detainees and used excessive force during raids that have led to civilian deaths, a rights group has charged.
In a report published today, Human Rights Watch says the US is keeping civilian detainees "in a legal black hole" where there are no tribunals and they have no access to legal counsel or contact with their families.
Afghan civilians resent aggressive military activity, especially in the south and east of the country, where the US-led coalition's hunt for suspected terrorists is most intense. The deaths of more than a dozen children during military raids in December and the coalition's reticence about the incidents drew sharp rebukes from Hamid Karzai, Afghan president, and Lakhdar Brahimi, then United Nations envoy to Afghanistan.
Former detainees at US military bases in Afghanistan said they were beaten, doused in cold water, made to stand or crouch for long periods in uncomfortable positions and deprived of sleep for days or weeks, the report said.
Human Rights Watch called on the US military to release the findings of an investigation into the death of two men at Bagram airbase, the coalition's headquarters, both of whose cases were declared homicides by military pathologists.
Dilawar, a 22-year-old from near Khost city in south-eastern Afghanistan, died in December 2002 from "blunt force injuries to lower extremities complicating coronary artery disease". His death certificate was obtained by the New York Times. Mullah Habibullah, a young man from the southern province of Oruzgan, also died in December from a blood clot on the lungs "due to blunt force injury to the legs". Coalition officials said recently the investigation was ongoing.
The report quotes Roger
King, former spokesman for the US-led coalition, as saying that detainees were not mistreated but that troops did "force people to stand for an extended period of time" and that a "common technique" for disrupting sleep was to keep the lights on or to wake detainees every 15 minutes to disorient them.
The new report demands that the US military act in line with international codes to prevent harm to civilians during operations.
The report describes a raid in July 2002 on a village in Zurmat district, in the eastern province of Paktia, after which a farmer, Niaz Mohammad, was found dead, with bullet wounds in his foot and back.
Three men were held for a few weeks at Bagram then released without being charged.
On December 10, a coalition spokesman gave a account of the death of eight civilians, including six children, during a raid five days earlier near Gardez, the provincial capital of Paktia.
The spokesman said a wall collapsed on them because they were hiding near a weapons arsenal that exploded during the operation.
But in today's report, Human Rights Watch says a visiting reporter saw a crater in the ground where the family was killed "suggesting that an errant bomb had hit the compound".
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