BERLIN, 19 May 2004 — US troops in Afghanistan have written permission to use threats, dogs and the firing of mortars near prisoners to help extract information during interrogations, a German news weekly reported yesterday. The magazine said one of its reporters had found and taken photographs of the documents at a US military base in southeastern Afghanistan.
The directives also allowed “sensory overload,” the use of loud noise or music, “use of warm or cold temperatures, long interrogation sessions, threats of transfer to the US detention center in Guantanamo Bay, and sleep deprivation to weaken prisoner resistance.”
Stern quoted a passage from the documents saying “prisoners have a right to at least four hours sleep per day ... regardless of how this time is divided up”. The magazine said the written instructions contradicted statements from US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who told a Senate Armed Services Committee that US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan are ordered to respect the Geneva conventions for prisoners of war.
Stern said the treatment of prisoners as described in the documents found in Afghanistan clearly violated the Geneva Conventions and United Nations anti-torture conventions.
The US is investigating two complaints of prisoner abuse while in custody, including allegations by a former police officer that he was beaten, stoned, sexually taunted and deprived of sleep while in holding cells in southeastern Gardez and Kandahar.
A New Yorker magazine story this week alleged Rumsfeld approved a secret operation that encouraged the physical coercion and humiliation of Iraqi prisoners to obtain intelligence, based on practices already used in Afghanistan. The Pentagon has denied the report.
The US military is conducting a “top-to-bottom” review of its secretive network of jails, the American ambassador said in Kabul yesterday. The United States leads around 20,000 troops in Afghanistan hunting Al-Qaeda and Taleban militants. It has already said it changed procedures at its prisons following the deaths of two Afghans in US custody 18 months ago.
Further modifications have been made following feedback from the International Committee of the Red Cross, the only independent body allowed into its main prison for militant suspects at Bagram air base, just north of Kabul. But the latest comments by Zalmay Khalilzad in Kabul suggested the review could be far-reaching. “We have launched investigations and are in the process of thoroughly reviewing detention facility conditions and interrogation guidelines,” he told a news briefing.
“We are going to investigate when allegations are made and do the right thing, and we’re also doing a top-to-bottom look at detention centers, and also we are making sure that everybody understands what the guidelines are,” Khalilzad added.
The US military has acted swiftly in response to the latest Afghan allegations, having seen its campaign in Iraq undermined by similar abuses at a jail near Baghdad. But many Afghans point out that an investigation into two deaths at Bagram in December 2002, both caused by repeated beatings to the victims’ legs, has yet to be concluded.
“The investigation that has been launched is a welcome step,” Jawed Ludin, spokesman to President Hamid Karzai, told a separate briefing. “We also emphasize that (that investigation) should also be speedy and comprehensive and if that determines that abuses have taken place by certain people we expect that the course of justice should follow.”
Khalilzad said incarceration and questioning were inevitable as the US pursued its “war on terror”, but added: “While that mission is vital, it’s equally important that we do this with the clear understanding that an equally important mission is to help the Afghan people stand on their own feet, to build a normal country.
“Our military must trust Afghans with respect, with due consideration.” There are no plans to change the status of detainees in Afghanistan, who the US says do not come under the Geneva Convention that protects the rights of prisoners of war because they did not fight in uniform or represent a country.
Meanwhile, Afghanistan’s police have seized some 120 kilos of various narcotics from a house in the east of Kabul, the state-run television said yesterday. Police yesterday raided a house in Surobi, a district located in Kabul-Jalalabad highway, the report said. The Afghan counternarcotic police also destroyed 24 hectares of poppy lands in western province of Herat.
In the northern province of Kunduz, where 230 German soldiers are based as part of Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRT), the counter narcotic police destroyed a total of 350 Jerib (one Jerib is equal to 1,000 square meters) of poppy lands since it started its operation in early 200, the report added.
Last Wednesday, Afghan police also arrested 12 people for selling illegal narcotics and seized at least 14 kilos of heroin after conducting two separate operations in Kabul, according to Afghan interior minister. An estimated 80,000 hectares of land in Afghanistan is devoted to opium production, which was banned under the Taleban. Up to 90 percent of all heroin consumed in Europe comes from the country.
Karzai in early March announced a new “war on drugs” aimed to wipe out at least 25 per cent of opium cultivation across the country.
