KABUL, 20 May 2004 — Accused of stalling on prison abuse in Afghanistan while rushing to contain a scandal in Iraq, the US military in Kabul said it would review how its secretive jails were run but vowed to keep them shut to the outside world.
The families of two Afghans who died from wounds sustained in a US detention center at Bagram, just north of Kabul, 18 months ago, are still waiting for the outcome of a US investigation.
The top US commander in Afghanistan, Lt. Gen. David Barno, has ordered a “top-to-bottom” review of conditions and methods used at a network of around 20 detention centers in Afghanistan.
US military spokesman Lt. Col. Tucker Mansager told reporters yesterday the review would be carried out by a general and completed within a month. “The appointed general will visit every facility to ensure internationally accepted standards of handling detainees are being met,” he told a regular news briefing in Kabul.
Mansager said the US military had yet to respond to a May 10 request from the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission, which has collected more than 40 recent complaints of mistreatment, for access to the main jail at Bagram.
Only the International Committee of the Red Cross is allowed to visit Bagram, and its findings are not made public. The ICRC also recently requested access to a detention centre in the southern city of Kandahar.
Mansager said journalists would not be allowed to visit Bagram, despite reporters being given access this month to Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, depicted in images of abuse of prisoners by American soldiers that sparked a backlash across the Arab world.
“It’s the coalition’s continued policy to treat persons under confinement in the spirit of the Geneva Conventions.
“Part of that spirit is to ensure that the persons under confinement are not subject to any kind of exploitation. It is the coalition’s position that allowing media into the facilities would compromise that protection.”
The US military has come under intense scrutiny since the prisoner abuse scandal broke in Iraq and fresh allegations of mistreatment surfaced in Afghanistan.
A former police officer from near the city of Gardez said he was beaten and sexually abused during around 40 days in US custody last year, and Human Rights Watch has called the mistreatment of detainees “systemic” in Afghanistan.
Two new investigations have been launched this month into prisoner abuse. A third, into the death in custody of two Afghans 18 months ago, has yet to be completed, to the dismay of family and friends of the men who died.
Both suffered “blunt force injuries” to the legs at Bagram, according to press reports quoting their death certificates.
Mansager said many changes were made to procedures at Bagram in the wake of the deaths, and the US had nothing to hide.
“We’re very comfortable with what we’re doing, but nonetheless we are always in search of improvements and changes.”
But the involvement of Barno, the top US commander in Afghanistan, is a clear sign of unease at the potential fallout from complaints of abuse. “Certainly the situation in Iraq has brought some more focus to this,” Mansager said.
