... In an interview with The New York Times today, police officer Sayyed Nabi Siddiqi says he was falsely accused of being a member of the Taliban last summer and spent some 40 days in detention at various U.S. bases in Afghanistan. He alleges he was subjected to beatings, sleep deprivation, and sexual abuse. Siddiqi said he was repeatedly photographed naked by his U.S. captors, like the Iraqi prisoners at the Abu Ghurayb prison. Siddiqi was released without charge. The U.S. Embassy in Kabul issued a statement today saying the U.S. military is investigating the case.
Afghan and international human rights groups say they have been investigating similar complaints about the U.S. treatment of Afghan detainees, long before the scandal over Iraqi prisoners surfaced. The Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission says it has received 44 complaints in recent months against various actions by U.S. forces. .... John Sifton, the Afghanistan researcher at Human Rights Watch, said some detainees who were released from U.S. custody told HRW they had been mistreated: ".... We have serious allegations from early, early, early in the conflict from 2001 and 2002 that prisoners captured in Afghanistan were beaten severely, stripped naked, [and] exposed to cold temperatures by U.S. forces. This was in many ways early warning signs to the U.S. military that it has problems detaining prisoners taken on the battlefield, but what we now know is that those lessons were not learned." ....
In March, the organization released a 59-page report about alleged abuses by U.S. forces in Afghanistan. The report concluded that U.S. forces operating in Afghanistan had arbitrarily detained civilians, used excessive force during arrests of noncombatants, and mistreated detainees. Sifton told RFE/RL that some allegations of mistreatment have been made by U.S. military personnel themselves: "There are members of the U.S. military who are concerned about what the U.S. intelligence and military service is doing, and they have leaked information to us about those problems." .... [Lieutenant General David] Barno, the commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, acknowledged that the military has been looking into what he called "challenges and problems" at its holding facilities in Afghanistan. He said military authorities are investigating allegations of abuse, including three deaths. ... U.S. officials say about 300 Afghans suspected of having ties to the Taliban, Al-Qaeda, or other insurgent groups are being held in detention at Bagram. An unknown number of others are being held at eight to 10 other sites across the country.
| Maybe we should just cut their heads off and be done with it? |
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