Gad zooks: Torture scandal brewing in Afghanistan now?

http://www.boston.com/dailynews/133/world/U_S_military_opens_investigati:.shtml

U.S. military opens investigation into alleged abuse of prisoner in eastern Afghanistan

By Stephen Graham, Associated Press, 5/12/2004 09:45

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) The U.S. military has opened an investigation into allegations that an Afghan police officer was stripped naked, beaten and photographed at a U.S. base in Afghanistan, officials said Wednesday.

The alleged abuse occurred in August 2003 at the American base in the eastern town of Gardez, 60 miles south of the capital, Kabul, according to a statement by the U.S. Embassy in Kabul. ''The U.S. military has launched an immediate investigation,'' the statement said, adding that U.S. officials had learned of the allegations from the media.

Lt. Col. Tucker Mansager, a military spokesman, said the case was only brought to the military's attention on Tuesday and it was being investigated by the army's Criminal Investigation Department.

He would not discuss details, saying the military wanted the investigation to be conducted in a ''totally impartial manner.''

The New York Times quoted the former police colonel, Sayed Nabi Siddiqui, 47, as saying he was subjected to sexual abuse, taunting and sleep deprivation.

...more...

And the Red Cross reports about Afghanistan that were made MONTHS ago?

SHEESH

It was the Joe Conason opinion piece.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/conason/2004/05/07/rights/index.html

"Prompted by their allegations as well as press reports of torture and mistreatment of detainees in Afghanistan, Horton and other members of the New York bar began to compile a report examining U.S. and international legal standards governing the treatment of military prisoners. Horton says he and his colleagues met with JAG officers expressing the same concerns again last fall.

The bar association's 110-page report, released last week, leaves no doubt that the practices revealed at Abu Ghraib violated both U.S. and international law. During the preparation of that report, Horton and his colleagues were more concerned with practices in Afghanistan and Guantánamo than in Iraq. What they have learned recently, however, suggests that questionable practices and attitudes toward prisoners stem from broad policy decisions made at the very highest levels of the Defense Department."

remember? these are only 6 or 7 "bad apples" :eyes:

:puke:

as seen in Star Trek? (the original, not the "Enterprise" version).

Man, those six or seven "bad apples" get around, but quick.

given that the abuse was systemic and widespread there was no reason to believe that the same thing was not happening in Afghanistan. I wonder what our Canadian government knows about this, given that we have troops there as part of the NATO peacekeeping mission?

When the current scandal broke out I remembered some more local PA folks being sent home from Iraq for similar stuff.

A local PA paper published this article 5/8/04


http://www.timesleader.com/mld/timesleader/8617617.htm

"A former POW in Iraq names an Ashley-based reservist in a complaint against the U.S. Army. And he compared the treatment at his camp to the abuse that's making international news

Hossam Shaltout said widespread mistreatment from soldiers in Camp Bucca, where he was imprisoned last year, was as inhumane as that depicted in recent photos from Camp Abu Ghraib in Iraq.

Shaltout described Camp Bucca as a "torture camp" where soldiers beat and humiliated prisoners, had them lie naked atop each other or pose in sexual positions.

"They wanted us to have sex with each other," Shaltout said. He said prisoners were humiliated but refused to engage in sex. Shaltout, 57, said the soldiers had "watch outs" to alert them when an officer was approaching."



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Also here is an alert I found on a google search dating the hearing for the above soldiers around September 5th 2003.

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Re: EPW Abuse Hearings Under Way

From: POW-MIA InterNetwork

Date: September 05, 2003

"Military hearing ends for soldier accused of abuse

Outcome expected later this month

By JOAN D. LAGUARDIA, jlaguardia@news-press.com
Published by news-press.com on September 5, 2003

The Article 32 military hearing for Sgt. 1st Class Scott McKenzie — accused of abusing Iraqi prisoners — ended Tuesday after four days of testimony, according to his mother, Carolyn Lachemayer of North Fort Myers.

The Army has not yet revealed the outcome of the grand-jury-style hearing.

It’s part of an investigation into whether McKenzie and three other military police officers used excessive force while handling Iraqi prisoners.


http://www.aiipowmia.com/inter23/in050903epwhrngs.html

Biiiiiiig fuckin' surprise. :eyes:

Right now it feels like it's just never going to end.

It would be nice if people would finally make the connectiont between abuse of prisoners in Iraq and abuse of prisoners in Afghanistan and abuse of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay and the stories of abuse of prisoners here in the US that have popped and disapperard over and over again. None of this should come as a big surprise. *sigh*

'me too.' For a while after 9/11, it looked like Afghanistan had finally earned a place for itself, but the Dubya substituted Iraq. So now Afghanistan can hardly get into the news, even when it has a good case for its me-tooism.

Originally released in 1980
Reissued October 16, 2001
Cover art by the late Phil Hartman

As relevant as today's headlines:


Oh, Afghanistan
from "Fighting Clowns"

http://www.firesigntheatre.com/afghan/index.html

I saw this film over a year ago. A member of Physicians for Human Rights who went to Afghanistan to investigate and saw the mass grave was at the showing.

--------------------

The Convoy of Death
The film the United States authorities didn't want you to see: a compelling investigation into the true human cost of our "war against terror."

Up to 3,000 now lie buried in a mass grave, but this was NOT a simple matter of Afghans killing Afghans.

AFGHAN MASSACRE tells of how American Special Forces took control of the operation, re-directed the containers carrying the living and dead into the desert and stood by as survivors were shot and buried.

And it details how the Pentagon lied to the world in order to cover up its role in the greatest atrocity of the entire Afghan War. This is the documentary they did not want you to see.

AFGHAN MASSACRE was produced over ten months in extremely dangerous circumstances: eyewitnesses were threatened and subsequently killed, the film crew were forced into hiding and our researcher was savagely beaten to within an inch of his life. He was recently awarded the 2002 Rory Peck Award for Hard News, The SONY Award and the film has been nominated for a Royal Television Society Award for Current Affairs.

Link, including info to order a copy of this film: http://www.acftv.net/more.asp?id=270



Afghan massacre haunts Pentagon
Guardian 9/14/02

<snip>

The prisoners still in Shiberghan - half of them Afghans, and half Pakistanis - estimate that about 400 people suffocated to death during the journey. Other sources say the figure is between 900 and 1,000. The Physicians for Human Rights group from Boston, which identified the mass grave earlier this year and later sent out a forensic scientist to carry out further tests, suggests that 2,000-3,000 of the 8,000 prisoners taken to Shiberghan died on the way.

But the Guardian has obtained harrowing details which suggest that their death was not a tragic accident but a deliberate act of revenge.

Some of the first Taliban fighters to surrender made the initial part of the journey in open lorries, their faces caked with dust. When they reached Mazar-i-Sharif, 90 miles from Kunduz, they were taken to Qala Zaini, a mud-walled fortified compound on the outskirts of the city. There Gen Dostum's soldiers crammed them into shipping containers. When they protested that they could not breathe, the soldiers told them to duck down, then fired several Kalashnikov rounds into the containers.

"I saw blood coming out of the holes," an eyewitness who refuses to be identified said.

<snip>

The Pentagon said last week that the US troops had reported that they were unaware what had happened to the prisoners. But the evidence suggests that they were so close to Gen Dostum's soldiers that they may have been informed.

The general has been on the US payroll for nearly a year. According to Newsweek magazine, an elite team from the Fifth Special Forces Group first met up with Gen Dostum last October, when its members were dropped by Chinook helicopter at his mountain base.

<snip>

A confidential UN memo obtained by Newsweek concluded that there was enough evidence to justify a "fully-fledged criminal investigation". But earlier this week Lakhdar Brahimi, the UN special envoy, said the government was too fragile to investigate further. "Politics is the art of the possible," he said.

The Pentagon has so far declined to answer several tricky questions, among them, were US soldiers present when the containers were first opened at Shiberghan prison?

US intelligence officers spent weeks interrogating Taliban and al-Qaida suspects at the jail, and in time removed 114 prisoners from their cramped, lice-ridden cells to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where they remain without charge.

But the same soldiers appear to have no knowledge of the mass grave just down the road.

Link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,791840,00.html