Torture in Afghanistan
Updated on 22 May 2005
Afghanistan's Hamid Kharzai demands action from President Bush after evidence of American torture emerges.
Hamid Kharzai reacted angrily after seeing details of the report obtained by the New York Times.
The Afghan President, Hamid Karzai, has reacted with anger after hearing the details of a US army report into abuse at a US detention facility in Afghanistan. Two inmates died after being beaten by inexperienced guards the report found.
Mr Karzai says he'll raise the matter when he meets President Bush on Monday and ask that all Afghan prisoners being held by the US abroad should be returned to Afghanistan. He also wants the US military to stop raiding homes in his country. Julian Rush reports.
By all accounts Dilawar was a shy and simple man, rarely leaving the remote village where he's now buried. He died, in December 2002, at the hands of ill-trained US troops at Bagram airbase.
Troops who allegedly repeatedly assaulted and abused prisoners, sometimes just out of boredom. He was the second prisoner to die within six days.
The US military gave his family a death certificate: homicide, it says, but no-one in the village could read English.
In pages from the investigation file into the deaths, obtained by the New York Times, witnesses describe how Dilawar was chained to a ceiling for four days; how he was repeatedly kneed in the leg, turning his flesh to pulp so he couldn't stand; injuries like those of somebody run over by a bus, said the military coroner.
Drawings from a US. military report that was obtained by the New York Times.
The Afghan President, making it clear today he will confront President Bush when he sees him on Monday. In echoes of the prisoner abuse at Abu Graib in Iraq, no officers have been charged. Just seven junior soldiers will go to court, even though the investigation said senior officers had condoned the abuse.
One of the British prisoners released from Guantanamo, Moazzam Begg, was held in Bagram at the same time. Earlier this year, he told Channel 4 News he had been abused there too. He has confirmed to us he believes the questions from investigators he described to us then were about these deaths.
Drawings from a US. military report that was obtained by the New York Times.
US forces in Afghanistan are increasingly unpopular: passions inflamed this week by the now-withdrawn report from Newsweek magazine of a Quran flushed down a toilet at Guantanamo.
Americans, though, listening to their President on radio today, heard no acknowledgement their country's image was growing ever more tarnished.
"On Monday, I will meet Afghan President Hamid Karzai at the White House to discuss freedom's remarkable progress in his nation. Afghanistan now has a constitution, an elected President, and its citizens will return to the polls this September to elect provincial councils in the lower house of the National Assembly.
We're helping Afghanistan's elected government solidify these democratic gains and deliver real change. A nation that once knew only the terror of the Taliban is now seeing a rebirth of freedom, and we will help them succeed." - President Bush, speaking on radio.
But help isn't always wanted. In Washington, Mr Karzai will also ask for an end to searches of Afghan homes by US troops. This was the funeral of a 75 year old man killed by soldiers searching his home. It's causing growing resentment: others displaying injuries they say were caused in an American search.
The investigation into the deaths has taken nearly three years: dilatory, say some involved. Comprehensive, says the Pentagon, a sign of how seriously they take allegations of abuse.
INTERNET LINKS
The New York Times website - Visit the NY Times website to see more details on the report they obtained detailing the alleged torture abuse.
