BTIF: Bagram, Black Hole

I've been a fan of Eliza Griswold ever since I read some of her poetry in the New Yorker and then read more of her work on the Pastun/tribal Pakistani-Afghan border. Her latest piece for the New Republic, "The Other Guantantamo: Black Hole" is a wake-up call.



Sometimes the spotlight on Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo leads the public to forget that the US still operates a prison at Bagram Airbase, and probably other secret prisons in Afghanistan. The military has a virtual free-hand to treat the 650 prisoners there as it wishes because of the lack of media scrutiny and the overall lack of interest in Afghanistan. What I find really interesting is the father of a detainee's insistence on the existence of photos proving abuse at Bagram. He desperately knows that after Abu Ghraib, without photos, the world simply does not care. I decided to post the whole article here for future reference:

Early last spring, outside a guesthouse in Kabul where I was staying, an injured Afghan man limped up to the locked gate. He wore a blazer with suede elbow patches and leaned on crutches. Because a suicide bomber had attacked the building not long before, a guard blocked the entrance of the unannounced supplicant. The fact that the man refused to give his name didn't help his case. But, finally, once inside, he blurted his reason for traveling across a war zone to the building: He had heard that American lawyers with whom I was traveling were staying there and that these lawyers wanted to represent prisoners held by the Americans at Bagram Airbase, some 40 miles north. "My son is in prison at Bagram," the man said, clutching a cell phone: A sympathetic Afghan guard inside Bagram Theater Internment Facility (btif) had sent him a photograph of his son after he had been badly beaten, his eye swollen shut.

Btif is currently home to about 650 detainees. Unlike the prison in Guantánamo, there aren't congressional junkets regularly touring the facility, let alone any reporters. Inside one of the low-slung, pale concrete buildings, on the vast floor of what was once a machine shop, is a scene one former interrogator describes as a dungeon, full of "medieval sounds"--the dragging of leg shackles, shouts from military police. Most of its windows, initially installed by the Soviet army, are broken and boarded up. There are six large 60-foot-long cages ringed in coiled barbed wire where detainees are kept, 15 to 20 prisoners to a cage. Before the prisoners enter or leave these cages, they are transferred temporarily to cages large enough for only one prisoner called "sally ports," which are encased in coils of concertina wire and reinforced with steel beams. On a level above the machine shop floor, there are isolation rooms walled in plywood with chicken-wire ceilings.

The man had come to the guest house on bad information. The lawyers with whom I traveled represented prisoners in Guantánamo, and they weren't seeking new clients from Bagram. As the man took in this depressing fact, he grew irate and began pressing his case with even greater fervor. "There are more photographs," he exclaimed, turning to leave. "Someday, you will see them."

That day may be fast approaching. The photos accompanying this piece are the first to be published from inside the prison. Last month, lawyers pleaded two separate cases before the D.C. District Court, demanding that the justices review petitions of habeas corpus for Bagram detainees. These cases represent the rare moment when Bagram will actually receive scrutiny. Unlike Guantánamo, a puddle-jumper away from Miami, Bagram is tucked into the Afghan countryside, not far from where combat with the Taliban still flares. And this remoteness has made the plight of its prisoners all the more dire: Only the International Committee of the Red Cross knows the names of Bagram's occupants. Eric Lewis, a co-counsel in one of the habeas cases, says, "The nightmare of Guantánamo is something of a picnic compared to Bagram," a fact that prisoners can relate with firsthand knowledge: A good portion of the detainees in Guantánamo were first held in Bagram. "Our clients were beaten more badly in Afghanistan than in Guantánamo, basically because, in Cuba, the whole world is watching," says Lewis.

Bagram is a 6.5-square-mile plot located on the vast, once-verdant Shomali plain and encircled by the snowy Panjshir mountains. After the Soviet invasion in the late '70s, the Russians built a two-mile runway and airbase at Bagram. During the decades of civil war, the defunct base repeatedly switched between Taliban and Northern Alliance control. In late 2001, as it trounced the Taliban, the United States took possession of the base and outfitted its cavernous machine shop to detain captured combatants. Former prisoners and interrogators say that there were old Soviet signs written in Cyrillic still on the walls.

The detention facility was designed as a short-term collection point, where American interrogators sorted erroneous and low-level captures from those of higher intelligence value. And, at first, the prison actually served this purpose: Detainees from Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and North Africa were transported to Guantánamo--although there are still some Arabs held at Bagram. (We know this, in part, because a Yemeni prisoner, held virtually incommunicado for more than five years, sent his father a letter through the Red Cross. "BT," meaning Bagram Theater, was marked on the upper-left-hand corner.)

From the start, the processing of prisoners entailed some grisly practices. When Captain Carolyn Wood assumed control of the prison in the summer of 2002--she ran it until taking over Abu Ghraib a year later--interrogation tactics came to include beatings, anal violation with sharp objects, blows to the genitals, and "peroneal" strikes (an incapacitating blow to the leg with a baton, a knee, or a shin). We know about these tactics because an internal Army investigation into two prisoner deaths was obtained by The New York Times. These detainees--a 22-year-old taxi driver and the brother of a Taliban commander--were found dead and hanging from the wrists by shackles. A coroner's report said the two men died after being subjected to dozens of peroneal strikes. According to the coroner's report, the "pulpified" legs of one of the corpses looked as if they had "been run over by a bus."

During these early years, one of the most notorious figures at the prison was Private First Class Damien M. Corsetti, known in turns as the "King of Torture" and "Monster." Corsetti tattooed an Italian translation of the latter moniker across his stomach. In the end, a military tribunal cleared Corsetti of all charges. His lawyer successfully argued before the tribunal that the rules for detainee treatment were unclear: "The president of the United States doesn't know what the rules are. The secretary of defense doesn't know what the rules are. But the government expects this Pfc. to know what the rules are?" But, in the course of proving his innocence, Corsetti revealed several damning details. One of the prisoners he called to testify on his behalf told the military judges that a Saudi detainee recounted how Corsetti had threatened to rape him. He had even taken out his penis and yelled, "This is your God!"

It's not that Bagram has entirely escaped scrutiny. Army investigators have recommended criminal charges for 27 alleged Bagram-based torturers. But, of these 27, only four soldiers have been sentenced to prison time--for no more than several months. The alleged abusers have evaded punishment largely with the help of, among others, Donald Rumsfeld, who approved a December 2002 memorandum that permitted the use of stripping, dogs, and stress positions in interrogations. In fact, many of the top brass who presided over Bagram have done more than escape punishment. Despite the many accounts of Captain Wood's encouragement of torture--Amnesty International has called her a "torture architect"--she has received two Bronze Stars.

While Bagram began as a temporary jail, it has over time morphed into a more permanent facility. As the bulk of its Arab prisoners were shipped to Guantánamo, it increasingly held Afghans for long (and in many cases indefinite) terms. "One of the worst aspects of Bagram is that no one knows how long they'll be held there," says Sam Zia-Zarifi, the research director for the Asia division of Human Rights Watch. The secrecy shrouding the prison makes it hard to discern the precise composition of its occupants. But we do know that, last year, its population swelled by about 100 detainees, thanks to new U.S.-nato operations aimed at routing the resurgent Taliban. And even the Pentagon has implicitly conceded that the prison no longer serves its initial short-term purpose, changing its name from Bagram Collection Point to the Bagram Theater Internment Facility.

During this transformation, some of the worst abuses at Bagram, such as anal violations and beatings, have been curbed, according to former detainees, the Afghan Human Rights Commission, and Human Rights Watch. The Department of Defense claims that prisoners now gain an average of 15 pounds during their detention. And, several weeks ago, the first Afghan prisoners were transferred from Bagram into Afghan custody in the U.S.-built wing of the infamous Policharki prison. Lieutenant Colonel Todd Vician, a spokesman for the Department of Defense, tells me, "We have no desire to be the world's jailer."

But, for all these changes, the growing detainee population still lives in overcrowded cages. Prisoners don't even have the limited access to lawyers available to prisoners in Guantánamo. Nor do they have the right to Combatant Status Review Tribunals, which Guantánamo detainees won in the 2004 Supreme Court ruling in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld. Instead, if a combat commander chooses, he can convene an Enemy Combatant Review Board (ecrb), at which the detainee has no right to a personal advocate, no chance to speak in his own defense, and no opportunity to review the evidence against him. The detainee isn't even allowed to attend. And, thanks to such limited access to justice, many former detainees say they have no idea why they were either detained or released.

With a victory in the pending habeas cases, Bagram detainees might eventually win the same legal rights now held by Guantánamo prisoners. But, according to Tina Foster, executive director of the International Justice Network and co-counsel on the habeas petitions, "Even if the cases are successful, we are unlikely to see dramatic changes at Bagram any time soon." It will remain too far from the public eye, too deep in a war zone, to receive the public pressure that forced the reform of Guantánamo. That's a shame, because the prison--and, more precisely, its infamy--has hurt the American cause in Afghanistan. "[It] undermines our legitimacy in building democracy and human rights in Afghanistan," says Barnett Rubin, director of studies at New York University's Center on International Cooperation.

I began to understand this cost as I sat in the Kabul guesthouse with the American lawyers. Over a cup of tea, one local official named Zalmay Shah told us that he had once worked closely with U.S. Special Forces. At the beginning of the U.S. invasion, he had helped a commander named "Tony" round up a handful of midlevel Taliban. The soldiers had awarded him a letter of commendation for his efforts, and he developed a sincere affection for the Americans. That soon changed.

While delivering one wanted man into U.S. custody, Shah was himself arrested, hooded, shackled, and stripped. Soldiers taped his mouth shut, refusing to let him spit out the snuff he was chewing. For three days, his jailers in Bagram denied him food. All the while, Shah pleaded his innocence and reminded the Americans of his friendship with "Tony." And, eventually, the Americans concluded that they had mistakenly identified the man as a Taliban official and released him. Despite all this, the U.S. military has continued to ask Shah for his help. "I have refused," he told us. "When the Americans came, we thought we would be free. But, on the contrary, we have suffered." Placing his elbows on the table, he hunched forward and cupped his hands around the now cold tea. "If the Americans don't change their policies soon, neither we nor they will have a way out."

Dilawar, RIP

Thanks to the attention that "Taxi to the Dark Side" is garnering in the mainstream media (Post, WSJ, Salon), for a while at least, innocent Afghan Dilawar is remembered as a victim of American military institutionalized brutality.

'Taxi to the Dark Side'

Finally a "big" documentary about the Bagram homicides. Abu Ghraib has elicited a huge reaction especially in the past two years, by artists, writers and documentarists. But the sad fate of those tortured to death in Afghanistan has been largely forgotten. Recall that of the original 27 men recommended to prosecutors by Army investigators the killing of innocents Dilawar and Habibullah, only 6 were convicted or pled guilty. The stiffest punishment handed down has been 5 months in a military prison.

Involved among others as executive producer was journalist Sid Blumenthal. The film by Alex Gibney "Taxi to the Dark Side" portrays the arrest of taxi driver Dilawar and to his killing at Bagram Air Base. It premiers at the Tribeca Film Festival next week.

Tom Tomorrow shares his thoughts after seeing a preview.

Year in Review

As this blog was dormant for much of the year, here we provide a detention/interrogation year in review:

January

Omar Khadr, a Canadian citizen held at Guantanamo Bay who was a minor when he was detained by US forces in Afghanistan, was arraigned by a military tribunal.

General Geoffrey Miller testifies before Congress regarding the use of dogs on detainees in Abu Ghraib.


February

The final soldier charged with involvement of in the deaths of Habibullah and Dilawar was acquitted by US Military Courts.

Human Rights First concludes that 34 prisoners had died in US custody in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2002, and that 8-12 were tortured to death.

Federal judge David Trager throws out the suit by a Canadian who was sent to Syria to be tortured. (In 2002, Canadian citizen Maher Arar, born in Syria was passing through a New York airport, detained and subsequently "rendered" to Syria and tortured)

Prisoners riot at Policharki Jail in Afghanistan, demanding retrials.


March

Times exposes alleged abuses by the secret task force "6-26" in Iraq.

Army Sargeant Michael J. Smith is found guilty on 6 of 13 counts of abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib, for the use of dogs on detainees. He gets 6 months jail time, when the maximum sentence would have been 8 years.


April

AP Photographer Bilal Hussein is imprisoned in Ramadi. The US claims he was apprehended with two other militants, surrounded by bombs making material. Journalist defense groups try in vain to get more information on his case.

New data released by the Detainee Abuse and Accountability Project alleges that over 600 military and contractors may have been involved in detainee abuse in Iraq. Only 40 members of the armed services have been sentenced to jailtime, and one civilian.


May

A federal judge dismisses the civil law suit against the American government brought by Khaled El-Masri, a German Lebanese-born man who was abducted by the CIA while on vacation in Macedonia in 2003. The rationale: the suit would endanger the US' national security.


June

Limited theatrical release of Michael Winterbottom's The Road to Guantanamo in the US.


July

Iranian-American filmmaker Cyrus Kar filed suit with the US government over his detention in 2005.


September

America turns Abu Ghraib, empty, over to Iraqi control. Its prisoners were moved to Camp Cropper.

President Bush claims the CIA's secret prisons across the world have been emptied.

A new Army manual for interrogation is published, banning hooding, forced nakedness and other stress positions.

AP goes public with their photographer's detention in Ramadi in April, calling for the US to either charge or release him.


October

President Bush signs the Military Commissions Act into law, according to many legal experts, denying habeas corpus rights to non-US citizens and legal aliens in the US. There is debate as to whether it denies habeas rights to American citizens. The Times calls it "a tyrannical law that will be ranked with the low points in American democracy".

Afghanistan's Reconciliation Commission visits Bagram in a bid to get more prisoners released. The number of detainees is thought to be around 500 at the time.

The US (apparently) bombs militants in the Pakistan-Afghanistan border area, killing 80 people in Pakistan's tribal area. Many were civilians.

HRW questions NATO's move towards reliance on "close air support" and bombing of civilian regions, and suggests they create a mechanism to compensate civilians affected by bombing.


November

ICG releases a report called "Countering Afghanistan’s Insurgency: No Quick Fixes" suggesting that priority be given to rule of law and fixing the judiciary.

The European Commission concludes that many EU countries were aware of the CIA's "extraordinary rendition" flights.


December

The US releases 26 detainees from Bagram Theater Internment Facility. Around 475 are believed to remain.

An ex-Navyman and security contractor in Baghdad reveals to the Times he was kept prisoner for 3 months at Camp Cropper after attemping to blow the whistle on suspicious activities by his firm. He claims he received "less legal council than Saddam."

Pakistan announces it detained over 500 Taleban and handed 400 of them over to the Afghan government.

Xray is 5-star compared to Bagram

This week Tim Golden of the New York Times detailed the growth of Bagram's detainee population, describing the harsh conditions of the prison compared to Guantanamo Bay. Prisoners are kept in cages similar, according to one tribal elder held there two years, to the cages for animals in the Karachi zoo in Pakistan.

Only the International Red Cross is allowed to visit Bagram, and visits must be planned well in advance. There are no lists of prisoners in the facility. Military documents suggest the number of detainees to be around 600 people, up from only 100 in 2004. These detainees have little hope of ever seeing legal council, although the legality of their detention has yet to be tested in US courts.

From what Golden writes, it appears that many people picked up by the CIA are prisoner at Bagram, and if they were taken to Guantanamo, it would be possible that details of their arrest (or kidnapping) would be heard in a US court.

There is also a connection between the kind of abuses described in Southern Afghanistan in Taliban Country and the large detainee population at Bagram.

Officials said most of the current Bagram detainees were captured during American military operations in Afghanistan, primarily in the country's restive south, beginning in the spring of 2004.

"We ran a couple of large-scale operations in the spring of 2004, during which we captured a large number of enemy combatants," said Maj. Gen. Eric T. Olson, who was the ground commander for American troops in Afghanistan at the time. In subsequent remarks he added, "Our system for releasing detainees whose intelligence value turned out to be negligible did not keep pace with the numbers we were bringing in."

General Olson and other military officials said the growth at Bagram had also been a consequence of the closing of a smaller detention center at Kandahar and efforts by the military around the same time to move detainees more quickly out of "forward operating bases," in the Afghan provinces, where international human rights groups had cited widespread abuses.

MP acquitted in Bagram abuse case

A soldier from Cincinnati-based Military Police battalion 377 was acquitted by a military jury on charges of beating an Afghan prisoner at Bagram. The prisoner, who the soldiers had sarcastically named "Timmy" (after the retarded character of South Park), allegedly suffered beatings during his imprisonment. He could not be located to testify, and military prosecutors were forced to rely on one eyewitness. Military justice once again seems unequipped to successfully prosecute abuses in Afghanistan and Iraq.

First Army Officer charged in abuses cases

The first ever US military officer faces criminal charges in relation to abuses committed in Afghanistan and/or Iraq. AP reports that Capt. Christopher M. Beiring faces charges of dereliction of duty and making a false statement in relation to his unit's abuse and beating deaths of two Afghan detainees in Bagram in 2002.

Another two of his soldiers were also charged Tuesday, bringing the total number of soldiers from Cincinnati's 377th Military Police Company to eleven. Two were acquitted last week.

Acquittal in 2nd Bagram homicide

Another member, Sgt. Christopher Greatorex, of the 377th Military Police company based in Cincinnati was acquitted today on abuse charges. Even though the prosecution had sworn testimony from another soldier in the room during the beatings which led to prisoner Habibullah's death, the military panel acquitted the Reservist.

Sgt. Greatorex's defense claimed that the witness had mixed him up with another soldier and accused her of trying to "cover" for other soldiers.

The prosecution is quoted by the Houston Chronicle as saying, ""I really don't have any idea what those panel members were thinking."

MP convicted in Bagram homicide; no jail-time

After the media circus surrounding the Abu Ghraib abusers, the trial of Military Police Spc. Willie Brand for causing the death of two Bagram detainees, received little attention in the US media.

Last week a Texas military panel found Brand guilty of assault, maltreatment, maiming and lying to investigators in the case of the death of Dilawar, a young Afghan taxi driver. Brand was found innocent of the charges related to the second homicide of Habibullah.

Military prosecutors asked for a jail sentence of 10 years (the maximum would have been 16 years.) Instead, Brand was demoted. The only explanations for such a light sentence would be that the panel believed Brand's plea that his training related to restraining prisoners was "inadequate," and that it welcomed the reservist's promise to testify against his superiors.

Afghan justice system a major worry

A paper written jointly by the Afghan government and the UN claims that only 15 of 380 buildings dedicated as courthouses have the facilities to hold legal hearings. Yesterday in Kabul, a 3-day conference on the Afghan justice system was convened, and the paper "Justice for All" was released, detailing the poor state of the Afghan justice system.

The paper maintains that provincial facilities, including prisons, are at best ineffective, and often non-existent. There is a shortage of trained personnel and prisons. In at least 20 provinces there are no proper prison facilities.

In the absence of any formal system, tribal or "traditional" courts have filled the void, says the paper.

The US claims it will remand the Afghan prisoners in Guantanamo (and Bagram) to the state of Afghanistan when the system is ready for them. One wonders, reading this report, when that may be...

Military Intel Sgt. pleads guilty in Afghan death

Military Intelligence Sgt. Selena Salcedo plead guilty this week to charges of dereliction of duty and assault in the case of the violent death of Afghan taxi-driver detainee Dilawar. She faces up to a year in prison, bad conduct discharge, loss of a year's pay, and reduction of rank. MP Pfc. Willie Brand is currently on facing similar charges in relation to Dilawar's death.

Sgt. Salcedo testified that she became impatient with Dilawar's "whiny" Pastun pleas for mercy, grabbing his head and shoving him against a wall, where he was forced to sit as though in a chair for long periods of time, even though he claimed his knees were in pain. Dilawar later died due to blood clotting in his thighs from knee-cap blows he received from his captors, and the stress on his legs from being forced to "sit" and stand up repeatedly.

Analysis of Bagram protest/riot

Radio Free Europe offers the best analysis of the protest/riot at Bagram this week, clarifying the motives and origin of the protestors. The protestors were not from Bagram village, but from Deh Mullah, east of the base. There, a former commander of Mujuhideen-come-anti-US warlord Hekmatyar, was arrested in the middle of the night from his family compound. Hekmatyar is considered a major threat by US forces, according to RFE "the third party of the triumvirate fighting against Afghan President Hamid Karzai's government and its foreign backers."

His friends, family and fellow villagers claim that Commander Hamidullah renounced arms and decade ago and is now a farmer. US forces claim to have found explosives in his house and suspect him of planning an attack on Bagram Airbase. According to a US Army spokesman, Afghan police and Army were present at the arrest, in keeping with President Karzai's recent requests.

RFE's Amin Tarzi reveals the significance of these events surrounding Commander Hamidullah:

After less than one day in custody, the United States handed the eight men over to provincial authorities in Parwan on 27 July.

While the handover of the eight detainees to the Afghans might very well have quelled the anger of local residents of Bagram District, the longer term question of counterterrorist activities in Afghanistan, and the standing of the United States in that country, remains an open question.

There has been no credible accounting as to which of Afghanistan's former warlords have sincerely traded in their swords for plows, nor has any of them thus far been identified or arrested for their past deeds. Moreover, the Afghan judicial system remains in shambles with little hope of it returning soon to something that can be remotely regarded as a transparent and fair system in which cases can be tried. This situation is especially true in provinces where local loyalties often overpower any respect there is for the central Afghan government's laws and commitments, including its counterterrorism efforts. The Bagram riot clearly points to this problem, as no protests have targeted that base since late 2001 when some locals were arrested.

As such, the task for the United States in leading the war against terrorism and militancy in Afghanistan becomes very complicated. On one hand, with more intrusive operations the U.S. faces the possibility of dealing with more hostility to its presence in Afghanistan while on the other hand, in the absence of a robust Afghan commitment to investigate, arrest when needed, and incarcerate suspected terrorists, the chance for an Afghanistan free of the menace of terrorism might fall victim to short-term local expediencies.

Angry Bagram villagers protest at Airbase

Nearly 2,000 villagers from Bagram village, which sits alongside the Soviet-era airbase, now the air hub of the US military effort in Afghanistan, protested outside the gates yesterday. Chanting "Die America" and "Die Karzai," the crowd had a very specific greivance: when US forces conducted the man hunt for the escaped Arab prisoners from the detention facility there, they entered uninvited into many houses, and apprehended eight people.

US forces claim these men were suspected terrorists, but Bagram villagers say that is not the point. They are outraged that their village elders were not consulted first. From the villagers' perspective, they did not deserve the invasive raids of US forces, especially because they claim they have been always cooperative with the Americans. Even President Karzai has commented that the US procedure of raiding residential compounds, where women and children are present, is extremely offensive to the Afghan sensibility. (It is also true that the cooperation and labor of the villagers at Bagram is key to the functioning of the Base.)

The AP circulated some photos of the protest (including this one here by Tomas Munita). In them there are no written signs, just a tire burning, and men and boys chanting, indicating a fairly spontaneous, localized protest. According to some Western media, the protest turned into a riot, with stone throwing, and attempts to break through the gates of the base.

Low-ranking MPs blamed for Bagram homicides

The first military court-martial for one of the 2002 homicides at Bagram Air Base detention facility began today in El Paso, Texas. Pfc. Willie Brand was originally charged with manslaughter, a charge which was dropped in military court. He is the only military personnel to be charged in connection with the death of Afghan taxi driver Dilawar. According to the Army Times, only one another MP faces a court-martial for the deaths, Spc. Brian Cammack, of the same 377th MP Company based in Cinncinati.

While Dilawar's body showed signs of cruelty and sadism beyond any reasonable military operating procedure (had he not died, doctors would have been forced to amputate his legs), Brand's defense attorney John Galligan is right to point out:

... the larger issue is that, while the government is blaming a low-ranking enlisted man for the December 2002 deaths of the two Afghani detainees, "officers who may have designed the programs that led to those deaths are left unscathed."

Four Al-Qaeda detainees escape Bagram

As unbelievable as it sounds, four "Arab" detainees held deep in the highly-secured Bagram Airbase north of Kabul have escaped. The US military seems to still be in shock that such an escape could happen, as the men would have eluded multiple layers of security. There is still no clear information explaining how the men managed to escape. The escaped men were from Libya, Kuwait, Syria, and Saudi Arabia.

The US reports that it is conducting a massive manhunt for the men with Afghan national forces. US military officials distributed photos of the men in Bagram village, claiming that they were "dressed in yellow jumpsuits" (when it seems obvious that they would have removed them as soon as possible, even before leaving Bagram.)

An anonymous American official told The Washington Post, "Even if those Arabs had wings, they should not have been able to escape."

Detainee release in Kabul

Another detainee release took place over the weekend in Kabul, much like prior releases, under the Peace Commission's "amnesty" program, even though most were "not guilty" and never convicted of anything. One wonders what these detainees think about the American presence in Afghanistan after having their lives so interrupted, for months and years. The compensation, $200, even in the Afghan context, seems small. More releases are due in the coming months under the program, which is said to include 199 men in total. From the New York Times:

On Saturday, American forces freed 57 Afghan detainees from the detention facility at Bagram Air Base, north of Kabul, as part of a continuing government reconciliation program with suspected insurgents.

[...]

The detainees, with closely shaved heads, were handed over to Afghan authorities who gave them silk turbans and 10,000 afghanis, or about $200, for their journey home. "You are released and I congratulate you," Sebaghatullah Mojadeddi, president the Peace Commission, told them in a speech in Kabul.

"Certainly most of you were not guilty," he told them. "The problems were caused because of personal enmity and people giving false reports to have you imprisoned," he said, recognizing the complaints of many previous detainees that personal rivalries and old enmities are behind much of the information supplied to the American forces.

The government had asked American forces to stop raiding houses without first consulting the local authorities and to conduct all operations with the Afghan police and army personnel, Mr. Mojadeddi said. "They have promised to do so, so I hope they will fulfill their promises," he said of the American military.

"Low-level combatants" released from Bagram

The US released 53 "low-level combatants" who were deemed as no longer a risk by the US military. The wire reports do not adequately question the US version of the detainees' alleged guilt for "hostile acts" against the US-led coalition, ignoring the fact that none of them were ever heard in a court, and none were found guilty of any crime. It seems the wire services are concerned with the "presumption of innocence" only as it applies to Westerners. Not surprisingly, the US did not apologize to these detainees.

Sibghatullah Mujaddedi, head of Afghanistan's peace and reconciliation commission, told the released prisoners that although some of them may be innocent, they shouldn't complain, but instead be thankful to be free.

The release comes amid allegations that U.S. military personnel at Bagram and at other detention facilities have abused prisoners. The U.S. military has said it would not tolerate any maltreatment.

Four of those who were released and spoke to The Associated Press said they were not abused while in detention.

"No one has beaten me during the last eight months and I haven't heard of anyone else being beaten," said Mohammed Anwar Hanifi, 38, who worked as a government official in eastern Paktika province before being arrested last October. "I was interrogated a lot, but they found no proof I was guilty. It is why they released me."

It was not immediately clear how many Afghans are still in U.S. military detention. A month ago, 85 other prisoners were released.

There was no apology for the 53, but officials handed each of them 10,000 Afghanis (US$234; euro182), and a new turban as well as a letter from the U.S. military confirming their release.

Bush denies Karzai on prisoners, military ops

The press is buzzing with Afghan President Hamid Karzai's visit to the States. After giving the key-note address at Boston University on Sunday, he spoke on late night news programs, softening his harsh criticisms of US military conduct. Then it was off to the Whitehouse, where he had a private meeting with President Bush. Following the meeting, in a joint news briefing, Karzai was told by a smiling Bush that "of course" the US would maintain control over its military operations. Absolutely no concessions were made on the issue of intrusive raids by US soldiers. As for control of prisoners, this was also denied.

See New York Newsday's editorial: Afghanistan Left in the Lurch by US; the New York Times' Bush Deflects Afghan's Request for Return of Prisoners, Radio Free Europe's Afghanistan: Prisoner Abuse Scandal Overshadows Karzai's Talks With Bush; The Chicago Tribune's Karzai softens criticism during visit.

Bottom line: Karzai came in like a lion, and left like a lamb. No improvements can be expected in the area of detention or contentious raids of homes and residential compounds.

More over, Karzai was repeatedly chastized for his inability to reign in the opium trade in Afghanistan, and, as expected signed a "Strategic Partnership" allowing the US to continue to occupy Bagram Airbase with future bases to be "mutually determined." How will his visit be portrayed in the Muslim world, where he is already perceived like a puppet of America?

Account of Bagram homicides outrages Karzai

The New York Times gained access to the full text of a 2,000 page report on the deaths of two detainees in Bagram in 2002, and its reporting of their brutal homicides has sparked outrage in Afghanistan and the US. The account of the torture and physical abuse which led to the deaths of two Afghanis, both known only by one name, Dilawar and Habibullah, provoked President Hamid Karzai to demand immediate custody of all Afghan detainees in Afghanistan. Speaking before a news conference, on the eve of his departure for the US to meet with President Bush, Karzai appeared uncharacteristically angry, saying, "It has shocked me thoroughly and we condemn it."



The New York Times feature, reporting the sadistic and horrifying treatment of the two victims is extremely graphic, benefitting from the Army's own interviews and investigations into the matter. The NY Times has also created a shorter, more "interactive" feature which is worthwhile.

The media seems intent on squashing the story, reporting instead on the "tough stance" the US is taking with President Hamid Karzai on opium. Given the detail and violent sadism apparent in the story, it seems clear that the issue will not go away.

When one of the First Platoon M.P.'s, Specialist Corey E. Jones, was sent to Mr. Dilawar's cell to give him some water, he said the prisoner spit in his face and started kicking him. Specialist Jones responded, he said, with a couple of knee strikes to the leg of the shackled man.

"He screamed out, 'Allah! Allah! Allah!' and my first reaction was that he was crying out to his god," Specialist Jones said to investigators. "Everybody heard him cry out and thought it was funny."

Other Third Platoon M.P.'s later came by the detention center and stopped at the isolation cells to see for themselves, Specialist Jones said.

It became a kind of running joke, and people kept showing up to give this detainee a common peroneal strike just to hear him scream out 'Allah,' " he said. "It went on over a 24-hour period, and I would think that it was over 100 strikes."

Deadly knee jab: "standard procedure" at Bagram

In this Knight Ridder story, the military reservist charged with one count of involuntary manslaughter and one count of maiming in the deaths of two Afghan detainees at Bagram, claims that the knee jabs deemed by autopsies to have caused the deaths in question were Standard Operating Procedure. The procedure of knee-jabbing, included in the training of the Defendant's platoon are technically called "peroneal strikes" by an officer by Defendant Pfc. Brand's platoon. The knee jabs combined with a pre-existing heart condition, and the chaining of the detainees' arms above his head, caused his death.

Galligan [the defense attorney] said Brand used the training he'd been given when dealing with the detainees and that the Army command is at least as culpable as his client. Brand "followed the SOP (standard operating procedure) that was in place," Galligan said.

Sgt. 1st Class Gerald Hawkins, who commanded Brand's platoon, said the unit had received two days of training in "peroneal strikes," or knee jabs, during a course at Fort Dix, N.J., before they were deployed.

Spokesmen at Fort Dix said they couldn't confirm what was covered in the course.

According to Army pathologists, Habibullah and Dilawar died after repeated blows to their legs. Both also were shackled to the ceiling for prolonged periods, sometimes with their hands chained at the level of their heads or higher.

Medical examiner Lt. Col. Kathleen Ingwersen said the forced immobility might have contributed to the blood clot that caused the 30-year-old Habibullah's heart to stop. According to an Army investigation, Habibullah was so badly hurt by repeated knee strikes that "even if he survived, both legs would have had to be amputated."

Lt. Col. Elizabeth Rouse, the pathologist who examined Dilawar, 35, testified via telephone that the severe beating might have aggravated a pre-existing heart condition. She said the tissue in Dilawar's legs had been so damaged by repeated blows that "it was essentially crumbling and falling apart."

Brand, who works as a private security guard in civilian life, attended the hearing, in uniform, but didn't speak.

[...]

Brand said he'd been trained to use "minimum force" when a detainee attacked or assaulted a guard. But when he got to Bagram, he said, "the standard changed and we did things differently."

Brand, who was demoted from specialist to private earlier this year, said an outgoing platoon of soldiers at Bagram trained him to use the knee strikes "as a matter of common practice."

Brand said he initially was uncomfortable with the move, which momentarily crushes a nerve in the leg and incapacitates a person with pain. But he said his commanders "saw this stuff and made no move to correct it, so I took it that the practice was tolerated or allowed."

[...]

"It was morally wrong," Brand said. "But it was an SOP."

A few hours later, Habibullah, the brother of a former Taliban commander, lost consciousness. He died shortly after midnight on Dec. 4, 2002.