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Villagers Released By American Troops Say They Were Beaten, Kept In 'Cage'
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"They were beating us on the head and back and ribs. They were punching us with fists, kicking me with their feet," said Allah Noor, 40, a farmer and policeman for the new government.
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URUZGAN, Afghanistan, Feb. 11 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Afghan villagers, who were misidentified by U.S. military forces as Al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters, said they were beaten and kicked by their captors and imprisoned in a wooden-barred "cage" at a U.S. base in Kandhar, a leading U.S. paper said Monday.
Several of the 27 former prisoners, who were released Wednesday, February 6, said U.S. soldiers treated them so harshly that two men lost consciousness during the beatings while others suffered fractured ribs, loosened teeth and swollen noses, the Washington Post reported.
"They were beating us on the head and back and ribs," said Allah Noor, 40, a farmer and policeman for the new government who said he suffered two fractured ribs at the military base where the men were imprisoned. "They were punching us with fists, kicking me with their feet. They said, 'You are terrorist! You are Al-Qaeda! You are Taliban!' "
Four of the 27 men described their experiences in Uruzgan for the first time since they were nabbed in an early morning attack January 24 at a local school and a district government office that Pentagon officials described as outposts for Al-Qaeda and Taliban hold-outs. Twenty-one other villagers were killed in the assault and one U.S. soldier was wounded.
The U.S. attacks in this remote village in the home province of Afghanistan's interim leader Hamid Karzai added to a list of incidents involving misleading intelligence, mistaken identities and other errors that have led to killings of civilians and friendly forces during the war in Afghanistan, the Post added.
"We are sorry. We committed a mistake bombing this place," one officer told the ex-prisoners," after the U.S. military released the captives two weeks ago.
U.S. officials in Washington, acknowledging that something went wrong in Uruzgan, have said the CIA is distributing reparation money to the families of those killed.
In Washington, a Pentagon spokesman said the Defense Department would not comment on the complaints until the completion of an official investigation being conducted by the United States Central Command, U.S. daily newspaper, New York Times, reported.
Although the U.S. Central Command, which runs the war in Afghanistan, released the 27 men, it has steadfastly refused to acknowledge error, saying an investigation is still underway.
Local government officials said that many of those killed or captured, far from being Taliban or Al-Qaeda sympathizers, were involved in the struggle to oust Islamic forces and that most were working for the new administration.
Two of the men killed in the attack were heading a local disarmament drive to collect weapons from former Taliban sympathizers and other citizens; one of the prisoners was the new district police chief, Abdul Rauf.
Like many of his newly recruited police officers, Rauf was spending the night at the district police office the night of the attack. The gunfire and shouting outside the building jarred sleeping policemen awake just before 3 a.m. Rauf, who had a job similar to his current one before the Taliban took power in his province, recognized loud American voices.
"They are our friends," a relieved Rauf told his frightened men. "Don't run. They won't do anything to us."
Several minutes later, Rauf said, he was curled on his side fending off boot kicks to his back and knee jabs into his chest. He screamed in Pashto, "We're friends! We're friends, friends, friends!"
Rauf, who places his age somewhere between 60 and 65, heard one of his ribs crack, and then, he said, he blacked out.
Meanwhile, the British daily newspaper, The Independent, reported that the U.S. has been accused of openly flouting the Geneva Conventions at an Afghan jail where scores of prisoners are at risk of dying from disease and malnutrition, just days after U.S. President George W. Bush said Taliban fighters should be protected under international law.
The Independent learnt Sunday, February 10, that the Pentagon has "washed its hands" of Shebarghan jail in northern Afghanistan, which it helped to operate and where it interrogated many of its prisoners. It is now hoping that humanitarian groups and charities will step in and improve the conditions at the jail, where 3,300 prisoners are squeezed together in grossly overcrowded, unsanitary cells, and where many have already died from disease.
An inspection team from the Boston-based Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) visited the prison recently and declared it "a quiet atrocity". Their report portrayed an institution where there was no running water and little food or medicine. Up to 110 men were being held in cells designed for no more than 15, said the Independent.
Until mid January, the U.S. helped to operate the prison along with General Abdul Rashid Dostum, the warlord who is now deputy defense minister in the interim Afghan administration. A number of the prisoners – most of whom were captured after the fall of the northern city of Kunduz – were taken to Kandhar or Guantanamo Bay in Cuba for further questioning.
However, despite the appalling conditions at the prison, the United States says it is no longer having anything to do with it, even though it claims the right to return to interview other prisoners.
Leonard Rubenstein, executive director of PHR, said: "The information is that the Pentagon is doing nothing for the conditions at the prison. That is a decision that has been taken at four-star general level. They are not taking responsibility for that prison." The group has argued that under the Geneva Conventions, the U.S. still has responsibility for conditions at the jail.
"This obligation exists irrespective [of] whether the U.S. physically captured the prisoners, whether it currently has custody of them, or whether the detained individuals are considered prisoners of war of the U.S.," it says in its report.
Last week, President Bush announced a partial U-turn on the status of prisoners captured in Afghanistan, saying that the protections of the Geneva Conventions should be afforded to Taliban prisoners, but not Al-Qaeda prisoners. Neither should be considered prisoners of war.
Many of those who are being held at Shebarghan are ordinary Taliban fighters. The U.S. has admitted that higher-ranking fighters have already been moved.
"No one wants to treat the enemy well," Rubenstein said. "But that is exactly why you have the Geneva Conventions. There is a degree of self-interest – it is quite risky [for any U.S. soldiers captured overseas] if the U.S. government does not apply the conventions."
There is another aspect to what has happened at Shebarghan which also worries aid agencies with experience of Afghanistan. "Detention has always been a business affair in Afghanistan," said an aid official who did not want to be named. "Detainees are always sold back to their families."
This factor has made some foreign relief organizations reluctant to provide food and medical supplies to Shebarghan because they fear this would relieve General Dostum of the cost of keeping the prisoners and give him no incentive to let them go until their families pay ransoms.
"We don't want to substitute ourselves for General Dostum, which would encourage this trade in human beings," said the aid official. He admitted, however, that if they did nothing, as the cold intensifies in Afghanistan, then more of the prisoners would die.
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