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One
side of CAIR’s anti-torture postcard
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KABUL
, July 3 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – As the US military
said Saturday, July 3, it is investigating a new allegation of
prisoner abuse in
Afghanistan
, the largest Muslim advocacy group in the
United States
has launched a nationwide sign campaign to open an investigation into
the abuse of prisoners by US troops in
Iraq
and elsewhere around the world.
"This
week the coalition reviewed a new allegation of detainee abuse
occurring within its area of responsibility,"
US
military spokesman Major Jon Siepmann said. "The Naval Criminal
Investigation Service is looking into the allegation."
Siepmann
said he was unable to comment on where or when the latest abuse
supposedly took place or any other details regarding the allegation,
reported Agence
France
-Presse (AFP).
"Right
now it's just an allegation, we don't know that anything in particular
occurred," he said. "We cannot release any of the details of
the investigation itself."
Siepmann
said the Naval Criminal Investigation Service usually looked into
cases involving "naval and marine corps issues."
"They
were the appropriate entity to conduct the investigation," he
said.
The
US
military is also investigating the deaths of five Afghans, three of
which occurred while the deceased were in
US
custody.
Two
of these deaths, which occurred in December 2002, were the result of
"blunt-force injuries."
Two
allegations of prisoner abuse emerged in Afghanistan
following international outcry over the treatment of detainees in
Iraq .
The
allegations are believed to include assault, poor living
conditions and sleep deprivation.
Afghanistan 's Independent Human Rights Commission has already registered three
complaints of prison abuse.
One
complaint involves an ex-police officer who says he was beaten,
deprived of sleep and humiliated in custody in 2003.
Amnesty
International published a report in April, hitting out at the US
violations of the rights of prisoners held by the US
army in Guantanamo (Cuba) and
Afghanistan .
According
to AFP, the American military has a primary detention facility at
their main base some 50 kilometers (31 miles) north of Kabul
at Bagram Air Base.
Another
19 transit detention centers are placed around the country, some in
very rugged and remote areas where troops from a 20,000-strong US-led
force are fighting Taliban, Al-Qaeda and other militants.
So
far, only the International Committee of the Red Cross has been able
to visit the estimated 300 people detained at Bagram.
Anti-Torture
Campaign
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Former
Afghan prisoner Khwaja Sayed Nabi Siddiqi, who said he was abused
in detention (AFP)
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Meanwhile,
the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR)
launched Friday, July 2, a nationwide anti-torture
campaign.
CAIR
urged the American public to send a postcard to their elected
representatives in Congress to open an investigation into the
US prisoner scandal in Iraq .
"By
sending the postcard below to your elected representatives, you are
saying that we, as Americans, must re-establish our moral and legal
obligations to respect basic human rights. As we fight the war on
terror, we must not violate the moral and ethical values that we are
trying to uphold in America and around the world," read the logo of the campaign.
The
postcard carries on one of its front a picture of an Iraqi prisoner
tortured by his US jailers.
The
other front runs a quote by US President George W. Bush reading: "The
United States is committed to the worldwide elimination of torture and we are
leading this fight by example."
The
U.S. found itself in an unenviable situation after the ever-growing scandal
of Iraqi prisoner abuse at the hands of American soldiers and officers
broke
into public view last April.
Bush
had denounced the misconduct as "abhorrent, shameless and
unacceptable" and apologized
for it.
A
US Christian group had filmed a
TV ad aired on June 15 on Arab satellite channels, condemning
the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by "rogue" US
soldiers and affirming that the people of America do really care.
