Sunday, May 16, 2004

Prisoner abuse

Col. Syed Nabi Siddiqui, 47, was acting out the humiliating treatment he said he received during 40 days as a detainee in three U.S. military prisons last year. He said his captors made barnyard jokes about his manhood, bent him into painful postures, photographed him naked, prevented him from sleeping, beat and stoned him, and taunted him while he relieved himself in a bucket.

"I kept begging them for water and they would spray something on my face, so I had to lick the drops," Siddiqui recounted at home in his village in Paktia province, as four of his young sons listened silently. "They asked me stupid questions like did I know Fidel Castro. . . . They covered my face and told me they put a snake and a scorpion on my neck. I thought I was going to die, but they were always laughing, like it was all a joke."

... Siddiqui, a veteran police officer in Paktia, said his ordeal began last July, shortly after he complained to the newly appointed provincial police chief about corruption and abuse by another police official. He said he was called to the chief's office and found several U.S. military officers there who asked for his assistance with some investigations and escorted him to their base outside the city.

There, he said, he was thrown into a locked room and held prisoner for 22 days.

...Siddiqui said his captors indulged in frequent sexual taunting and harassment that included poking fingers and objects in his rectum, photographing him while naked, making farm animal sounds and asking which kind of beast he preferred for sex. The worst moment, said the father of nine, was when he was told his wife and daughters had become prostitutes in his absence.

...Although his story became public only this week, he complained of mistreatment to [a] human rights group after he was released last August.

...According to press reports, [another] former detainee said he was hung from a ceiling and force-fed water while held last year in one of the same prisons as Siddiqui.
  WaPo article

No, not Abu Ghraib. This is in Afghanistan.

Hundreds of prisoners have passed through these centers in the past two years, and at least three are reported to have died. U.S. officials have repeatedly refused to discuss detention conditions and have allowed Red Cross delegates to visit only one of the facilities.

Human Rights Watch, a New York-based group, charged this week that mistreatment of prisoners in U.S. custody in Afghanistan was a "systemic problem." The group reported that detainees had been beaten, stripped, exposed to extreme temperatures and photographed while naked. It said some of the abuses were similar to those recently exposed and photographed in Abu Ghraib, a large prison run by the U.S. military in Iraq.

U.S. military officials in Kabul expressed shock and concern last week over Siddiqui's account, and promised to begin investigating immediately.


So much shock and concern. A few bad apples have kept systematic abuse hidden from "officials" for three years. Clever, aren't they?

Meanwhile, over at Guantanamo:

Terek Dergoul, one of the five British prisoners released from Guantanamo last March, said American guards digitally recorded the beatings and abuses.

He told the Observer newspaper of one assault by a five-man team of Extreme Reaction Force (ERF), saying "they pepper-sprayed me in the face and I started vomiting."

"They pinned me down and attacked me, poking their fingers in my eyes and forced my head down the toilet pan and flushed," he said, speaking for the first time about his ordeal in Guantanamo Bay.

"They tied me up like a beast and then they were kneeling on me, kicking and punching."

"Finally, they dragged me out of the cell in chains, into the recreation yard and shaved my beard, my hair, my eyebrows," he said.

"There was always a guy behind the ERF squad, filming what was going on," he added.

A Guantanamo spokesman, Lieutenant Colonel Leon Sumpter said the video films were made so the actions could be reviewed by senior officers.

"They tied me up like a beast and then they were kneeling on me, kicking and punching"

All tapes are kept in an archive at the base, he added.
  article

I would imagine they have been destroyed in the wake of the torture issue going public and to trials, but, who knows?