Detainees in Afghan prisons are hung from the ceilings by their wrists, severely beaten with cables and wooden sticks, have their toenails torn off, are treated with electric shock, and even have their genitals twisted until they lose consciousness, according to a study released Monday by the United Nations.
The study, which covered 47 facilities sites in 22 provinces, found “a compelling pattern and practice of systematic torture and ill-treatment” during interrogation by US-supported Afghan authorities. Both US and NATO military trainers and counterparts have been working closely with these authorities, consistently supervising the detention facilities and funding their operations.
The report detailed instances where detained suspects not yet charged with crimes signed confessions only after days of torture, sealing their fate as a convict in Afghanistan.
Before the report was published, the Afghan government got word of its findings and officials sternly denied the claims of torture. Gen. John R. Allen, the NATO commander in Afghanistan, saw a draft of the report and halted transfers of suspected insurgents to 16 of the 47 facilities uncovered in the report.
The Afghan government claims that although the torture was widespread and systemic, they do not condone torture. It has reportedly set up an “assessment unit” to look into the issue and has already dismissed some of the employees at one particularly abusive facility. No prosecution for the torturers has yet been initiated.
The negligence of the US and NATO administrators, and of the Obama administration in Washington, overseeing the detention facilities in Afghanistan could be prosecutable, although chances for accountability in that respect are very remote. The revelations may trigger restrictions on US aid to Afghanistan, under a provision of law called the Leahy law.
Wait, are we there to bring modernity to them or to learn the ways of the middle ages on how to treat human beings? When this is all said and done, if it ever is, it will be fascinating to see what the war of terror has turned us into.
Three-tier test for evaluating claims of presidential power,
residential authority vis a vis Congress into three categories, ranked in descending order of legitimacy: (1) those cases in which the President was acting with express or implied authority from Congress, (2) cases in which Congress had thus far been silent, and (3) cases in which the President was defying congressional orders.
http://www.answers.com/topic/youngstown-sheet-tub…
How does this fit in in Afghanistan. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leahy_Law
The Afghan government claims that although the torture was widespread and systemic, they do not condone torture. It has reportedly set up an “assessment unit” to look into the issue and has already dismissed some of the employees at one particularly abusive facility.
"These defendants were men of a station and rank which does not soil its own hands with blood. They were men who knew how to use lesser folk as tools. We want to reach the planners and designers, the inciters and leaders…."
–Justice Robert Jackson at Nuremberg http://www.larouchepub.com/impeach_ridge/ridge_5….
Torture in a prison? Does the name Guantanamo come to mind?
Countries supporting the US the criminal onslaught on Afghanistan perportedly do so under the pretext that they help the help the population by improving the lot of the Afghans by introducing our ‘democratic humanitarian values’ to a backward people: building schools, hospitals, training the police and so forth.
That in my estimation is just a case of ‘manufacturing consent’ among western public. Because if that was so why not take over the Afghan prisons, supervise and train prison wardens, allow Red Cross, Amnesty International to visit these prison and in general restructure the entire Afghan prison system on the same humanitarian values as we know them in civilzed countries.