A human-rights group on Sunday accused US forces in Afghanistan of detaining at least 1,000 Afghans and other people over the past two years in "a climate of almost total impunity" that it contends violates international human-rights law. A spokesman for the US military in Afghanistan disputed the findings.
In a 60-page report issued on Sunday, the group, Human Rights Watch, also called on the US military to release the results of investigations into the deaths of three Afghans in US custody in 2002 and last year. Initial military medical investigators declared two of the deaths homicides.
The report also said it had received "numerous reports" of US forces relying on faulty intelligence or using "excessive or indiscriminate force" that resulted in avoidable civilian deaths and the detention of innocent people. It contended that the US was employing interrogation techniques, like shackling prisoners, stripping them naked or depriving them of sleep, that the State Department had condemned as torture in countries like Libya, North Korea and Iran.
"There is little doubt that US policies on the detention of terrorism suspects both in Afghanistan and elsewhere have harmed public opinion of the United States around the world," the report said. "This course of action is shortsighted and damaging to the rule of law, not only in Afghanistan but across the world."
Lieutenant Colonel Bryan Hilferty, a spokesman for the US-led coalition in Afghanistan, said US forces were acting properly. He said the procedures used in the main US detention facility at Bagram Air Base just north of Kabul had been changed.
"We are in complete compliance with the laws of combat," he said.
Much of the report focused on the treatment of detainees in Bagram and other facilities across the country. The International Committee of the Red Cross is the only outside group allowed to visit the facilities and to carry messages between detainees and their families. For the past two years, the US military has refused to release information about the number of detainees it is holding, their nationalities or their names.
The report said detainees were in a legal limbo in which they could be held in indefinite secret detention, not formally charged and barred from contact with lawyers and journalists. It said the detainees in Afghanistan, no matter what their rank or role, had been treated as "unlawful combatants" who had far fewer legal rights than prisoners of war.
"They are held at the apparent whim of US authorities, in some cases for more than a year," the report said. "The general lack of due process with the US detention system violates both international humanitarian law and basic standard of human rights law."
Hilferty said the report did not take into account the fact that combat continues in Afghanistan and that using law enforcement methods was inappropriate.
"We are engaged in combat operations," Hilferty said. "It's a war."
KINGPIN: Marset allegedly laundered the proceeds of his drug enterprise by purchasing and sponsoring professional soccer teams and even put himself in the starting lineups Notorious Latin American narco trafficker Sebastian Marset, who eluded police for years, was handed over to US authorities after his arrest on Friday in Bolivia. Marset, a Uruguayan national who was on the US most-wanted list, was passed to agents of the US Drug Enforcement Administration at Santa Cruz airport in Bolivia, then put on a US airplane, Bolivian state television showed. “The arrest and deportation were carried out pursuant to a court order issued by the US justice system,” Bolivian Minister of Government Marco Antonio Oviedo told reporters. The alleged kingpin was arrested in an upscale neighborhood of Santa
FAKE NEWS? ‘When the government demands the press become a state mouthpiece under the threat of punishment, something has gone very wrong,’ a civic group said The top US broadcast regulator on Saturday threatened media outlets over negative coverage of the Middle East war, after US President Donald Trump slammed critical headlines from the “Fake News Media.” The US president since his first term has derided mainstream media as “fake news” and has sued major outlets over what he sees as unfair coverage. Brendan Carr, head of the US Federal Communications Commission — which oversees the nation’s radio, television and Internet media — said broadcasters risked losing their licenses over news coverage. “The law is clear. Broadcasters must operate in the public interest, and they will
SCANDAL: Other images discovered earlier show Andrew bent over a female and lying across the laps of a number of women, while Mandelson is pictured in his underpants A photograph of former British prince Andrew and veteran politician Peter Mandelson sitting in bathrobes alongside late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein was unearthed on Friday in previously published documents. The image is believed to be the first known photograph of the two men with Epstein. They are currently engulfed in scandal in the UK over their ties to their mutual friend. The undated photograph, first reported by ITV News, shows King Charles III’s disgraced brother and former British ambassador to the US sitting barefoot outside on a wooden deck. They appear to have mugs with a US flag on them
INFLUTENTIAL THEORIST: Habermas was particularly critical of the ‘limited interest’ shown by German politicians in ‘shaping a politically effective Europe Jurgen Habermas, whose work on communication, rationality and sociology made him one of the world’s most influential philosophers and a key intellectual figure in his native Germany, has died. He was 96. Habermas’ publisher, Suhrkamp, said he died on Saturday in Starnberg, near Munich. Habermas frequently weighed in on political matters over several decades. His extensive writing crossed the boundaries of academic and philosophical disciplines, providing a vision of modern society and social interaction. His best-known works included the two-volume Theory of Communicative Action. Habermas, who was 15 at the time of Nazi Germany’s defeat, later recalled the dawn of
RSS