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US reports detail pattern of Afghan abuse

Unreleased US Army reports detailing the deaths of two Afghan men who were beaten to death by US soldiers show that military prison abuses began in Afghanistan in 2002, and were part of a systematic pattern of mistreatment, a human rights representative said Saturday.

More than two dozen US soldiers face possible criminal prosecution -- and one has already been charged with manslaughter -- in the deaths at the main US detention facility in Bagram, just north of the Afghan capital of Kabul.

As documented by the Army's Criminal Investigation Command, the men died a year before the photographed horrors at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, according to John Sifton, the Afghanistan researcher for the New York-based Human Rights Watch.

In a phone interview, Sifton said his group had obtained 20 pages of electronically scanned Army reports.

The American Civil Liberties Union sued to obtain the case files under the Freedom of Information Act, but the Army withheld portions of the records because of an ongoing investigation and possible charges.

On Saturday, a Pentagon spokesman, Lieutenant Colonel Jeremy Martin, would say only that the cases from 2002 "were thoroughly investigated and people were punished appropriately."

"The Bush Administration and the Pentagon describe the abuse problems as isolated incidents, not systematic, not part of a plan. The evidence shows otherwise," Sifton said. "Far from being isolated incidents, these beatings were part of a pattern of abuse."

Members of the 519th Military Intelligence Battalion who set up intelligence operations at the Bagram facility did the same at the Abu Ghraib prison.

The two Afghan detainees died in Dec. 2002 -- a week apart -- as reported in Army memos, with updates detailing their fate after they were captured by Afghan forces and handed to the US military.

There were several other deaths of Afghans in American custody before December 2002, Sifton said, "and we want more information."

"It's amazing," he said. "Nobody has been punished for this. The command has recommended that 28 people be prosecuted for this, but only two have been charged so far."

The unreleased Army documents detail US military investigations of the deaths of a man named Mullah Habibullah, about 30, and another identified only as Dilawar, a 22-year-old taxi driver with a 2-year-old daughter, according to Sifton.

Under US detention, the two men were chained to the ceiling in standing positions, one at the waist and one by the wrists, while their feet remained on the ground, according to the Army reports. One of them was maimed over a five-day period, dying with his leg muscle tissue destroyed from blows to his knees and lower body.
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