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New Zealand's SAS complains about US abuse of detainees

New Zealand military forces in Afghanistan were reported yesterday to have complained about the treatment of prisoners they handed over to the US.

The elite SAS soldiers were so concerned they called a meeting of other special forces in Kandahar, the New Zealand Herald quoted a Danish military source as saying.

Denmark was among the countries that sent special forces to Afghanistan after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack on New York's World Trade Center and it was among the forces present at the meeting called by New Zealand soldiers.

`Snatch-grab'

The forces, which included soldiers from Australia, Canada, Norway, Germany and Britain, participated in military operations known as "snatch-grabs" -- missions whose objective was to round up terrorist suspects to hand over to the US for detention and interrogation.

But New Zealand soldiers were said to be concerned that some of the detainees they had handed over to US forces in 2002 had not been properly registered.

Instead of being identified, photographed and fingerprinted and having their weapons properly registered, they had their heads shaved, no photos or ID taken and their belongings were thrown into a single pile, the report said.

New Zealand Defense Minister Phil Goff said he was not aware of such a meeting having taken place, although he would not necessarily hear about meetings at an operational level.

Deal with ICRC

But he said that after the first deployment of the SAS to Afghanistan the former New Zealand Defence Force chief, Bruce Ferguson, negotiated a deal with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to follow up on any prisoners New Zealand forces helped to capture.

Goff said that the New Zealand SAS had been involved in the capture of 50 to 70 terrorist suspects.

They were held for no more than five hours before being handed over to the US and Canadian forces.

"We followed up to see what had happened to those people and to the best of our knowledge, none of those people are still in custody in the hands of US authorities," he said.

`Uncomfortable'

Asked whether the Red Cross agreement pointed to New Zealand being unhappy with the treatment of Afghan prisoners, Goff said: "We were uncomfortable with the fact that we didn't have a procedure whereby people could be immediately followed up on and that's why ... that arrangement was made with the ICRC."

Goff acknowledged there was some debate about whether detainees in those circumstances were prisoners of war or not.

New Zealand has had three deployments of SAS in Afghanistan since the beginning of military operations there in late 2001.

Its last mission ended in 2005 and no new deployment was being considered.

There are 116 New Zealand servicemen in Afghanistan's Bamyan Province working on reconstruction projects.
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