Human rights watchdog Amnesty International yesterday urged NATO-led forces in Afghanistan to stop transferring prisoners to the Afghan authorities, saying it feared they could be tortured.
In a new report, Amnesty said the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) could be exposing detainees to abuse, including whipping, beatings, exposure to extreme cold and food deprivation.
It singled out Afghanistan's National Directorate of Security (NDS) as a major offender and said the agency "currently poses a serious threat to those in its custody."
Amnesty said Britain, Canada, Denmark, the Netherlands and Norway had signed "memorandums of understanding" and other accords on prisoner transfers with the Afghan authorities, and that Belgium, France, Germany and Sweden may do so too.
The agreements, it said, "do not fulfill the absolute and non-derogable legal obligation not to put anyone in a situation where they are at risk of torture or other ill-treatment."
ISAF, which comprises some 40,000 troops from 37 nations, is trying to spread the influence of Afghan President Hamid Karzai's weak central government across the strife-torn country, but is battling a tenacious Taliban-led insurgency.
Amnesty urged ISAF to stop "any further transfers of detainees to the Afghan authorities and take responsibility for the custody of such detainees until effective safeguards against torture and other ill-treatment are introduced in the Afghan detention system."
The group called on ISAF not to rely on memorandums of understanding as a guarantee that prisoners would not be tortured once they are handed over, and to help train Afghan prison staff and reform the prison system.
It urged Afghanistan to reform the NDS and allow independent monitors into all detention facilities.
NATO spokesman James Appathurai said the military alliance had no evidence that any prisoners were being abused and did not plan to build its own jails.
He said: "NATO has no proof of ill-treatment or of torture of detainees that its forces have transferred to the Afghans."
"It's true there are concerns. This is precisely why the allies have invested, and a lot, in the reform of the Afghan institutions, including the NDS. It's the only appropriate and acceptable way to improve the situation."
But "Afghanistan is a sovereign country", he said. "It's not up to NATO to put a parallel detention system in place on Afghan territory.
Four people jailed in the landmark Hong Kong national security trial of "47 democrats" accused of conspiracy to commit subversion were freed today after more than four years behind bars, the second group to be released in a month. Among those freed was long-time political and LGBTQ activist Jimmy Sham (岑子杰), who also led one of Hong Kong’s largest pro-democracy groups, the Civil Human Rights Front, which disbanded in 2021. "Let me spend some time with my family," Sham said after arriving at his home in the Kowloon district of Jordan. "I don’t know how to plan ahead because, to me, it feels
Poland is set to hold a presidential runoff election today between two candidates offering starkly different visions for the country’s future. The winner would succeed Polish President Andrzej Duda, a conservative who is finishing his second and final term. The outcome would determine whether Poland embraces a nationalist populist trajectory or pivots more fully toward liberal, pro-European policies. An exit poll by Ipsos would be released when polls close today at 9pm local time, with a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points. Final results are expected tomorrow. Whoever wins can be expected to either help or hinder the
North Korea has detained another official over last week’s failed launch of a warship, which damaged the naval destroyer, state media reported yesterday. Pyongyang announced “a serious accident” at Wednesday last week’s launch ceremony, which crushed sections of the bottom of the new destroyer. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un called the mishap a “criminal act caused by absolute carelessness.” Ri Hyong-son, vice department director of the Munitions Industry Department of the Party Central Committee, was summoned and detained on Sunday, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported. He was “greatly responsible for the occurrence of the serious accident,” it said. Ri is the fourth person
The collapse of the Swiss Birch glacier serves as a chilling warning of the escalating dangers faced by communities worldwide living under the shadow of fragile ice, particularly in Asia, experts said. Footage of the collapse on Wednesday showed a huge cloud of ice and rubble hurtling down the mountainside into the hamlet of Blatten. Swiss Development Cooperation disaster risk reduction adviser Ali Neumann said that while the role of climate change in the case of Blatten “still needs to be investigated,” the wider impacts were clear on the cryosphere — the part of the world covered by frozen water. “Climate change and
RSS