Military investigators are looking into another allegation of abuse in a network of secretive US jails where at least four prisoners have died, the military said Saturday.
Meanwhile, a rights group said that an Afghan man claimed he was burned and beaten so badly last year by militiamen guarding a US base that he needed surgery.
The cases add to concern about reported prisoner abuse in Afghanistan stretching back to the war that ousted the Taliban in late 2001 -- reports that have received attention since the scandal broke over detainee mistreatment in Iraq.
The US military recently opened at least two new investigations after former Afghan prisoners said they were beaten and sexually abused.
US military spokesman Major Jon Siepmann would not give details of the probe, including when or where the alleged abuse took place, whether it involved any deaths or who was accused.
Siepmann said the Naval Criminal Investigative Service was investigating, which suggests that Marines might have been implicated. The Marines are a separate service within the Department of the Navy. Navy special forces have also served in Afghanistan.
"The allegation is characterized as detainee abuse," Siepmann told reporters. He said "appropriate action" would be taken based on the outcome of the investigation.
"It's the same old story," said Nader Nadery of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission. "They never share information, and we just don't know what's going on in these detention centers."
This month, Lieutenant General David Barno, the top US commander in Afghanistan, is to announce the results of a review of a network of 20 jails across the country.
Officials say the prison program has already been altered as a result of the review, carried out since late May by a brigadier general under Barno's command.
Rights activists are also concerned about the behavior of Afghan militias working with the 20,000 US-led troops here.
Nadery said the commission recently interviewed a man who said he was arrested and tortured by the same militiamen relatives have accused of killing his cousin near a US base in southern Helmand province last November.
The man, Abdul Haleem, filed a complaint that the Afghan soldiers beat his feet and body and set fire to pieces of plastic laid on his skin during a four-day ordeal that began Nov. 3.
US soldiers visited the guard post outside their base in Girishk during the four days and saw his bloodied state but made no effort to intervene, according to Haleem's account.
The Afghan soldiers were trying to extract a confession to crimes which Haleem didn't specify, Nadery said.
Relatives said in late June that Haleem was arrested at the same time as his cousin, Abdul Wahid, who the US military says died in their custody on Nov. 6.
Abdul Wahid's father blamed Afghan forces for his death, which is the subject of a US Army investigation.
Nadery said commission officials had been seeking a meeting with the US military to present their concerns and a dossier including photos of scars on Haleem's body -- some from burns, others from surgery he underwent in Pakistan for abuse-related abdominal injuries.
A US military spokeswoman said she was unaware of Haleem's case.
"They should at least make sure that these things don't happen," Nadery said.
The International Committee of the Red Cross regularly visits prisoners at the main jail at Bagram Air Base north of Kabul, and last week began visiting the next-largest jail in the southern city of Kandahar.
But its reports are not released, and neither the Afghan human rights commission nor the media have been given any access to the shadowy US holding facilities.
‘CHILD PORNOGRAPHY’: The doll on Shein’s Web site measure about 80cm in height, and it was holding a teddy bear in a photo published by a daily newspaper France’s anti-fraud unit on Saturday said it had reported Asian e-commerce giant Shein (希音) for selling what it described as “sex dolls with a childlike appearance.” The French Directorate General for Competition, Consumer Affairs and Fraud Control (DGCCRF) said in a statement that the “description and categorization” of the items on Shein’s Web site “make it difficult to doubt the child pornography nature of the content.” Shortly after the statement, Shein announced that the dolls in question had been withdrawn from its platform and that it had launched an internal inquiry. On its Web site, Le Parisien daily published a
China’s Shenzhou-20 crewed spacecraft has delayed its return mission to Earth after the vessel was possibly hit by tiny bits of space debris, the country’s human spaceflight agency said yesterday, an unusual situation that could disrupt the operation of the country’s space station Tiangong. An impact analysis and risk assessment are underway, the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) said in a statement, without providing a new schedule for the return mission, which was originally set to land in northern China yesterday. The delay highlights the danger to space travel posed by increasing amounts of debris, such as discarded launch vehicles or vessel
RUBBER STAMP? The latest legislative session was the most productive in the number of bills passed, but critics attributed it to a lack of dissenting voices On their last day at work, Hong Kong’s lawmakers — the first batch chosen under Beijing’s mantra of “patriots administering Hong Kong” — posed for group pictures, celebrating a job well done after four years of opposition-free politics. However, despite their smiles, about one-third of the Legislative Council will not seek another term in next month’s election, with the self-described non-establishment figure Tik Chi-yuen (狄志遠) being among those bowing out. “It used to be that [the legislature] had the benefit of free expression... Now it is more uniform. There are multiple voices, but they are not diverse enough,” Tik said, comparing it
North Korea yesterday fired a ballistic missile, Seoul’s military said, about a week after US President Donald Trump approved South Korea’s plan to build a nuclear-powered submarine. Analysts have said Seoul’s plan to construct one of the nuclear-driven vessels would likely draw an aggressive response from Pyongyang. South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said North Korea fired an unidentified ballistic missile toward the East Sea, referring to the body of water also known as the Sea of Japan. The missile landed in the sea outside Japan’s economic waters and no damage or injuries had been reported, Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi said. The missile
RSS