Rights group reveals new U.S. abuses in Afghanistan

12/13/2004 4:00:00 PM GMT

Human Rights Watch said that it discovered new evidence that three more detainees have died in U.S. custody in Afghanistan.

The New York-based group also accused the Bush administration of “dragging its feet” on investigations that might have prevented the abuses of Iraqi detainees.

It said in an open letter to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld that the United States is continuing to fail to probe the abuses or prosecute the guilty, noting that the U.S.-run jails in Afghanistan aren’t operating according to the rule of law.

Human Rights Watch also demanded the U.S. army to release an internal report on its Afghan detention facilities, which U.S. authorities promised to release several months ago.

But the U.S. army didn’t improve its image in Afghanistan with the confusion and delay that has surrounded the internal investigation into its practices at its bases.

The group reported three more new cases of prisoners dying in U.S. detention, bringing the total number of dead detainees to six. Four cases involve accusations of murder or manslaughter.

“Government's failure”

One of the new cases involves an Afghan soldier who was trained by the U.S. army. The soldier died after he was mistakenly captured in the Gardez area of eastern Afghanistan and repeatedly beaten by U.S. forces.

Another case refers to four U.S. troops accused of killing an Afghan prisoner in 2002.

The group said that the new cases were uncovered because another U.S. campaign group demanded the release of documents from an internal army probe.

"It's time for the United States to come clean about crimes committed by U.S. forces in Afghanistan," said Brad Adams, the group's Asia division director.

"The United States has to get serious about prosecuting people implicated in prisoner deaths and mistreatment."

Human Rights Watch also said that it knows of "only a handful of criminal investigations" into these deaths and other cases of torture and abuse. It noted that only two U.S. personnel were charged with crimes.

It added that the "government's failure to hold its personnel accountable for serious abuses has spawned a culture of impunity among some personnel".

The American group also noted that the failure to prosecute those responsible for the abuses in Afghanistan “spawned a culture of impunity" among some interrogators and made torture-induced methods spread to Iraq.

"The U.S. government is dragging its feet on these investigations," Adams said.

"Abuse and arbitrary detention"

The group's letter to Rumsfeld also said that there were fewer complaints in the main U.S. detention facility at the Bagram airbase, north of Kabul.

However, "abuse and arbitrary detention" continue to emerge from the "forward operating bases" - smaller sites usually in frontline areas. It said that it is particularly concerned about the behavior of special forces troops at such bases.

Moreover, U.S. officials have always refused demands by the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission - the country's prominent rights group- to access their detention centers in the country.

So far, the office of Afghanistan’s president Hamid Karzai didn’t respond.