US abuse of Afghan prisoners 'systemic', says rights group

8.15am

KABUL - Mistreatment of prisoners by American forces in Afghanistan is systemic, Human Rights Watch said on Thursday, a day after the US army in Kabul launched a fresh inquiry into beating and sexual abuse at secret jails.

The rights body demanded information on how two Afghans died in US custody 18 months ago and called for wider access to detention centres where hundreds of al Qaeda and other Islamic militant suspects are held.

A spokesman for the US Criminal Investigation Command, looking into the two deaths at Bagram air base just north of Kabul in December, 2002, said the investigation was "ongoing".

"We are close to completing our investigation, and once it is completed we will forward it to the appropriate commanders for disposition," he said by telephone from the United States.

He passed on a query about a third Afghan death at a jail near Asadabad in June, 2003, to the Justice Department.

The US military in Kabul opened an inquiry this week into complaints by a former police officer that he was beaten, kicked, taunted, sexually abused and photographed naked during roughly 40 days in American custody in Afghanistan last summer.

The US-led force of 20,000 troops hunting al Qaeda and the Taleban is keen to contain fallout from the complaint, having faced an Arab world backlash for abusing prisoners in Iraq.

"Afghans have been telling us for well over a year about mistreatment in US custody," John Sifton, Afghanistan researcher for Human Rights Watch, said in a statement.

"Mistreatment of prisoners by US military and intelligence personnel in Afghanistan is systemic and not limited to a few isolated cases," the statement said.

Sifton said the United States should publicise the results of its investigations of abuse, fully prosecute those responsible and provide access to independent monitors."

Only the International Committee of the Red Cross has access to US detention centres in Afghanistan, including the largest at Bagram where some 300 suspects are believed to be held.

Suspected militants detained by US forces are either taken to centres in Afghanistan or to Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. Often nothing is known of their fate until they are freed.

The US military said in March last year the deaths of two Afghans at Bagram were homicides and news reports quoted a spokesman as saying they had suffered "blunt force" injuries.

Sifton said Human Rights Watch had called for the results of investigations into Afghan deaths to be released.

"We've basically been stonewalled... It's been well over a year since the two (Bagram) detainees were killed in Afghanistan, and US officials are still supposedly investigating. It's time for them to tell the public what happened."

The rights body said some detainees complained of being stripped and photographed while naked.

"Some of these abusive practices during interrogation were similar to those recently reported in Iraq," it said.

The Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission has also requested access to US detention centres.

Commissioner Abdul Razique Samadi said 43 Afghans had complained to the AIHRC about abuse by US forces, although the new allegation by the police officer was the most serious.

Samadi said he did not believe the treatment of prisoners in Afghanistan was comparable with that in Iraq, but warned that any complaint could play into the hands of militants fighting an insurgency against US forces and the central government.

"Those hardliners will misuse this, so why not be open and transparent?"

- REUTERS