Evidence of U.S. complicity in the execution and torture of prisoners:
1. Bagram
The U.S. Army is conducting a criminal investigation into whether its soldiers caused the deaths of two Afghan prisoners at Bagram air base in December, a military spokesman said today.
The men died while under U.S. control, and a military pathologist listed homicide as their official cause of death, said the spokesman, Col. Roger King. The death certificates for both men said they had died of blunt force injuries, in addition to other causes. 3/5/03
washingtonpost.com
(One more reason to oppose the ICC, so the guilty will never be punished.)
-----------------
While the U.S. government publicly denounces the use of torture, each of the current national security officials interviewed for this article defended the use of violence against captives as just and necessary. They expressed confidence that the American public would back their view. The CIA, which has primary responsibility for interrogations, declined to comment.
"If you don't violate someone's human rights some of the time, you probably aren't doing your job," said one official who has supervised the capture and transfer of accused terrorists. "I don't think we want to be promoting a view of zero tolerance on this. That was the whole problem for a long time with the CIA."
The off-limits patch of ground at Bagram is one of a number of secret detention centers overseas where U.S. due process does not apply, according to several U.S. and European national security officials, where the CIA undertakes or manages the interrogation of suspected terrorists. Another is Diego Garcia, a somewhat horseshoe-shaped island in the Indian Ocean that the United States leases from Britain.
washingtonpost.com
2. Mazar-e-Sharif
Dostum is one of Afghanistan's most feared and notorious warlords. When his fighters took Mazar-e Sharif from the Taliban in 1997, they threw prisoners into wells and tossed in grenades to finish them off, the United Nations reported. The Taliban settled the score when they recaptured the city in 1998; a UN report charged the Islamic militia with executing thousands of people, many under severe torture.
"Well, the president's policy is "dead or alive." Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld joked last week with reporters. "I have my preference."
"The implication that a dead enemy is better than a live one will not have been lost on the murderous warlords of the Alliance," wrote the Times of London. "If they think they can get away with killing their Taliban prisoners, they will do so."
Toronto Star 11/28/01
-----------------
Many of the foreign fighters are believed to have ties to Osama bin Laden. As the surrender deal for Kunduz was being brokered last week, US Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said he hoped they would be killed or captured, and not allowed to go free.
That’s exactly what happened to nearly 700 of the foreign fighters being held in a fortress outside the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif, who were killed by alliance troops and US airstrikes on the compound.
agrnews.org
aeronautics.ru
Notice the picture of the dead Taliban, with his hands tied together. If you saw a picture of a dead American POW, with his hands tied together, you'd assume he was executed, right?
--------------
An Associated Press photographer Wednesday saw a field of about 50 bodies laid out in the southern part of the fort. He watched as northern alliance fighters cut the scarves from the bound hands of some of the corpses. At least one fighter pried gold fillings from a corpse.
Associated Press 11/28/01
-------------
The precise nature of the threat raised by Mr Spann and a CIA colleague called Dave is unclear, but on the video Mr Spann, 32, wearing jeans and a black jumper and with an AK47 assault rifle strapped across his back, is seen nodding towards Mr Walker, 20, and then saying to Dave: "I explained to him what the deal is". The video shows Mr Walker kneeling on the ground, emaciated, filthy, wearing loose black trousers and a tunic, with his elbows tied behind his back, and cowering as Mr Spann remonstrates
with him. Mr Walker stares at the ground throughout.
"Dave" then replies: "The problem is, he's got to decide if he wants to live or die. If he wants to die, he's going to die here. Or he's going to f****** spend the rest of his short f****** life in prison. It's his decision, man.
"We can only help the guys who want to talk to us. We can only get the Red Cross to help so many guys."
The mention of the Red Cross appears to be a reference to a representative of the international charity who was trying to register the thousands of Taliban and al-Qa'ida fighters in the prison.
<http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia_china/story.jsp?story=108988
(Notice the explicit threat to kill a prisoner, who happened to be an American citizen, as an interrogation technique. A threat that was carried out, for almost all the prisoners except Walker.)
-------------
International Red Cross workers Nov. 28 began removing the bodies of hundreds of dead Taliban prisoners from the Qala-e-Jhangi fort, near the Afghan city of Mazar-e-Sharif. An uprising by the prisoners, most of whom were Chechen, Pakistani or Arab Taliban fighters, led to a three-day clash with Northern Alliance and foreign forces. According to reports, all of the 300 to 600 prisoners were killed after intense fighting backed by U.S. air strikes on the compound.
punjabilok.com
--------------
3.Death by Container
The Taliban and Qaeda forces at Konduz surrendered in a negotiated deal that took two to three days to hammer out. According to Shams-ul-Haq (Shamuk) Naseri, a mid-level Northern Alliance commander who was present, the talks were held in the presence of three American intelligence officers and a dozen or more Special Forces soldiers. Northern Alliance commanders, including General Dostum, agreed to relatively generous conditions: The Afghan fighters would be allowed to go home to their villages. Most of the Pakistanis could also return home after the Americans picked out suspected Qaeda operatives. Arabs and other foreign fighters would be turned over to the United Nations or some other international organization......Dostum and another Northern Alliance commander, Atta Mohammed, were at Yerganak to monitor the surrender. So were dozens of American Special Forces troops, according to U.S. and Afghan participants. Some of the Special Forces teams were zipping around the area on four-wheeler motorcycles; Dostum was filmed at the time enjoying a ride on the back of one.......Then they herded the captives into the containers, as many as 200 to a truck. The fighters realized they were not going home, as promised. "F -- k Shamuk Naseri," one driver recalls a prisoner's screaming. "He betrayed us." The doors of the container trucks were locked.
globalpolicy.org
---------------
The discovery of numerous mass graves, filled with bones and skulls, raises questions about exactly what happened to prisoners after they were captured last November in the northern city of Konduz by the U.S.-backed forces of Northern Alliance Gen. Adbul Rashid Dostum. The ground around Mazar-e-Sharif offers abundant evidence of mass death. In May, investigators with the Boston, Massachusetts-based group Physicians for Human Rights examined a grave in Dasht-e-Leili and said hundreds of victims had been dumped there. But how and why the men died is still uncertain.
Human-rights groups have accused Afghan forces of suffocating hundreds of Taliban fighters by locking them in unventilated steel shipping containers after their capture. The captives were taken to a prison in Sheberghan, some 200 miles from Konduz. Not all of them were dead on arrival. Many are still behind bars at Sheberghan, where they told CNN of their surrender and the aftermath. They said they were packed tightly into trucks and shipping containers for the trip to the prison, and that many of their Taliban comrades did not survive. "We don't know how many people died," one prisoner said. "We know that we were about 12,000 people, and now there is only 4,000 or 3,500. We don't know where are the other people."
cnn.com
-------------------
NEWSWEEK's extensive inquiries of prisoners, truckdrivers, Afghan militiamen and local villagers -- including interviews with survivors who licked and chewed each other's skin to stay alive -- suggest also that many hundreds of people died.
globalpolicy.org
--------------
4. Torture in Herat:
Ismail Khan has personally ordered some of the politically motivated arrests and beatings, which have taken place throughout 2002. The Human Rights Watch report documents beatings with thorny branches, sticks, cables, and rifle butts. The most serious cases of torture involved hanging detainees upside down, whipping and using electric shocks. Members of the Pashtun minority have been specially targeted for abuse.
Human Rights Watch criticized international actors for legitimizing and supporting warlords like Ismail Khan. Earlier this year, U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld called on Ismail Khan during a visit to Herat, and afterward described him to reporters as "an appealing person."
In Herat, Human Rights Watch researchers found a closed society in which there is virtually no dissent or criticism of the government, no independent newspapers, and no freedom to hold public meetings. Ismail Khan and his supporters have intimidated journalists and printers and stifled or controlled the few civic organizations they permit to exist. Non-political civic groups have stopped gathering, and university students refrain from discussing political issues.
Human Rights Watch noted that both the US and Iranian militaries have a presence in the area, regularly meet with Ismail Khan and members of his government, and have previously given military and financial assistance to Ismail Khan and other commanders allied with him.
globalpolicy.org
----------------
5.subcontracted torture
In other cases, usually involving lower-level captives, the CIA hands them to foreign intelligence services -- notably those of Jordan, Egypt and Morocco -- with a list of questions the agency wants answered. These "extraordinary renditions" are done without resort to legal process and usually involve countries with security services known for using brutal means.
According to one official who has been directly involved in rendering captives into foreign hands, the understanding is, "We don't kick the [expletive] out of them. We send them to other countries so they can kick the [expletive] out of them."
Bush administration officials said the CIA, in practice, is using a narrow definition of what counts as "knowing" that a suspect has been tortured. "If we're not there in the room, who is to say?" said one official conversant with recent reports of renditions.
washingtonpost.com
-------------------
From what I've read, we are clearly violating the Geneva Conventions in Guantanamo. This does not equate to the parading of captured U.S. soldiers on TV. It's worse. Our POWs were humiliated briefly by the Iraqis, while the Taliban in Cuba have apparently been given life sentences.
As far as the execution of American POWs by Iraqis, neither you nor I know what happened in that firefight where U.S. soldiers were killed near Nasariyah. Maybe they were executed, maybe they were shot at close range in a confused firefight. You are ready, eager even, to assume the worst about the Iraqis, reflexively. The evidence that they were executed, is a lot more tenuous, than the evidence presented above. I choose not to demonize Them, or rationalize or ignore our crimes. The decision to solve problems by force, is a decision to shed the veneer of civilization, and return to "nature red in tooth and claw", and everyone is doing it. We are, our proxies are (who we train, fund, and work side by side with), and our enemies as well. |
