Brutal Details of 2 Afghan Inmates' Deaths Reported in The New York Times.
Even as the young Afghan man was dying before them, his American jailers continued to torment him.
The prisoner, a slight, 22-year-old taxi driver known only as Dilawar, was hauled from his cell at the detention center in Bagram, Afghanistan, at around 2 a.m. to answer questions about a rocket attack on an American base. When he arrived in the interrogation room, an interpreter who was present said, his legs were bouncing uncontrollably in the plastic chair and his hands were numb. He had been chained by the wrists to the top of his cell for much of the previous four days.
Mr. Dilawar asked for a drink of water, and one of the two interrogators, Specialist Joshua R. Claus, 21, picked up a large plastic bottle. But first he punched a hole in the bottom, the interpreter said, so as the prisoner fumbled weakly with the cap, the water poured out over his orange prison scrubs. The soldier then grabbed the bottle back and began squirting the water forcefully into Mr. Dilawar's face.
"Come on, drink!" the interpreter said Specialist Claus had shouted, as the prisoner gagged on the spray. "Drink!"
At the interrogators' behest, a guard tried to force the young man to his knees. But his legs, which had been pummeled by guards for several days, could no longer bend. An interrogator told Mr. Dilawar that he could see a doctor after they finished with him. When he was finally sent back to his cell, though, the guards were instructed only to chain the prisoner back to the ceiling.
"Leave him up," one of the guards quoted Specialist Claus as saying.
Several hours passed before an emergency room doctor finally saw Mr. Dilawar. By then he was dead, his body beginning to stiffen. It would be many months before Army investigators learned a final horrific detail: Most of the interrogators had believed Mr. Dilawar was an innocent man who simply drove his taxi past the American base at the wrong time.
The story of Mr. Dilawar's brutal death at the Bagram Collection Point - and that of another detainee, Habibullah, who died there six days earlier in December 2002 - emerge from a nearly 2,000-page confidential file of the Army's criminal investigation into the case, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times.
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CONTENTS
I- Prisoner Abuse and Torture by the American and European Military and Intelligence Operatives.
June 2009 additions
A-Recent News
B-American Prisoner Abuse
C-British Prisoner Abuse
II- Russian War Crimes in Chechnya
III-Prisoner Rendition
IV-Americans and Britons for Torture
V-Documents, Bills, etc.
NOTE:
For Americans and Britons OPPOSING torture see separate catalogue
The most telling of atrocities
Despite all the atrocities of war, invasion, and occupation, prisoner abuse reveals the ugliest, most savage and sadistic side of human nature, more so when it is practiced by some nationals of modern, developed, prosperous, and stable countries that seem to continually tout their religious, civil, and moral values, ideals, and principles.
We consider the detention of individuals, while denied due process, under any fabricated excuses, a form of torture, which it is.
Forcible confinement within a small room for months, even years, at a time without any evidence of guilt or innocence, is paramount to torture, both mental and physical.
Society accepts it as punishment for crimes or wrongs committed, but not for persons who have not been charged, let alone found guilty, of any criminal activity.
Even if it's routinely practiced by totalitarian regimes, it's scandalous that supposedly "civilized" nations would engage in it. Some "civilized" people in those civilized nations who support such legal transgressions are increasingly shedding any entitlement to that designation: "civilized".
As we repeatedly remind visitors to our catalogues, we categorically reject any exploitation of wrongs committed by governments, particular bodies or entities, military personnel, etc., to generalise in any way, any kind of characteristics to a whole people, population, nation, faith, or group of any kind, or to stereotype such a group or entity in any way.
Moreover, amongst all the sadism, abuse and torture there is what is very praiseworthy. The authorities responsible for the locations or entities where the wrongs were committed, politicians, the media, various groups and organizations, all decent people, law-enforcement agencies, and the courts of law expose, acknowledge, condemn, and prosecute all such wrongs and abuses, and speak out against them unequivocally.
As we shall see from the entries below, there are the exceptions to every rule. Whether it be ordinary citizens who have hate for Muslims, or groups or organizations that are similarly inclined, or politicians or law-enforcement agencies who support the abuse from a professional point of view to use it for their own purposes, the exceptions do exist.
But it is our duty to acknowledge and commend the good, decent ones who condemn such wrongs.
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June 2009 Updates
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
