Prisoner Abuse
Was Routine at
U.S. Bases in
Afghanistan
By McClatchy Newspapers
16/06/08 "Duluth News" -- - KABUL, Afghanistan — American soldiers herded the prisoners into holding pens of razor-sharp concertina wire, the kind that’s used to corral livestock.
The guards kicked, kneed and punched many of the men until they collapsed in pain. U.S. troops shackled and dragged other prisoners to small isolation rooms, then hung them by their wrists from chains dangling from the wire mesh ceiling.
Former guards and prisoners whom McClatchy interviewed said Bagram was a center of systematic brutality for at least 20 months, starting in late 2001. Yet the soldiers responsible have escaped serious punishment.
The public outcry in the U.S. and abroad has focused on prisoner abuse at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, but sadistic violence first appeared at Bagram, north of Kabul, and at a similar U.S. internment camp at Kandahar Airfield in southern Afghanistan.
Pattern of abuse
The eight-month McClatchy investigation found a pattern of abuse that continued for years. The abuse of prisoners at Bagram has been reported by U.S. media organizations, in particular the New York Times, which broke several developments in the story. But the extent of the mistreatment, and that it eclipsed the alleged abuse at Guantanamo, hasn’t previously been revealed.
Guards said they routinely beat their prisoners to retaliate for al-Qaeda’s Sept. 11 attacks, unaware that the vast majority of the prisoners had little or no connection to al-Qaeda.
Former prisoners at Bagram and Kandahar said they were beaten regularly. Of the 41 former Bagram prisoners whom McClatchy interviewed, 28 said that guards or interrogators had assaulted them. Only eight of those men said they were beaten at Guantanamo Bay. Because President Bush loosened or eliminated the rules governing the treatment of so-called enemy combatants, however, few U.S. troops have been disciplined under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, and no serious punishment has been administered, even in the cases of two prisoners who died after American guards beat them.
In an effort to assemble as complete a picture as possible of U.S. detention practices, McClatchy reporters interviewed 66 former prisoners, double-checked key elements of their accounts, spoke with U.S. soldiers who’d served as detention camp guards and reviewed thousands of pages of records from Army courts-martial and human rights reports.
The Bush administration refuses to release full records of prisoner treatment in the war on terrorism, and no senior Bush administration official would agree to an on-the-record interview to discuss McClatchy’s findings.
2002 peak
The brutality at Bagram peaked in December 2002, when U.S. soldiers beat two Afghan prisoners, Habibullah and Dilawar, to death as they hung by their wrists. Habibullah and Dilawar, like many Afghans, have only one name.
Dilawar died on Dec. 10, seven days after Habibullah died. He’d been hit in his leg so many times that the tissue was “falling apart” and had “basically been pulpified,” said then-Lt. Col. Elizabeth Rouse, the Air Force medical examiner who performed the autopsy on him.
The only American officer who has been reprimanded for the deaths of Habibullah and Dilawar is Army Capt. Christopher Beiring, who commanded the 377th Military Police Company from the summer of 2002 to the spring of 2003.
The soldier who faced the most serious charges, Spc. Willie Brand, admitted that he hit Dilawar about 37 times, including 30 times in the flesh around the knees during one session in an isolation cell.
Brand, who faced up to 11 years in prison, was reduced in rank to private — his only punishment — after he was found guilty of assaulting and maiming Dilawar.
Although they were at Bagram at different times and speak different languages, the 28 former prisoners who told McClatchy that they’d been abused there told strikingly similar stories:
Soldiers who served at Bagram starting in the summer of 2002 confirmed that prisoners there were struck routinely.
“Whether they got in trouble or not, everybody struck a prisoner at some point,” said Brian Cammack, a former specialist with the 377th Military Police Company, an Army Reserve unit from Cincinnati. He was sentenced to three months in military confinement and a dishonorable discharge for hitting Habibullah.
Spc. Jeremy Callaway, who admitted to striking about 12 prisoners at Bagram, told military investigators in sworn testimony that he was uncomfortable following orders to “mentally and physically break the prisoners.” He didn’t go into detail.
“I guess you can call it torture,” said Callaway, who served in the 377th from August 2002 to January 2003.
Asked why someone would abuse a prisoner, Callaway told military investigators: “Retribution for September 11, 2001.”
Almost none of the prisoners at Bagram, however, had anything to do with the terrorist attacks.
Maj. Jeff Bovarnick, the former chief legal officer for operational law in Afghanistan and Bagram legal adviser, said in a sworn statement that of 500 prisoners he knew of who’d passed through Bagram, only about 10 were high-value targets, the military’s term for senior terrorist operatives.
NO RULES APPLIED
The mistreatment of prisoners at Bagram, some legal experts said, may have been a violation of the 1949 Geneva Convention on prisoners of war, which forbids violence against or humiliating treatment of prisoners.
At Bagram, however, the rules didn’t apply. In February 2002, President Bush issued an order denying suspected Taliban and al-Qaeda prisoners prisoner-of-war status. He also denied them basic Geneva protections known as Common Article Three, which sets a minimum standard for humane treatment.
In 2006, Bush pushed Congress to narrow the definition of a war crime under the War Crimes Act, making prosecution even more difficult.
The military police at Bagram had guidelines, Army Regulation 190-47, telling them they couldn’t chain prisoners to doors or to the ceiling. They also had Army Regulation 190-8, which said that humiliating prisoners wasn’t allowed.
Neither was applicable at Bagram, however, said Bovarnick, the former senior legal officer for the installation.
No U.S. military officer above the rank of captain has been called to account for what happened at Bagram.
By McClatchy Newspapers
16/06/08 "Duluth News" -- - KABUL, Afghanistan — American soldiers herded the prisoners into holding pens of razor-sharp concertina wire, the kind that’s used to corral livestock.
The guards kicked, kneed and punched many of the men until they collapsed in pain. U.S. troops shackled and dragged other prisoners to small isolation rooms, then hung them by their wrists from chains dangling from the wire mesh ceiling.
Former guards and prisoners whom McClatchy interviewed said Bagram was a center of systematic brutality for at least 20 months, starting in late 2001. Yet the soldiers responsible have escaped serious punishment.
The public outcry in the U.S. and abroad has focused on prisoner abuse at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, but sadistic violence first appeared at Bagram, north of Kabul, and at a similar U.S. internment camp at Kandahar Airfield in southern Afghanistan.
Pattern of abuse
The eight-month McClatchy investigation found a pattern of abuse that continued for years. The abuse of prisoners at Bagram has been reported by U.S. media organizations, in particular the New York Times, which broke several developments in the story. But the extent of the mistreatment, and that it eclipsed the alleged abuse at Guantanamo, hasn’t previously been revealed.
Guards said they routinely beat their prisoners to retaliate for al-Qaeda’s Sept. 11 attacks, unaware that the vast majority of the prisoners had little or no connection to al-Qaeda.
Former prisoners at Bagram and Kandahar said they were beaten regularly. Of the 41 former Bagram prisoners whom McClatchy interviewed, 28 said that guards or interrogators had assaulted them. Only eight of those men said they were beaten at Guantanamo Bay. Because President Bush loosened or eliminated the rules governing the treatment of so-called enemy combatants, however, few U.S. troops have been disciplined under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, and no serious punishment has been administered, even in the cases of two prisoners who died after American guards beat them.
In an effort to assemble as complete a picture as possible of U.S. detention practices, McClatchy reporters interviewed 66 former prisoners, double-checked key elements of their accounts, spoke with U.S. soldiers who’d served as detention camp guards and reviewed thousands of pages of records from Army courts-martial and human rights reports.
The Bush administration refuses to release full records of prisoner treatment in the war on terrorism, and no senior Bush administration official would agree to an on-the-record interview to discuss McClatchy’s findings.
2002 peak
The brutality at Bagram peaked in December 2002, when U.S. soldiers beat two Afghan prisoners, Habibullah and Dilawar, to death as they hung by their wrists. Habibullah and Dilawar, like many Afghans, have only one name.
Dilawar died on Dec. 10, seven days after Habibullah died. He’d been hit in his leg so many times that the tissue was “falling apart” and had “basically been pulpified,” said then-Lt. Col. Elizabeth Rouse, the Air Force medical examiner who performed the autopsy on him.
The only American officer who has been reprimanded for the deaths of Habibullah and Dilawar is Army Capt. Christopher Beiring, who commanded the 377th Military Police Company from the summer of 2002 to the spring of 2003.
The soldier who faced the most serious charges, Spc. Willie Brand, admitted that he hit Dilawar about 37 times, including 30 times in the flesh around the knees during one session in an isolation cell.
Brand, who faced up to 11 years in prison, was reduced in rank to private — his only punishment — after he was found guilty of assaulting and maiming Dilawar.
Although they were at Bagram at different times and speak different languages, the 28 former prisoners who told McClatchy that they’d been abused there told strikingly similar stories:
Soldiers who served at Bagram starting in the summer of 2002 confirmed that prisoners there were struck routinely.
“Whether they got in trouble or not, everybody struck a prisoner at some point,” said Brian Cammack, a former specialist with the 377th Military Police Company, an Army Reserve unit from Cincinnati. He was sentenced to three months in military confinement and a dishonorable discharge for hitting Habibullah.
Spc. Jeremy Callaway, who admitted to striking about 12 prisoners at Bagram, told military investigators in sworn testimony that he was uncomfortable following orders to “mentally and physically break the prisoners.” He didn’t go into detail.
“I guess you can call it torture,” said Callaway, who served in the 377th from August 2002 to January 2003.
Asked why someone would abuse a prisoner, Callaway told military investigators: “Retribution for September 11, 2001.”
Almost none of the prisoners at Bagram, however, had anything to do with the terrorist attacks.
Maj. Jeff Bovarnick, the former chief legal officer for operational law in Afghanistan and Bagram legal adviser, said in a sworn statement that of 500 prisoners he knew of who’d passed through Bagram, only about 10 were high-value targets, the military’s term for senior terrorist operatives.
NO RULES APPLIED
The mistreatment of prisoners at Bagram, some legal experts said, may have been a violation of the 1949 Geneva Convention on prisoners of war, which forbids violence against or humiliating treatment of prisoners.
At Bagram, however, the rules didn’t apply. In February 2002, President Bush issued an order denying suspected Taliban and al-Qaeda prisoners prisoner-of-war status. He also denied them basic Geneva protections known as Common Article Three, which sets a minimum standard for humane treatment.
In 2006, Bush pushed Congress to narrow the definition of a war crime under the War Crimes Act, making prosecution even more difficult.
The military police at Bagram had guidelines, Army Regulation 190-47, telling them they couldn’t chain prisoners to doors or to the ceiling. They also had Army Regulation 190-8, which said that humiliating prisoners wasn’t allowed.
Neither was applicable at Bagram, however, said Bovarnick, the former senior legal officer for the installation.
No U.S. military officer above the rank of captain has been called to account for what happened at Bagram.
