The American style of winning their hearts and minds and extracting information has not generally been perceived as being done by virtual sadism — but if a report in the New York Times is correct that seems to have been the modus operendi in some quarters.
In a truly horrifying account that should do more than just raise eyebrows both in the U.S. and elswhere in the world, the Times details allegations of severe brutality that ended in some Afghani prisoners’ deaths.
The account below brought a CHILL to this writer’s spine. Why? Because it reminds him of the kinds of reports he wrote when writing for the old Chicago Daily News from Spain in 1975 during the last months of the Franco-regime, when there were widespread, detailed reports of physical abuse and torture of prisoners by Spanish security forces that could only be described as sadistic. In this case, the Times reports:
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.
Note that this site has been VERY critical of Newsweek because of poor sourcing. This story does NOT fit the same mold. And it raises the questions about how far up tolerance or enabling of this kind of prosecutable behavior goes — plus the bottom line question of whether a country that is supposed to have deposed a regime known for brutality inflicted upon prisoners is now morphing into a version of the same jailkeepers- only with Yankee accents.
If any story demanded a bipartisan investigation and a universal clamor for specific ANSWERS this is it. Read it all but here’s another sickening tiny taste:
Like a narrative counterpart to the digital images from Abu Ghraib, the Bagram file depicts young, poorly trained soldiers in repeated incidents of abuse. The harsh treatment, which has resulted in criminal charges against seven soldiers, went well beyond the two deaths.
In some instances, testimony shows, it was directed or carried out by interrogators to extract information. In others, it was punishment meted out by military police guards. Sometimes, the torment seems to have been driven by little more than boredom or cruelty, or both.
In sworn statements to Army investigators, soldiers describe one female interrogator with a taste for humiliation stepping on the neck of one prostrate detainee and kicking another in the genitals. They tell of a shackled prisoner being forced to roll back and forth on the floor of a cell, kissing the boots of his two interrogators as he went. Yet another prisoner is made to pick plastic bottle caps out of a drum mixed with excrement and water as part of a strategy to soften him up for questioning.
The Times obtained a copy of the file from a person involved in the investigation who was critical of the methods used at Bagram and the military’s response to the deaths.
There is an official Pentagon response:
“What we have learned through the course of all these investigations is that there were people who clearly violated anyone’s standard for humane treatment,” said the Pentagon’s chief spokesman, Larry Di Rita. “We’re finding some cases that were not close calls.”
Yet the Bagram file includes ample testimony that harsh treatment by some interrogators was routine and that guards could strike shackled detainees with virtual impunity. Prisoners considered important or troublesome were also handcuffed and chained to the ceilings and doors of their cells, sometimes for long periods, an action Army prosecutors recently classified as criminal assault.
We’ll dilute the impact of this report by taking any more of it out of context. Read it yourself and keep in mind:
- This writer has supported the war.
- This writer has been steadfast in condemning Newsweek’s report due to the poor confirmation.
- This writer doesn’t belong to either party and has to say in no uncertain terms that allegations of this kind of behavior must be investigated and if proven true prosecuted to the absolute fullest extent of the law – including up the chain of command if necessary. Those who try to defend it or dismiss it as soldiers blowing off steam or minimize the gravity of it deserve nothing but contempt from those from both parties who militantly believe in and cherish long-held American ideals.
There is a real sense of deja vu in reading this. I wrote about this kind of thing in the 70s when reporting on the way Civil Guards interrogated Basque prisoners and read about it in Amnesty International reports on Spain and the Basques. The specific techniques may have differed but the unchecked brutality and tacit government support via notable inaction was the same.
The Franco government showed its true colors by looking the other way. Do we?
UPDATE: MUST READING. Conservative bloggere John Cole.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.