US troops in new abuse scandal

A CONFIDENTIAL report by the United States army has found that a young taxi driver who died at the Bagram detention centre in Afghanistan had been tortured for days by American soldiers.

In a grim echo of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal in Iraq, the torture appears to have been part of widespread and horrific abuse of detainees by young and poorly trained US troops.

The extent of what happened emerged from a leaked 2,000-page report of the army's criminal investigation into events at Bagram.

In sworn statements to investigators, soldiers described mistreatment ranging from a female interrogator stepping on a detainee's neck and kicking another in the genitals to a shackled prisoner being made to kiss the boots of interrogators as he rolled back and forth on the floor of a cell.

Another prisoner was made to pick plastic bottle tops out of a drum filled with a mixture of excrement and water prior to his interrogation.

The report deals mainly with the deaths in December 2002 of the 22-year-old taxi driver, known only as Dilawar, and of another detainee, Habibullah, who died six days earlier.

Dilawar was chained by his wrists to the top of his cell in Bagram for several days before he died and his legs had been pummelled by guards.

One soldier told investigators: "He screamed out, Allah, Allah, Allah, and my first reaction was he was crying out to his God. It became a running joke and people kept showing up to give him a strike just to hear him scream 'Allah'. It went on over a 24-hour period and I would think it was over 100 strikes."

At about 2am on the night he died, he was taken from his cell to answer questions about a rocket attack on a US base. On his arrival in the interrogation room, an interpreter who was there said his legs were bouncing uncontrollably in the plastic chair and his hands were numb.

Dilawar asked for a drink of water and one of the two interrogators, Specialist Joshua Claus, 21, picked up a large plastic bottle. Before handing it over, he punched a hole in the bottom, so as the prisoner fumbled weakly with the cap, the water poured out.

According to the interpreter, the soldier then grabbed the bottle back and began squirting the water forcefully into the prisoner's face. "Come on, drink, drink," Specialist Claus is said to have shouted, as the prisoner gagged on the spray.

At the interrogators' request, a guard tried to force the young man to his knees. But his legs, which had been pummelled by guards for several days, could no longer bend.

An interrogator told Dilawar he could see a doctor after they had finished with him. But when he was sent back to his cell, the guards were instructed only to chain him back to the ceiling. "Leave him up," one of the guards quoted Specialist Claus as saying.

Several hours passed before a doctor finally saw Dilawar; by then, he was dead.

Investigators later discovered one final, horrific detail: most of the interrogators thought he was an innocent man who had simply driven his taxi past the US base at the wrong time.

A copy of the report was leaked to the New York Times by someone involved in the investigation who was critical of the methods used at Bagram and the army's response to the deaths.

Like the situation at Abu Ghraib - where pictures of abuse caused outrage throughout the world - young, poorly trained soldiers were blamed.

The harsh treatment went well beyond the two deaths. The testimony shows that, in some cases, it was directed or carried out by interrogators to extract information or was punishment meted out by military police guards. However, there were other incidents where it seems to have been driven by little more than boredom or cruelty.

Lieutenant Colonel John Skinner, a Pentagon spokesman, said the "comprehensive" investigation into the Bagram claims showed how seriously such reports were taken.

"The humane treatment of detainees has always been our standard," he said. "In context, there was a relatively small number of incidents, but even one is unacceptable and we take them very seriously and have conducted several thorough investigations."

The US army's Criminal Investigation Command concluded last October there was "probable cause" to charge 27 officers and enlisted personnel with criminal offences in the Dilawar case and 15 in the Habibullah case. Two US army interrogators have been reprimanded and seven soldiers have been charged.

The scandal broke as the US First Lady, Laura Bush, arrived in Jordan on a goodwill tour of the Middle East and admitted that "terrible happenings", including the Abu Ghraib abuse in Iraq, had "really, really hurt our [America's] image" in the Muslim world.

'KIDNAP' CLAIMS

PRESSURE is growing on the United States over claims that its agents were involved in spiriting terrorist suspects out of three European countries and sending them to nations where they may have been tortured.

An Italian judge says foreign intelligence officials "kidnapped" an Egyptian man in Milan two years ago and took him to a US base from where he was flown home. A German prosecutor wants to question the US about a Lebanese-born German who says he was arrested in Macedonia and flown by US agents to jail in Afghanistan. In Sweden, security services have been criticised over the case of two Egyptians who were handed over to US agents and flown home on a US government-leased plane.

The campaign group Human Rights Watch says sending people to other countries to be tortured would be "criminal".