KABUL – Afghanistan’s intelligence agency and police force have been “systematically” torturing detainees including children at a number of jails, in breach of local and international laws, a United Nations report said yesterday.
Scores of people told the UN that the agency – the National Directorate of Security (NDS) – and the Afghan National Police had abused them through beatings, electrocution and toenail removal.
The head of the UN in Afghanistan, Staffan de Mistura, said torture was neither institutional nor government policy, and praised the ministry and directorate for allowing access to their prisons for research. The Afghan government rejected many of the allegations, but conceded there may have been some abuse, adding steps were being taken to prevent further problems.
Interviews with 379 pre-trial detainees and convicted prisoners were conducted at 47 different facilities by the UN assistance mission in Afghanistan from October 2010 to August 2011.
The report said 324 of the detainees were accused of crimes related to the war.
There was systematic torture found at five directorate “facilities”, the report said, and “multiple, credible allegations” of torture at two others. There were some allegations from 17 other facilities the UN said it was still investigating.
Almost half of those interviewed were suspected insurgents, 20 per cent were arrested while carrying explosives and 11 per cent were failed suicide bombers.
The assistance mission said almost half of those it interviewed at directorate facilities experienced interrogation techniques that constituted torture. Of those in police facilities, more than a third of the 117 suspected insurgents or those believed to be assisting militants interviewed at police facilities told the mission they had been subjected to torture or inhumane treatment.
Beyond physical mistreatment, which included sexual humiliation, many prisoners said they had been held beyond the maximum duration allowed by law, and denied family visits.
The UN said Afghanistan’s difficult security situation did not justify any mistreatment.
The directorate said “reference has been made to some issues that are not in conformity with work principles of the NDS”, and rejected some allegations of mistreatment.
“Torture methods such as electric shock, threat of rape, twisting of sexual organs etc are methods that are absolutely non-existent in the NDS,” a government response said.
It suggested some insurgent prisoners might be making false claims to discredit the government. However, it said several officials had recently been dismissed or suspended, and the agency was “keen for reform and improvement in the field of interrogation”.
The mission said it had designed its study to take into account concerns of false claims.
The interior ministry accepted there were cases of poor treatment of detainees in police custody, but said they were in the minority and it was committed to punishing violators.
The report follows a similar UN inquiry into alleged torture that prompted Nato to halt transfers of prisoners to several Afghan jails in July. – (Reuters)