Reuters
January 28, 2002
Afghan Prisoners Face Death, U.S. Rights Group Says
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- While the world scrutinizes the treatment of the so-called worst of the worst 158 Taliban and al Qaeda prisoners at a U.S. naval base in Cuba, it ignores the plight of thousands more ordinary combatants facing death in a filthy Afghan prison, a U.S. rights group said on Monday.
``Many, many, many prisoners have already died,'' Boston-based Physicians for Human Rights, which sent a team to the prison at Shebarghan in northern Afghanistan on Jan. 20, quoted the prison commander, Gen. Jarobak, as saying.
Photographs of emaciated men in the dilapidated concrete structure exposed to the Afghan winter contrasted sharply with the images of the reportedly well-fed men in clean orange jumpsuits, held in open but sanitary mesh cells at the sun-soaked U.S. Navy base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
U.S. military officials have called the Guantanamo detainees the ``worst of the worst'' of Afghanistan's ousted Taliban fighting force and of al Qaeda, a network led by Saudi exile Osama bin Laden who is accused of masterminding attacks on the United States Sept. 11 that killed about 3,000 people.
As Afghanistan's interim leader Hamid Karzai prepared to meet President Bush, the rights group urged the United States to take responsibility for the men's fate.
``The state of Afghanistan is one month old, and several of the ministers in Kabul still lack offices, staff and minimal equipment,'' the group said in a report.
``The Geneva Conventions and the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners require that the parties responsible for the capture and custody of prisoners, including the United States, in this case, treat them humanely,'' it said.
The group's executive director, Leonard Rubenstein, said that since the Guantanamo Bay men were seized in combat, they should be treated as prisoners of war, a status that would give them more rights but could inhibit U.S. efforts to question them.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld says the men will not be declared POWs, though the Bush administration is debating whether and how the convention applies to the detainees.
'THEY ARE DYING'
But the rights group focused on the prison west of Mazar-i-Sharif, where detainees were part of a group that surrendered about two months ago in fighting around the town of Kunduz.
``There has been a great deal of attention to Guantanamo, but almost no attention to conditions within Afghanistan,'' Rubenstein told a news conference.
``They are dying. More will probably die if the United States does not take swift and assertive action,'' he added.
Billions of dollars have been promised to the interim administration that took over in December from the Taliban, ousted by U.S. bombs, but the money has yet to reach Kabul.
A U.S. injection of cash to double spending to $6 a day per prisoner could make a big difference, said Jennifer Leaning, a Harvard professor who visited the prison.
Epidemics of dysentery and yellow jaundice were afflicting the prison population of between 3,000 and 3,500 men, about two-thirds of them Afghans and the rest Pakistanis, she said.
The United States controlled access to the prison until some time between Jan. 14 and Jan. 20, she said, when it was handed to Afghan authorities following removal of ``more criminal'' inmates to Kandahar and presumably on to Guantanamo.
The rights group said Jarobak, who like many Afghans uses only one name, said some of the cells built for 10-15 men were holding as many as 110.
The three-person team from Boston did not enter the cells because of security concerns but did view about 300 prisoners clustered by the gate and interviewed some through bars at the end of their prison blocks, as well as a group of men held in the infirmary, where one was too close to death to speak.
Those who were either willing or well enough to come out looked young, drawn and were wrapped in thin blankets. Some were barefoot and had scabs on their faces, the rights group said.
Each of the three cell blocks had between eight and 12 toilet holes and there was a single place to take a wash from a pipe protruding from a wall in a muddy courtyard.
Copyright © 2002, Reuters. All rights reserved.
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