Inquiry focuses on an 18-year-old
soldier who died while in American custody: Beaten for a period of Two Weeks -A
witness described his battered corpse as being "green and black" with
bruises.
American military investigators have opened a
criminal probe into allegations of murder and torture involving an
18-year-old Afghan army recruit who died while in U.S. custody last
year. The new inquiry, which will also focus on the alleged torture of
seven other Afghan soldiers, was confirmed Monday by the U.S. Army
Criminal Investigation Command. The previously undisclosed death
occurred in March 2003 after the eight
soldiers were arrested at a remote firebase operated here by the U.S.
Army Special Forces, according to witnesses and an Afghan military
investigation. Motivation for those arrests remains cloaked in Afghan
political
intrigue. The action was requested by a provincial governor feuding
with local military commanders, an Afghan intelligence report says. In
the end, none of the eight men was charged with a crime or linked to
anti-government conduct. The dead soldier, identified as Jamal
Naseer, a member of the Afghan
Army III Corps, was severely beaten over a span of at least two weeks,
according to a report prepared for the Afghan attorney general. A
witness described his battered corpse as being "green and black" with
bruises. Pictured above: Jamal Naseer. The 18-year-old Afghan died while in U.S. custody in Gardez
Alleged American mistreatment of the detainees
included repeated
beatings, immersion in cold water, electric shocks, being hung upside
down and toenails being torn off, according to Afghan investigators and
an internal memorandum prepared by a United Nations delegation that
interviewed the surviving soldiers. Some of the Afghan soldiers were
beaten to the point that they could not walk or sit, Afghan doctors and
other witnesses said.
The prosecutors' confidential 117-page investigative report recently
was reviewed by a Washington-based nonprofit educational organization,
the Crimes of War Project, and the information was provided to The
Times. The U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Command, or CID, stymied in
an earlier attempt to investigate the incident, launched its probe over
the weekend in response to questions by The Times about the Afghan
report.After Naseer's death, the seven other troops were transferred to Afghan
police custody and released without charges. None was linked to Al
Qaeda or the forces of the ousted Taliban regime. [more]
