Afghan's Allegation of Abuse Echoes Accounts From Iraq

SHEIKO, Afghanistan -- The stern police officer doffed his peaked uniform cap and placed it carefully on his parlor carpet. He drew his asthma inhaler from his pocket and set aside his teacup. Then he knelt and twisted his gaunt frame into a series of contorted positions, grimacing in pain and panting for breath.

Col. Syed Nabi Siddiqui, 47, was acting out the humiliating treatment he said he received during 40 days as a detainee in three U.S. military prisons last year. He said his captors made barnyard jokes about his manhood, bent him into painful postures, photographed him naked, prevented him from sleeping, beat and stoned him, and taunted him while he relieved himself in a bucket.

"I kept begging them for water and they would spray something on my face, so I had to lick the drops," Siddiqui recounted at home in his village in Paktia province, as four of his young sons listened silently. "They asked me stupid questions like did I know Fidel Castro. . . . They covered my face and told me they put a snake and a scorpion on my neck. I thought I was going to die, but they were always laughing, like it was all a joke."

Siddiqui's story is the one of the first and most detailed allegations of abuse by U.S. military forces and other American security agents who operate detention centers throughout Afghanistan. Hundreds of prisoners have passed through these centers in the past two years, and at least three are reported to have died. U.S. officials have repeatedly refused to discuss detention conditions and have allowed Red Cross delegates to visit only one of the facilities.

Human Rights Watch, a New York-based group, charged this week that mistreatment of prisoners in U.S. custody in Afghanistan was a "systemic problem." The group reported that detainees had been beaten, stripped, exposed to extreme temperatures and photographed while naked. It said some of the abuses were similar to those recently exposed and photographed in Abu Ghraib, a large prison run by the U.S. military in Iraq.

U.S. military officials in Kabul expressed shock and concern last week over Siddiqui's account, and promised to begin investigating immediately. On Saturday, a U.S. military spokesman in Kabul said officials had received a second complaint of prisoner abuse and would also investigate it, but he provided no details. According to press reports, the former detainee said he was hung from a ceiling and force-fed water while held last year in one of the same prisons as Siddiqui.

"The coalition forces are committed to ensuring that all detainees are treated humanely and consistent with international law," Lt. Col. Tucker Mansager said at a news conference in the Afghan capital. "Our investigation is proof that we are concerned about these things."

In the past two years, some Afghans released from U.S. custody in the main detention facility at Bagram air base, north of Kabul, have described being hooded, held in groups in cramped wire cages, made to assume painful positions for hours at a time, deprived of sleep and subjected to other forms of duress.

But Siddiqui's account of abuse that allegedly occurred at U.S. bases in Paktia and Kandahar provinces is the first to emerge from the smaller, rural detention facilities run by various U.S. military and intelligence forces. It is also the first to allege sexual humiliation of the type described and photographed in Iraq. Although his story became public only this week, he complained of mistreatment to an Afghan human rights group after he was released last August.

Siddiqui, a veteran police officer in Paktia, said his ordeal began last July, shortly after he complained to the newly appointed provincial police chief about corruption and abuse by another police official. He said he was called to the chief's office and found several U.S. military officers there who asked for his assistance with some investigations and escorted him to their base outside the city.

There, he said, he was thrown into a locked room and held prisoner for 22 days. He said he was questioned by teams of young Americans who wore "shorts and T-shirts" and were assisted by masked Afghan translators. He said he acknowledged working briefly as a police officer under the Taliban, the repressive Islamic militia that ruled Afghanistan until late 2001. But he said many questions seemed irrelevant or ridiculous, such as whether he had heard of Castro, the Cuban president, or various Afghan militia leaders.

Siddiqui said his captors indulged in frequent sexual taunting and harassment that included poking fingers and objects in his rectum, photographing him while naked, making farm animal sounds and asking which kind of beast he preferred for sex. The worst moment, said the father of nine, was when he was told his wife and daughters had become prostitutes in his absence.

"They were laughing when they said this," Siddiqui recounted with a deep sigh, his eyes reddening. "I told them please, I am a police officer and Muslim. I have asthma and it is hard for me to breathe. I am not al Qaeda or Taliban. I fought against the Russians, and I was happy when the Americans came to Afghanistan. I asked them to please let me go home to my family, but they paid no attention."

After three weeks, Siddiqui said he was hooded, shackled and taken by helicopter with a large group of detainees to another base, which he later learned was near the southern city of Kandahar. There, he said, his captors were all wearing military uniforms. During about one week at that base, he said, he was beaten and forced into various painful positions, but questioned only cursorily and not about any serious matters.