Civilian Charged In Beating of Afghan Detainee

A former Army Special Forces soldier working as a contractor for the CIA in Afghanistan was charged yesterday with brutally assaulting a prisoner during three days of interrogations that ended in the Afghan man's death last year.

David A. Passaro, 38, became the first civilian to be charged in the scandal surrounding the abuse of detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan. A grand jury in Passaro's home state of North Carolina handed up a four-count indictment that accused him of using a large flashlight to beat a detainee suspected of participating in rocket attacks on a U.S. military base near the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Abdul Wali died in his tiny mud-walled cell last June 21, three days after he surrendered for questioning at the front gate of Asadabad Base. Justice Department officials said that Passaro was charged with assault rather than murder because no autopsy had been performed on Wali that would have established the cause of death.

"It's a continuing investigation," Attorney General John D. Ashcroft said in announcing the indictment. "We would follow additional evidence to add charges if warranted."

The indictment comes as the U.S. military investigates allegations of detainee abuse in Iraq and Afghanistan that extend beyond the mistreatment captured in widely published photographs at the Abu Ghraib prison. Earlier this month, the Pentagon said that it had investigated 36 deaths of detainees and that 12 inquiries were still open.

The Army announced yesterday that one investigation has resulted in a murder charge against a captain in the killing of an Iraqi man during an altercation on May 21 in Kufa, Iraq. Soldiers of the 1st Armored Division were chasing a vehicle believed to be carrying members of Moqtada Sadr's militia, and they shot and wounded the driver and passenger. The officer, whose name was withheld, is accused of fatally shooting one of them after the chase.

Ashcroft said yesterday that his department has received from the CIA additional referrals of possible prisoner abuse -- a number he had previously set at three. He said the department has also been asked by the Pentagon to investigate a case of possible abuse. He declined to detail the other cases or to say whether they involved deaths.

Passaro was arrested in Fayetteville, N.C., yesterday morning and is scheduled for a detention hearing Tuesday. Court officials said he had not yet retained a lawyer.

The CIA's inspector general began an investigation shortly after Wali's death and referred the matter to the Justice Department in November for criminal prosecution. The department sent the case to the U.S. attorney's office in Raleigh, N.C., earlier this year. Passaro was relieved of his duties and sent back to the United States after Wali died, Justice Department officials said.

Passaro was part of a clandestine paramilitary team made up of U.S. Special Forces and CIA personnel who capture and interrogate Taliban and al Qaeda members. He had worked for the CIA since December 2002 and got to Asadabad in early June 2003, said a U.S. official familiar with the case.

A member of the U.S. military who was based in Asadabad when the death occurred said three CIA workers -- one full-time employee and two contractors -- took part in interrogating Wali. Special Forces guards checked on him every several hours. About an hour after one interrogation session, guards entered the holding cell and discovered that "the man was dead," he said.

Immediately after Wali's death, he said, the CIA personnel left the base by helicopter. The soldier later learned that the CIA station chief in Kabul had been told that Special Forces troops had killed the man, according to the military source and an official in Washington. When the Special Forces team threatened to make the case public, the military source said, the CIA personnel admitted what had happened. An intelligence official in Washington yesterday called that allegation "flat wrong."

CIA spokesman Mark Mansfield said: "We take allegations of wrongdoing very seriously, and it is important to bear in mind that the CIA immediately reported these allegations to the CIA inspector general and the Department of Justice. . . . The CIA does not support or condone unlawful activities of any sort and has an obligation to report possible violations of the law to the appropriate authorities."

Wali's final days were chronicled by an American, Hyder Akbar, 18, whose father, Sayed Fazl Akbar, had returned to his native Kunar province to become the governor there after the fall of the Taliban. Portions of a tape-recorded diary that Hyder Akbar kept during a visit with his father were played Dec. 12 on National Public Radio.