US: Released Afghan prisoners say they were severely beaten after capture by US Special Forces, writes Patrick Smyth, from Washington
Another embarrassing killing of innocent civilians or a genuine strike against al-Qaeda? And now reports from released prisoners that they were severely beaten after capture by US Special Forces.
Both stories, casting damaging light on US intelligence and methods in Afghanistan, featured on the front pages of newspapers here yesterday at a time when the Administration has been scrambling to deflect international human rights critics of its Guantanamo holding centre and prisoner policy.
The Washington Post alleges that the group of three men killed last Monday by a US Hellfire missile fired by an unmanned Predator drone in the remote eastern mountains of Khost province were local villagers. Not the al-Qaeda leaders, which US briefers suggested they were.
An eyewitness to the missile strike at Zhawar village is quoted as identifying all three, including a "tall man" as local man Mir Ahmad. US sources had hinted to reporters that he might be Osama bin Laden.
The Predator had observed the three men's movement through the inaccessible area, regarded as the refuge of many fleeing al-Qaeda fighters, for some time before its controllers back at base decided they were al-Qaeda. They had then unleashed the missile.
Locals complain that the US is not consulting them for intelligence.Meanwhile, several of the 27 prisoners released last Wednesday after being held for 16 days after another "own goal" attack by the US have complained they were badly beaten by their captors. Several villagers fron Uruzgan in central Afghanistan, misidentified as a majoral-Qaeda arms dump, say they were kicked and punched to the point that two of their number lost consciousness and others suffered cracked ribs and broken teeth. In fact the base was being used by the new government as a centre for storing decommissioned weapons.
Mr Allah Noor, a policeman in the new government's embryonic force, says that he received two fractured ribs at the Kandahar military base where they were imprisoned. Mr Abdul Rauf(60), the police chief in the small mountain town, said he was beaten, kicked until his ribs cracked and punched by American soldiers when they stormed the district headquarters in the night of January 23rd-24th and took him and his men prisoner.
The Pentagon has acknowledged that the raids were conducted in error, also apparently because of flawed intelligence. Local officials put the death toll at 21; the Pentagon says at least 15 Afghans were killed.