Archival Rescue 17 ~ Afghanistan prison abuse

Backlogging, this one appeared a few weeks ago.

Troops destroyed Afghanistan abuse photos
By Richard Serrano in Washington
February 19, 2005 LA Times & Sydney Morning Herald

In a case that echoes the Abu Ghraib prison scandal in Iraq, US soldiers in Afghanistan posed before cameras while threatening to shoot prisoners in the head, shoving a detainee into a wall, and in "trophy shots" with the corpse of an enemy fighter who invaded their camp last year.

Military documents released on Thursday say the American soldiers, fearing "another public outrage", destroyed many of the photos and video images after photographs of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib were beamed around the world, resulting in widespread shock and criticism.

The remaining images were discovered by chance last year during the routine cleaning of a captain's office at Bagram airfield in Afghanistan. The photos were apparently shot at a small base in Afghanistan around the same time as the abuses at the large prison outside Baghdad triggered an internal army investigation.

This led to preliminary charges against eight soldiers for dereliction of duty after the army decided that more serious assault charges would not hold up.

It was unclear, however, whether the eight were prosecuted or disciplined. It was also unclear whether charges were brought against supervising officers in Afghanistan who admitted they ordered the destruction of many of the photos after the Abu Ghraib scandal erupted.

The army said on Thursday when asked about the case it "remains committed to addressing identified problems in detainee operations and to communicating the progress to the public".

Hundreds of pages of internal army investigative records, made public as a result of a public records lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union, recount interrogations of dozens of soldiers who were confronted with the photos. Most admitted to military investigators that they were posing in them. Many acknowledged that their behaviour was wrong.

The documents are the latest allegations of US military abuse of detainees in Afghanistan. Military investigators are investigating a December 2002 incident in which two detainees died after being captured and beaten.

American military investigators have also been looking into allegations of murder and torture involving an 18-year-old Afghan army recruit who died while in US custody last year. The inquiry has also focused on the alleged torture of seven other Afghan soldiers.

At least eight prisoners have died in US military custody in Afghanistan since the US-led invasion in 2001, military officials and documents say.

In the newly disclosed case, the images are said to show US soldiers "hazing" fellow troops by dressing them up as detainees with their hands cuffed and sandbags over their heads, then dousing them with water and rolling them through the mud. The soldiers said this was done to celebrate birthdays and promotions.

While it is not known what activities were depicted in the destroyed photos, the surviving images from Firebase Tcyz, near the Afghan village of Dah Rah Wod, do not show the kind of sexual humiliation of prisoners that was a hallmark of the sensational disclosures at Abu Ghraib.

Also, the Afghanistan case involved regular army troops rather than reservists.

The Abu Ghraib scandal became public last year and it appears that at that time many of the Fort Drum soldiers began destroying their pictures.

"After seeing the problems they had in Iraq I knew this was a problem and should have never been done," a specialist said. "I realised there would be another public outrage if these photographs got out so they were destroyed."

Los Angeles Times