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U.S. forces kill 12 rebels in Afghanistan
(Agencies)
Updated: 2005-05-23 08:33
U.S. airstrikes and ground troops killed 12 insurgents who had attacked a
coalition patrol in eastern Afghanistan's border region in the latest wave of
fighting with Taliban-led rebels, the U.S. military said Sunday.
The United Nations called for Afghan human rights investigators to be allowed
into Bagram, the main U.S. base in Afghanistan, after the New York Times
reported poorly trained U.S. soldiers there had repeatedly abused prisoners.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai, on the eve of his Monday meeting with
President Bush in Washington, said he was angry about the reported abuse and
called for more Afghan control over the operations of the 16,700 U.S. troops in
his country as well as punishment for any U.S. soldiers who mistreat prisoners.
Also on Sunday, an Afghan government spokesman said a kidnapped Italian aid
worker Clementina Cantoni is alive and healthy and that Afghan officials are in
contact with her kidnappers to secure her release. The announcement came two
days after reports quoting the purported kidnapper as saying he had killed her
because the government did not agree to his demands.
Saturday's fighting in eastern Paktika province left one U.S. soldier
slightly wounded. Spokesman Lt. Col. Jerry O'Hara said rebels had sneaked across
the border from Pakistan and had opened fire on American and Afghan forces.
Pakistani military spokesman Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan said shells from the
fighting landed in Pakistan, and that no one was hurt there. But a Pakistani
intelligence official in the area said on condition of anonymity that villagers
had retrieved the bodies of five unidentified men.
After a winter lull, loyalists of the ousted Taliban regime and other
militants opposed to Karzai's U.S.-backed government have ramped up their
insurgency.
The latest violence came as Karzai prepared to meet Bush in Washington, where
the two leaders are expected to discuss the prisoner abuse allegations among
other topics.
The New York Times on Sunday detailed fresh allegations of mistreatment of
prisoners by U.S. forces, citing the Army's criminal investigation into the
deaths of two Afghans at the Bagram base north of the capital Kabul in December
2002.
In Texas, U.S. soldier Spc. Brian E. Commack was sentenced in a court-martial
on Friday to three months in prison after pleading guilty to the 2002 attack on
prisoner Mullah Habibullah in Afghanistan. Cammack, a member of the Army
Reserve's 377th Military Police Company in Cincinnati, said he was angry when he
struck the prisoner twice in the thigh with his knee. The prisoner had allegedly
spit on his chest.
In a plea bargain, Army prosecutors agreed not to pursue a charge of
maltreatment against Cammack, who agreed to testify in other cases related to
the deaths of two inmates at Bagram. He will be demoted to private, fined more
than $3,200 and given a bad-conduct discharge.
Karzai — often viewed by critics as an American puppet — insisted that
abusers be punished.
"This is simply not acceptable," he told CNN. "We are angry about this. We
want justice. We want the people responsible for this sort of brutal behavior
punished and tried and made public."
The U.S. military has said it would not tolerate any abuse. The White House
said Friday that Bush was "alarmed" by the reports of abuse and wants them
investigated thoroughly. The White House said seven people were being
investigated in connection with abuse at Bagram.
Karzai also called for an end to U.S. raids on Afghans' homes unless the
government is notified beforehand. The Defense Ministry said all arrests should
now be made by Afghan authorities.
"Operations that involve going to people's homes, that involves knocking on
people's doors, must stop, must not be done without the permission of the Afghan
government," Karzai said.
The United Nations also entered the prisoner abuse controversy on Sunday.
Richard Provencher, U.N. spokesman in Afghanistan, said all Afghan detainees
should be treated in accordance with international law and called for "firm
guarantees" that there would be no more maltreatment.
"Such abuses are utterly unacceptable and an affront to everything the
international community stands for," he said.
He said abusers should be punished and that investigators from the Afghan
Independent Human Rights Commission should have access to detainees and be
allowed to monitor their cases.
The International Committee of the Red Cross is allowed to visit detainees at
Bagram and at the main U.S. base in southern Afghanistan at Kandahar. The Afghan
rights commission has sought access before, without success.
The U.S. military did not immediately respond to requests for comment Sunday.
In December, Pentagon officials said eight deaths of detainees in Afghanistan
had been investigated since mid-2002. Hundreds were detained during and after
the campaign by U.S.-led forces to oust the hardline Taliban regime in late
2001.
After the outcry over abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, the military
also began reviewing its detention facilities in Afghanistan and later said it
had modified some procedures, although the review's findings have not been made
public.
The latest allegations come at a sensitive time. Anti-U.S. riots broke out
across the country earlier this month, leaving at least 15 people dead. The
unrest was triggered by a Newsweek magazine report, later retracted, that the
Quran was defiled by interrogators at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay,
Cuba.
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