csua.org/u/cfg -> www.nytimes.com/2005/05/20/international/asia/20abuse.html?pagewanted=1&ei=5090&en=4579413ecb14ce16&ex=1274241600&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss
Reprints By TIM GOLDEN Published: May 20, 2005 Even as the young Afghan man was dying before them, his American jailers continued to torment him. The prisoner, a slight, 22-year-old taxi driver known only as Dilawar, wa s hauled from his cell at the detention center in Bagram, Afghanistan, a t around 2 am to answer questions about a rocket attack on an American base. When he arrived in the interrogation room, an interpreter who was present said, his legs were bouncing uncontrollably in the plastic chai r and his hands were numb. He had been chained by the wrists to the top of his cell for much of the previous four days.
Enlarge This Image A sketch by Thomas V Curtis, a Reserve MP sergeant, showing how Dilawa r was chained to the ceiling of his cell. Mr Dilawar asked for a drink of water, and one of the two interrogators, Specialist Joshua R Claus, 21, picked up a large plastic bottle. But f irst he punched a hole in the bottom, the interpreter said, so as the pr isoner fumbled weakly with the cap, the water poured out over his orange prison scrubs. The soldier then grabbed the bottle back and began squir ting the water forcefully into Mr Dilawar's face. the interpreter said Specialist Claus had shouted, as t he prisoner gagged on the spray. At the interrogators' behest, a guard tried to force the young man to his knees. But his legs, which had been pummeled by guards for several days , could no longer bend. An interrogator told Mr Dilawar that he could s ee a doctor after they finished with him. When he was finally sent back to his cell, though, the guards were instructed only to chain the prison er back to the ceiling. "Leave him up," one of the guards quoted Specialist Claus as saying. Several hours passed before an emergency room doctor finally saw Mr Dila war. It would be man y months before Army investigators learned a final horrific detail: Most of the interrogators had believed Mr Dilawar was an innocent man who s imply drove his taxi past the American base at the wrong time. The story of Mr Dilawar's brutal death at the Bagram Collection Point - and that of another detainee, Habibullah, who died there six days earlie r in December 2002 - emerge from a nearly 2,000-page confidential file o f the Army's criminal investigation into the case, a copy of which was o btained by The New York Times. Like a narrative counterpart to the digital images from Abu Ghraib, the B agram file depicts young, poorly trained soldiers in repeated incidents of abuse. The harsh treatment, which has resulted in criminal charges ag ainst seven soldiers, went well beyond the two deaths. In some instances, testimony shows, it was directed or carried out by int errogators to extract information. In others, it was punishment meted ou t by military police guards. Sometimes, the torment seems to have been d riven by little more than boredom or cruelty, or both. In sworn statements to Army investigators, soldiers describe one female i nterrogator with a taste for humiliation stepping on the neck of one pro strate detainee and kicking another in the genitals. They tell of a shac kled prisoner being forced to roll back and forth on the floor of a cell , kissing the boots of his two interrogators as he went. Yet another pri soner is made to pick plastic bottle caps out of a drum mixed with excre ment and water as part of a strategy to soften him up for questioning. The Times obtained a copy of the file from a person involved in the inves tigation who was critical of the methods used at Bagram and the military 's response to the deaths. Although incidents of prisoner abuse at Bagram in 2002, including some de tails of the two men's deaths, have been previously reported, American o fficials have characterized them as isolated problems that were thorough ly investigated. And many of the officers and soldiers interviewed in th e Dilawar investigation said the large majority of detainees at Bagram w ere compliant and reasonably well treated. "What we have learned through the course of all these investigations is t hat there were people who clearly violated anyone's standard for humane treatment," said the Pentagon's chief spokesman, Larry Di Rita.
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