After the revelations of the Abu Ghraib scandal in Iraq, we were also told what really happened in Afghanistan's prisons and at Guantanamo Bay. And it was not nice!

A report published on November 4, 2004, details the kind of abuses the prisoners in Guantanamo Bay jail were subjected to. Here are a few examples:
- A female interrogator ran her fingers through a prisoner's hair and sat in his lap.
- A detainee was forced to kneel so many times that his knees were bruised.
- Some prisoners were punched hard and other hosed with cold water.
The soldiers responsible were demoted, reprimanded, or sent for more training. The latest commander said that these abuses have stopped. However, if the UA military authorities admit these limited abuses, in reality they must have been, much worse.

On November 12, 2004, two cases of detainee abuses at Guantanamo Bay were revealed. The first is about a US military commander who failed to properly investigate a prison guard who threw cleaning solvent at a prisoner. The guard was demoted and reassigned; the officer was reprimanded. In the second case a guard hit a detainee after the prisoner spat on him and tried to bite him. The guard was demoted and reassigned.

On November 29, 2004, after a visit to Guantanamo Bay, the International Red Cross sent a report to the US government detailing how the US military authorities there had "intentionally used psychological and physical coercion tantamount to torture on the prisoners." They also wrote that doctors and medical personnel gave information about the prisoners' mental health and vulnerability to the interrogators, "a flagrant violation of medical ethics." The US government rejected the charges, but who believe it by now. The US authorities have been lying all the time and they are still lying. So what to expect in the future?

On December 2, 2004, the Principal Deputy Associate Attorney General, Brian Bole, said to the US District Court hearing lawsuits brought by some of the Guantanamo Bay foreign detainees, that US military panels reviewing their detention are allowed to use evidence obtained by torture even if "torture is illegal." And this should be the land of the free and justice!

On December 7, 2004, we were told that FBI inspectors found that some detainees at Guantanamo Bay prison had been "abused". They described their treatment as "highly aggressive interrogations". As examples, they mentioned that a woman interrogator grabbed a detainee's genitals and bended back his thumbs, a prisoner was gagged with duct tape, and a dog intimidated a third. This happened in 2002 and the FBI report was from January 2003. It was sent to the top-level military authorities that took no action, ignoring it!

On December 20, 2004, more revelations about the ill treatment of the Guantanamo Bay prisoners became of public knowledge. FBI agents wrote reports to their superiors stating that they saw prisoners shackled to the floor in foetal position for more that 24 hours, left without food and water and obliged to defecate and urinate on themselves. The FBI agents reported that growling dogs were used to intimidate the prisoners who were also submitted to loud music for long periods of time. Military interrogators pretended to be FBI agents to avoid blame for any possible future allegations of abuses. These information were obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union that is involved in a lawsuit. According to the Union the soldiers involved said that they believed that the Deputy Defence Secretary, Paul Wolfowitz, approved the interrogation techniques used. One British lawyer tell the following story: "He asked a Pentagon official what would happen to a 70-years old western European lady who was known to have sent money to a Muslim friend, if this friend transferred the money to al-Qaida. The official said that this lady could spent 40 years at Guantanamo Bay without trial!" The sad thing is that this could very well happen with the present occupiers of the White House and Pentagon.

On January 5, 2005, the New England Journal of Medicine accused US Army doctors of having violated the Geneva Conventions by helping intelligence officers doing abusive interrogations in many, if not all, detention centres, and even of participating in torture in many cases. The doctors helped to adapt the interrogations to the physical and mental conditions of the prisoners. This took place at Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib and many other military detention centres. The Pentagon said that all this was untrue on the same day that it is launching another investigation following FBI reports that prisoners were tortured at Guantanamo Bay. FBI agents reported to have seen prisoners beaten, grabbed by their genitals and chained to the cold ground.

On January 28, 2005, we were told that female interrogators submitted the Guantanamo Bay prisoners to sexual abuses in attempts to ""break" them. Sexual touching, wearing miniskirt and tong underwear were common tools used.

On February 5 2005, two separate UN reports described human rights abuses by the US-led forces in Afghanistan and in Guantanamo. Cherif Bassiouni, the UN-appointed Independent Expert on Human Rights in Afghanistan, after examining the situation in Afghanistan said that foreign troops had mistreated and tortured people in the war-torn country. "There is a very unusual practice in Afghanistan where mainly foreign forces have taken upon themselves the right, without any legal process, to arrest people, detain them, mistreat them and, possibly, even torture them." "There is no legal basis for coalition forces to hold people as prisoners," stressed the UN expert. "If they're held as prisoners of war, then they have to observe the Geneva Conventions. If they're held as common prisoners, then they have to conform to the Afghani laws and constitution. Foreign forces are not doing it." But US military officials rejected the allegations, saying US led forces do not arbitrarily arrest people; they only detain illegal combatants who pose a security threat, adding that all detainees in US custody are treated humanely, in the spirit of the Geneva Convention.

On Sunday February 6, 2005, The Observer published an interview with Martin Mubanga who was released lately from Guantanamo Bay prison after 33 months detention without charge. He complained of bad treatments like being washed with his own urine and regular beating. The worst accusation, however, was that he was sent to Cuba after interrogation by an MI6 agent! Mubanga said that he went to Pakistan and Afghanistan to study Islam. After September 11, 2001, he fled to Pakistan where he realised that he had lost his British passport. Having also the Zambian nationality he flew there where the local police arrested him after an article in the Sunday Time said that he was a terrorist. After long interrogations by an American official and a man who described himself as part of MI6, he was flown to Guantanamo Bay.

Several American soldiers are under investigation in the shooting deaths of two Afghan villagers outside an US base at Shindand in western Afghanistan we were told on February 17, 2005. Witnesses and local officials said the two villagers were shot February 11 while they fled across a field. Two witnesses said in an interview that two American soldiers approached one of the Afghans, who was wounded, and shot him dead at close range. The witnesses said the Americans were Special Forces soldiers, but that could not be confirmed. The US military said on February 19, 2005, that it is investigating the shooting deaths of two Afghans by US troops in the west of the country earlier this month. Several US soldiers are under investigation in connection with the February 11 incident outside the US base at Shindand in western Afghanistan's Farah province. The victims were ordinary villagers, not Taliban or Al Qaida suspects, and compensation of $2,000 had been paid to their families.

On February 19, 2005, US forces in Afghanistan have been accused of engaging in "widespread Abu Ghraib-style abuse", taking "trophy photographs" of detainees and carrying out sexual humiliation. Documents obtained by The Guardian claim to contain evidence that such abuses took place in the main detention centre at Bagram, near the capital Kabul, as well as at a smaller US installation near the southern city of Kandahar. The documents also indicates abuses went on in Afghanistan and in Iraq, even after the Abu Ghraib scandal last year. A Palestinian says American soldiers in Afghanistan sodomised him and another, a Jordanian, describes a form of torture, which involved being hung in a cage from a rope for days. Both men were freed from US detention last year after being held in Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay. Neither has been charged with any offence.

On February 25, 2005, a Briton who was detained in Guantanamo and Afghanistan said that he witnessed US guards beating two detainees "so badly" that he believes it caused their death. Moazzam Begg, 37, from Birmingham, was one of the four Britons freed last month from the US naval base in Guantanamo Bay. He said that he was tortured by US guards and CIA officers in Afghanistan; he was left tied up and hooded for several hours even though he suffers from asthma. Begg was arrested in February 2002 and was held at the Bagram air base near Kabul in Afghanistan before being transferred to Guantanamo in early 2003.

U.S. forces in Afghanistan were involved in killings, torture and other abuses of prisoners even before the Iraq war started, Human Rights Watch said on May 20, 2005. These crimes, known to senior officials in the military and Central Intelligence Agency, have not still been adequately investigated or prosecuted. At least six detainees in U.S. custody in Afghanistan have been killed since 2002, including one man held by the CIA. More than two years later, no U.S. personnel have been charged with homicide in any of these deaths, although U.S. Department of Defence documents show that five of the six deaths were clear homicides. A military intelligence brigade involved in abuse at Bagram airbase outside Kabul, including two deaths, was later deployed from Afghanistan to Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison. Killings and other cases of torture and abuse in Afghanistan uncovered by Human Rights Watch and other human rights groups include:
- An Afghan detainee known as "M. Sayari" was killed by four U.S. military personnel in Afghanistan in August 2002. A captain and three sergeants "murdered Mr. [Sayari] after detaining him for following their movements in Afghanistan."
- In November 2002, the CIA was involved in the torture and killing of a detainee in Afghanistan. A CIA case officer at the "Salt Pit," a secret U.S.-run prison just north of Kabul, ordered guards to "strip naked an uncooperative young Afghan detainee, chain him to the concrete floor and leave him there overnight without blankets. Afghan guards "paid by the CIA and working under CIA supervision" dragged the prisoner around the concrete floor of the facility, "bruising and scraping his skin," before placing him in a cell for the night without clothes. An autopsy by a medic listed "hypothermia" as the cause of death, and the man was buried in an "unmarked, unacknowledged cemetery."
- Two detainees were killed in December 2002 at Bagram airbase. Two Afghan detainees named Dilawar and Habibullah died at Bagram airbase after being chained to the ceiling and severely beaten by U.S. guards and interrogators. In the months after the deaths, the U.S. military continued to tell journalists that the detainees had died of natural causes.
- A detainee arrested by U.S. soldiers in Wazi village in January 2003 also died in custody.
- Jamal Naseer, a soldier in the U.S.-backed official Afghan Army, was killed in March 2003 after he and seven other soldiers were mistakenly arrested by U.S. forces and taken to a base in Gardez. Surviving detainees who were arrested with Naseer allege that U.S. forces punched them, kicked them, hung them upside down, and hit them with sticks or cables, among other abuses. Some said they were soaked in cold water and forced to lie in snow, and subjected to electrical shocks.
- Another Afghan detainee, Abdul Wali, died in custody in June 2003 at the Asadabad airbase in eastern Afghanistan. A CIA contractor has been indicted for assault in this case, but there are no homicide charges pending against him or anyone else.
Sher Mohammad Khan died in U.S. custody on September 25, a day after he was arrested in a raid on his family's home near Khost in which his brother, Mohammad Rais Khan, was shot and killed by U.S. forces.

On January 28, 2006, a US soldier, James R. Hayes, has been sentenced to four months in prison for punching detainees in prisons in Afghanistan. He was also reduced in grade to private and he will not get any pay or allowances for four months. A Sergeant, Kevin D. Myricks, will appear on a court martial on January 30.

The police chief in the Afghan capital, Kabul, accused US troops on June 1, 2006, of firing into a crowd of hundreds of stone-throwing rioters earlier this week and killing at least three civilians. General Amanullah Gozar says the shooting began as the troops' convoy was leaving the scene of a motor accident that triggered anti-American riots, and the worst violence since the Taliban was toppled in 2001. A coalition spokesman said an initial investigation had found the troops opened fire in self-defence after the accident.

An Army private was acquitted Thursday June 1, 2006, of charges that he abused inmates at a US detention facility in Afghanistan. Damien M. Corsetti was the last soldier charged in the Army's investigations of prisoner abuse in Afghanistan. The court-martial cleared him of charges of assault, maltreatment, dereliction of duty, using hashish and drinking on duty.

The German Defence Ministry said here on Wednesday October 25, 2006, that it was investigating allegations that German soldiers in Afghanistan defiled a corpse on a tour of duty. The Bild newspaper published five photos showing men dressed in German combat fatigues playing with the skull of a dead man. One photo shows that one of the soldiers, who is members of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), posing with the skull in his right hand aboard military vehicles.

Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor says it remains to be seen whether there is any merit to allegations of abuse of Afghan prisoners by Canadian soldiers.
O'Connor confirmed Tuesday February 6, 2007, that military and a civilian watchdog agency are both looking into claims that Canadian soldiers may have abused three detainees last spring. He added that the results of the investigations would be made public.

Former CIA contractor David Passaro was sentenced on February 14, 2007, in a North Carolina courtroom to eight years in prison for the torture of an Afghan detainee who later died. He was the first US citizen charged and convicted of detainee abuse during the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, and the first charged under the USA Patriot Act.

Passaro's sentencing came six months after a jury convicted the 40-year-old Lillington, N.C. resident of one felony and three misdemeanour assault charges for his role in the 2003 death of Abdul Wali, a farmer suspected of taking part in rocket attacks on a US military installation in Afghanistan's Kunar Province.

Human Rights Watch said Friday February 16, 2007, the US government has failed to investigate allegations of prisoner abuse by US forces in Afghanistan. The rights group said it supports the conviction and sentencing of David Passaro, a CIA contractor who was sentenced Tuesday to 8 1/2 years in prison for the June 2003 beating death of Abdul Wali at a border post but the case marks a rare exception to the United States' reluctance to investigate and prosecute detainee abuse cases.

A US military commander decided on April 11, 2007, that Marines accused of killing civilians after a suicide bombing in Afghanistan last month used excessive force, and he has referred the case for possible criminal inquiry.
The initial investigation of the March 4 incident, in which up to a dozen Afghan civilians are reported to have died, concluded that the Marines' response was "out of proportion to the threat that was immediately there.

US Marines who shot their way out of a suicide attack in eastern Afghanistan last month violated international humanitarian law by using excessive force that left 12 civilians dead, an Afghan human rights group said in a report on April 14, 2007. Following the March 4 attack in Nangahar province, when an explosives-rigged minivan crashed into their convoy, the Marines shot indiscriminately at vehicles and pedestrians along a 16-kilometer stretch of road. A US military commander also has determined the Marines used excessive force, and has referred the case for possible criminal inquiry. At least 12 people were killed and another 35 injured by the shooting, including several women and children.

Torture is just part of the grinding conditions faced daily in Afghanistan's "tribal culture," suggests Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper`s Midleeast adviser. Wajid Khan said on April 26, 2007, he doesn't support that kind of abuse, but life isn't easy in the impoverished country torn apart by almost 30 years of war. "Keep in mind it is Afghanistan we're talking about," he said in a brief interview.

Eight members of a Marine Corps company involved in the fatal shooting of civilians during an ambush last month in Afghanistan were brought back to the USA while an investigation continues we were told on April 27, 2007. The March 4 shootings -which came after a minivan rigged with explosives rammed the Marines' convoy- left 12 people dead including a 1-year-old boy and a 4-year-old girl. The panel said Marines fired indiscriminately at pedestrians, motorists and public transportation passengers along a stretch of road in Nangahar.

A US military commander decided on April 11, 2007, that Marines accused of killing civilians after a suicide bombing in Afghanistan last month used excessive force, and he has referred the case for possible criminal inquiry.
The initial investigation of the March 4 incident, in which up to a dozen Afghan civilians are reported to have died, concluded that the Marines' response was "out of proportion to the threat that was immediately there.

US Marines who shot their way out of a suicide attack in eastern Afghanistan last month violated international humanitarian law by using excessive force that left 12 civilians dead, an Afghan human rights group said in a report on April 14, 2007. Following the March 4 attack in Nangahar province, when an explosives-rigged minivan crashed into their convoy, the Marines shot indiscriminately at vehicles and pedestrians along a 16-kilometer stretch of road. A US military commander also has determined the Marines used excessive force, and has referred the case for possible criminal inquiry. At least 12 people were killed and another 35 injured by the shooting, including several women and children.

Torture is just part of the grinding conditions faced daily in Afghanistan's "tribal culture," suggests Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper`s Midleeast adviser. Wajid Khan said on April 26, 2007, he doesn't support that kind of abuse, but life isn't easy in the impoverished country torn apart by almost 30 years of war. "Keep in mind it is Afghanistan we're talking about," he said in a brief interview.

Eight members of a Marine Corps company involved in the fatal shooting of civilians during an ambush last month in Afghanistan were brought back to the USA while an investigation continues we were told on April 27, 2007. The March 4 shootings -which came after a minivan rigged with explosives rammed the Marines' convoy- left 12 people dead including a 1-year-old boy and a 4-year-old girl. The panel said Marines fired indiscriminately at pedestrians, motorists and public transportation passengers along a stretch of road in Nangahar province.

A senior military commander in Afghanistan, Army Colonel John Nicholson, apologized on May 8, 2007, for the conduct of US Marines who fired on civilians near Jalalabad, killing 19 people, including women and children.

Afghanistan has stepped up its efforts to eradicate poppy crops in 2007 after producing a record amount of the key ingredient for heroin production last year, a senior United Nations official said on May 27, 2007. Officials have destroyed some 25,000 hectares of opium poppy fields so far this year, compared to 15,000 hectares during all of 2006.

Afghanistan's poppy crop in 2007 could yield even more opium than last year's record harvest because of favourable weather conditions, a United Nations official said Monday June 25, 2007. Afghanistan's opium crop grew 59 percent in 2006 to 407,000 acres, yielding a record crop of 6,100 tons, enough to make 610 tons of heroin -90 percent of the world's supply. Western and Afghan officials say they expect a similar crop this year. There are close links between Taliban insurgents and criminal networks that deal in drugs. A significant portion of the profits from the US$3.1 billion trade is thought to flow to Taliban fighters, who tax and protect poppy farmers and drug runners.

A UN report released Tuesday June 26, 2007, showed that the "runaway train of drug addiction" has slowed, with estimated levels of global use holding steady for the third year in a row. Afghanistan's opium production, however, increased dramatically. The 2007 World Drug Report released by the Vienna-based UN Office on Drugs and Crime found that 200 million people -or 5 percent of the world's population aged between 15 and 64- used drugs at least once in the previous 12 months.

On August 4, 2007, we were told that Afghanistan will produce another record poppy harvest this year. UN figures to be released in September are expected to show that Afghanistan's poppy production has risen up to 15 percent since 2006 and that the country now accounts for 95 percent of the world's crop, 3 percentage points more than last year.

Dutch forces in Afghanistan have been accused of exposing their detainees to torture and flouting international obligations. Amnesty International said on November 12, 2007, troops from NATO's ISAF mission in the country are handing over detainees to Afghan authorities, despite consistent reports that these are using methods such as whipping and beatings against inmates.

On November 13, 2007, Polish military police detained seven soldiers who served in the country's military mission in Afghanistan on suspicion of violating international law. Polish military prosecutors said the seven soldiers were detained on suspicion of "violating international law and norms, especially the Hague and Geneva Conventions" while serving as part of the 1,200-strong Polish division of the NATO-led mission in Afghanistan. The soldiers were detained in connection with an August 16 incident in eastern Afghanistan. At that time Afghan civilians were killed and injured when Polish troops engaged in a fire fight with militants after a Polish armoured vehicle was hit by a roadside bomb. Five Afghan civilians were killed and three injured during the fight.

On June 17, 2008, we were told that American soldiers herded the detainees into holding pens of razor-sharp concertina wire, as if they were corralling livestock. The guards kicked, kneed and punched many of the men until they collapsed in pain. U.S. troops shackled and dragged other detainees to small isolation rooms, then hung them by their wrists from chains dangling from the wire mesh ceiling. Former guards and detainees said Bagram was a centre of systematic brutality for at least 20 months, starting in late 2001. Yet the soldiers responsible have escaped serious punishment. The public outcry in the United States and abroad has focused on detainee abuse at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, but sadistic violence first appeared at Bagram, north of Kabul, and at a similar U.S. internment camp at Kandahar Airfield in southern Afghanistan.

An Afghan man, Mohammad Jawad, on trial at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba says guards subjected him to 14 days of sleep deprivation. He told a military judge during a pre-trial hearing Thursday June 19, 2008, that he was shifted from one cell to another 112 times during two weeks in May 2004, a process that has been dubbed the "frequent flyer" program. He said guards kept the lights on in his cell and made loud noises to prevent him from sleeping. Jawad's lawyer argued that the treatment amounted to torture, and urged the judge to drop the attempted murder charges against his client. Prosecutors countered that the treatment was not torture and did not merit having the charges dropped. Jawad is charged with attempted murder in connection with a grenade attack in Afghanistan in 2002 that left two U.S. soldiers and their interpreter wounded.

Numerous former detainees at the US military facility at Bagram Air Field, held without charge during the period of 2002-2008, claim that they were beaten, deprived of sleep and threatened with dogs and firearms we were told Wednesday June 24, 2009. 27 former inmates of Bagram were interviewed over a period of two months. The men had been accused of belonging to or helping either al Qaeda or the Taliban, but were never charged or tried, and all were eventually released -many with an apology. Though interviewed separately, specific allegations of ill-treatment recur: physical abuse; sleep deprivation or maintaining stress positions for many hours, even days; undergoing excessive heat/cold or unbearably loud noise; being threatened with death at gunpoint, or with dogs; and being forced to remove their clothes in front of female soldiers.