May 24, 2004
By Douglas Jehl and David Rohde
WASHINGTON, May 23 — A military intelligence unit that oversaw interrogations at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq was also in charge of questioning at a detention center in Afghanistan where two prisoners died in December 2002 in incidents that are being investigated as homicides.
For both of the Afghan prisoners, who died in a center known as the Bagram Collection Point, the cause of death listed on certificates signed by American pathologists included blunt force injuries to their legs. Interrogations at the center were supervised by Company A, 519th Military Intelligence Battalion, which moved on early in 2003 to Iraq, where some of its members were assigned to the Joint Interrogation and Debriefing Center at Abu Ghraib. Its service in Afghanistan was known, but its work at Bagram at the time of the deaths has now emerged in interviews with former prisoners, military officials and from documents.
Two men arrested with one of the prisoners who died in the Bagram Detention Center that month said in southeastern Afghanistan on Sunday that they were tortured and sexually humiliated by their American jailers; they said they were held in isolation cells, black hoods were placed over their heads, and their hands at times were chained to the ceiling. "The 10 days that we had was a very bad time," said Zakim Shah, a 20-year-old farmer and a father of two who said he felt he would not survive at times. "We are very lucky."
The account provided by the two men was consistent with those of other former Afghan prisoners, including those interviewed by The New York Times and cited in reports by human rights officials.
In interviews, the two men and other former prisoners who were held at the center in Afghanistan at that time have described an environment similar in some ways to that of Abu Ghraib, whose outlines have been depicted in photographs and testimony. At both places, prisoners were hooded, stripped naked and mocked sexually by female captors, according to a variety of accounts.
In Iraq, at least three members of the 519th Military Intelligence Battalion who had been assigned to the joint interrogation center at Abu Ghraib have been quietly disciplined for conduct involving the abuse of a female Iraqi prisoner there, an Army spokesman said.
At least one officer, Capt. Carolyn A. Wood, served in supervisory positions at the interrogation units both at the Bagram Collection Point from July 2002 to December 2003 and then again at the joint center at Abu Ghraib, according to Army officials. That center was established in the fall of 2003. In Congressional testimony last week, a senior Army lawyer, Col. Marc Warren, praised Captain Wood as an officer who took initiative in Iraq at a time when American commanders had yet to spell out rules for interrogation. But he also singled out Captain Wood and her unit as having brought to Iraq interrogation procedures developed during their service in Afghanistan. No one is known to have accused Captain Wood of any wrongdoing in connection with the abuses at Abu Ghraib or the deaths of prisoners there or in Afghanistan.
A spokesman for the 18th Airborne Corps, in Fort Bragg, N.C., identified Captain Wood as having been sent to Afghanistan in July 2002 as Company A's interrogation platoon leader, and having later assumed the duties of "operations officer in charge of the Bagram Collection Point." In a written statement sent Friday, that spokesman, Lt. Col. Billy Buckner, said Captain Wood had been assigned to the 519th Battalion at Abu Ghraib. But other Army officers have described her as having served as the officer in charge of the interrogation center there, under Lt. Col. Steve Jordan, a reservist who served as its director.
In an interview on Sunday, Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, who oversaw Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq but has since been admonished and suspended from command, described Captain Wood as an impressive and well-spoken expert on interrogations who oversaw the center. Colonel Buckner said that Captain Wood's commanding officer in Iraq, Lt. Col. Robert Whalen, was not available for comment. To date, seven enlisted personnel from a military police unit have been the only soldiers charged with crimes in connection with the abuses at Abu Ghraib. But an Army report completed in March identified Colonel Jordan as among four people who may have been among those "directly or indirectly" responsible for the misconduct.
Within days after the deaths of the two prisoners in Afghanistan in December 2002, both were ruled homicides by American military doctors in Afghanistan. But in a public statement at the time, the military described at least one death as the result of natural causes.
The deaths of two prisoners at the Bagram Collection Point in Afghanistan in December 2002 are believed to be among nine being investigated by the Army as possible homicides linked to interrogation practices in Iraq and Afghanistan. At least two other deaths being investigated occurred in Abu Ghraib, senior military officers have said, but it is not clear whether those prisoners were under the authority of the Joint Interrogation and Debriefing Center.
The two former Afghan prisoners who were interviewed in Afghanistan on Sunday said they believed that their acquaintance, a young man named Dilawar whose death is considered a possible homicide, received the same harsh treatment that they did. Both prisoners were later sent to the American-run detention center in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, but were released with letters from the Army saying they did nothing wrong.
The two men said that at Bagram they were forced to strip naked in the presence of female soldiers when receiving prison clothes, undergoing medical exams and taking showers. They said female soldiers were never present when they were naked in Guantánamo Bay.
Both men said appearing naked in front of women was deeply humiliating for Afghan men, who live in a conservative Islamic culture. "The other things don't matter," Parkhudin said, referring to the kicking and sleep deprivation. "But we are angry about this."
Since 2002, about 350 prisoners have been held at any given time at American-run detention centers in Afghanistan. The Bagram Collection Point, at Bagram Air Base, just north of Kabul, is the main American detention center, and is visited by officials of the International Committee of the Red Cross. No outside inspectors visit roughly 20 smaller American bases around Afghanistan where prisoners are also held.
The two Afghan prisoners who died in American custody in December 2002 are identified on death certificates only as Dilawar and "Ullah, Habib." Friends and family members have identified Dilawar as a 22-year-old farmer and part-time taxi driver. The second prisoner who died has been identified by family members as Mullah Habibullah, about 30 years old and a brother of a former Taliban commander.
The Dec. 13 death certificate for Dilawar says he died as a result of "blunt force injuries to lower extremities complicating coronary artery disease." The document was signed by Lt. Col. Elizabeth A. Rouse of the Air Force, a military pathologist, and listed as its finding that the "mode of death" was "homicide," rather than "natural," "accident" and "suicide."
At the time, American military officials said Dilawar had died of a heart attack and had coronary artery disease. The fact that the military characterized his death a "homicide" was not publicly known until his family showed a reporter from The New York Times his death certificate in late February 2003. Family members, who do not speak English, were unable to understand the certificate.
According to military documents, Dilawar was found dead in his isolation cell on Dec. 10, his fifth day of captivity. The military later disclosed that the death in Bagram of Mullah Habibullah, which occurred on Dec. 3, 2002, had also been deemed a homicide by an Army pathologist. He too was found collapsed in a cell on the second floor of the center.
The two men interviewed on Sunday in Turiuba, a village in Khost Province in southeastern Afghanistan, said they had been held in isolation cells on the second floor of the Bagram center for the first 10 days.
Mr. Shah, the 20-year-old farmer, and Parkhudin, a 26-year-old farmer and former soldier, said they were later transferred from Bagram to the American detention center in Guantánamo Bay. Their first 10 days in Bagram were by far the most harrowing of their 15 months in American custody, they said.
Guards shouted at them or kicked them whenever they tried to sleep, the two men said. The only time they were allowed to move freely was during trips to eat or go to the bathroom, they said. If they tried to speak to a prisoner in an adjoining cell, guards beat them, they said.
"They were punching me and kicking me when I talked to the other prisoners," said Parkhudin, who like many Afghans has only one name. Mr. Shah said soldiers never struck him when he tried to sit, but they constantly shouted at him to keep him awake. "We were standing for the whole 10 days," said the young farmer, who said he grew so exhausted at one point that he vomited. "When we were trying to sit they would tell us `Hands up!' `Stand up!' " Parkhudin said his hands were chained to the ceiling for 8 of the 10 days. Mr. Shah said his hands were chained for only 4 hours in total over the 10 days. Parkhudin said he believed American interrogators treated him worse because they thought he was a Taliban commander.
A third detainee who was in the Bagram center at the time, Abdul Jabar, a 35-year-old taxi driver from the same area as Dilawar, said he saw him being led downstairs to the bathroom hooded. In a March 2003 interview with The New York Times, he said the young man "was struggling a lot."
He added, "He was scared because he could not get enough oxygen."
Sixteen months later, military investigations into both deaths have not been completed. Military officials have said that it has proved difficult to track the personnel who were on duty in the Bagram Detention Center at the time.
"It's complicated because forces have rotated outside of Afghanistan," Lt. Col. Tucker Mansager, a United States military spokesman in Afghanistan, said Saturday. "Our United States Army Criminal Investigative Division is having to follow those people to the various places they've gone in order to interview them and complete an actual criminal investigation into those allegations."
Douglas Jehl reported from Washington for this article, and David Rohde from Khost, Afghanistan.
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Citation:
Douglas Jehl and David Rohde. "Afghan Deaths Linked to Unit at Iraq Prison," New York Times, 24 May 2004. Original URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/24/politics/24ABUS.html?ex=1088222400&en=05e11290e4dc2f9e&ei=5070&pagewanted=print&position=