Military to Probe Alleged Abuse of Afghan Prisoners

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has asked for an investigation into allegations that a group of Afghans mistakenly taken prisoner by U.S. Special Forces troops last month was beaten and mistreated, but senior Pentagon officials said Monday that so far there was no evidence that such abuse took place.

At a news conference at the Pentagon, officials also defended a CIA missile strike last week near Zhawar Kili in eastern Afghanistan amid reports that civilians there had been killed.

The strike by a Hellfire missile from an unmanned Predator drone hit its intended target, the officials said. Those killed were “not innocents,” said Rear Adm. John D. Stufflebeem, deputy director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

The reports are part of an increasing drumbeat of alleged misfires and mistakes by U.S. forces in Afghanistan. Pentagon officials say the situation in Afghanistan is becoming increasingly murky, with former Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters switching sides or seeking to blend into the general population.

“To say that conditions in Afghanistan are confusing is an understatement, you know,” said Pentagon spokeswoman Victoria Clarke. “And it’s impossible to say these people are on this side and these people are on that side. People are on multiple sides, and they switch sides. So there is a great deal of confusion about information in general. And we do always try to get to [the] truth.”

Local officials in Afghanistan say there is a growing body of evidence that the United States has, in several cases, captured or killed the wrong people.

U.S. investigators trekked up to the mountainside site of the Hellfire missile strike late Sunday and left Monday morning, taking small pieces of human flesh and bone, communications equipment, documents, small weapons and ammunition, defense officials said.

A report in the Washington Post on Monday said those killed in the strike had been peasants collecting scrap metal. U.S. officials have said they believed the targets were Al Qaeda members, in part because of their Arab-style dress.

“We do not know who the individuals were at the strike site,” Stufflebeem said. “The indications were there that there was something untoward that we needed to make go away.”

Stufflebeem did not elaborate, citing concerns about the secrecy of intelligence operations. He said forensics experts plan to conduct DNA tests on the remains to try to determine the identities of those killed. U.S. officials reportedly have sought DNA samples from members of terrorist leader Osama bin Laden’s family.

A U.S. intelligence official said the CIA continues to believe that the missile attack “was a good strike on an appropriate target,” although there is no hard evidence suggesting that Bin Laden was among those killed.

“We still think it was someone senior” in the Al Qaeda terrorist network, the official said Monday, because the group was so large and appeared to show deference to one man who appeared taller than the rest.

The official disputed reports that the victims were innocent civilians. He said the drone had tracked the group for “a long time” before the order was given to fire a missile.

“No one was going around gathering any scrap metal, I can tell you that,” the official said.

As for the men who were reportedly beaten, they were among 27 Afghans captured in a Jan. 24 nighttime raid on what military intelligence analysts had mistakenly identified as a terrorist hide-out in a remote village in Oruzgan province.

Two told reporters over the weekend that they had blacked out from the beatings. Others claimed that their ribs had been broken. The men said they are allies of Afghanistan’s interim prime minister, Hamid Karzai, and were not Taliban or Al Qaeda fighters.

Clarke said Monday that those captured were not “high value” members of the Taliban militia or Al Qaeda, but she added that they may have been onetime Taliban allies who switched sides.

Survivors said 21 villagers were killed in the assault. One U.S. soldier was wounded. The CIA reportedly has begun paying reparations to victims of the raid.

Stufflebeem said it is plausible that the men were treated harshly when they were first taken prisoner.

“In that initial encounter, you don’t know who’s good, you don’t know who’s bad, and you don’t take the chances, you just secure the area,” Stufflebeem said. “So everybody’s treated the same, and it’s relatively harsh, I would say.”

But Clarke and Stufflebeem said military officials were seeking to determine whether soldiers in the raid did anything inappropriate.

“The investigation is still ongoing. The secretary and Gen. [Tommy] Franks [the head of U.S. Central Command] have asked for more information about those allegations,” Clarke said. “We have nothing to indicate anything like that happened.”

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Times staff writer Bob Drogin contributed to this report.