Afghan Leader to Seek Control Over Detainees

Shocked by a U.S. Army report detailing prisoner abuses in Afghanistan, President Hamid Karzai said Saturday that he would demand control over detainees during an upcoming visit to Washington.

Army investigators cited numerous witness accounts of brutal abuses of Afghan prisoners, including at least two deaths, in a 2,000-page confidential file on their criminal investigation, which was first reported by the New York Times on Friday.

Based on interviews with interpreters and U.S. soldiers, the Army report described questionable interrogation methods, including leaving one prisoner chained by the wrists to the ceiling of his cell for days. He later died.

“It has shocked me totally. We condemn it,” Karzai told reporters before leaving Kabul on a four-day visit to the U.S., which includes a scheduled meeting with President Bush at the White House.

“We want the U.S. government to take very, very strong action to take away people like that working with their forces in Afghanistan,” Karzai said, according to news agency reports.

The latest details of harsh treatment at the U.S. military’s Bagram air base follow riots in several Afghan cities over the reported desecration of the Koran by an American interrogator at the Guantanamo Bay detention center in Cuba.

At least 17 people died in rioting that erupted in several countries after Newsweek magazine reported May 9 that U.S. investigators had confirmed a Koran had been flushed down a toilet to rile prisoners. The magazine later retracted the story and apologized.

Karzai is trying to reach out to Taliban fighters and other militants, offering an amnesty program for combatants who pledge loyalty to his administration. About 80 militants have surrendered since March, when the amnesty took effect, and government officials say they expect momentum to pick up quickly.

The reconciliation process is also expected to raise Karzai’s approval ratings among the country’s majority Pushtuns, some of whom have accused him of turning his back on his own ethnic group.

Seven people face criminal charges in connection with the abuses described in the Army report.

Some of the most shocking revelations in the leaked Army file involved two previously reported deaths of Afghan prisoners at what the military calls the Bagram Collection Point. They are identified only as Dilawar and Habibullah.

The New York-based Human Rights Watch says at least six prisoners have died in the custody of the U.S. military and CIA in Afghanistan since 2002.

“These crimes, known to senior officials in the military and Central Intelligence Agency, have not still been adequately investigated or prosecuted,” the human rights group charged in a statement.

The Pentagon insisted there was no evidence of systematic abuse and blamed any incidents on rogue soldiers and civilian contractors at the prison.

Karzai, a close ally of the U.S. who recently said Afghanistan should have a formal alliance with Washington, agreed with that assessment, saying the abuses by interrogators and guards outlined in the Army file did not suggest widespread problems in the U.S. military.

“The people of the United States are very kind people,” he said. “It is only one or two individuals who are bad and such individuals are found in any military in any society everywhere, including Afghanistan.”

Karzai said he would raise his concerns in a meeting with Bush and called for the return of all Afghan prisoners to Afghanistan. Many Afghans remain at Guantanamo.

“No operations inside Afghanistan should take place without the consultation of the Afghan government,” he said.

“They should not go to our people’s homes any more without the knowledge of the Afghan government.... If they want any person suspected in a house, they should let us know and the Afghan government would arrange that.”

Times staff writer Watson reported from New Delhi and special correspondent Kazem from Kabul.