19 May 2004	Wednesday	28 Rabi-ul-Awwal 1425

BERLIN, May 18: US troops in Afghanistan have written permission to use threats, dogs and the firing of mortars near prisoners to help extract information during interrogations, a German news weekly said on Tuesday.

The magazine said one of its reporters had found and taken photographs of the documents at a US military base in southeastern Afghanistan. The directives also allowed "sensory overload", the use of loud noise or music, "use of warm or cold temperatures, long interrogation sessions, threats of transfer to the US detention centre in Guantanamo Bay, and sleep deprivation to weaken prisoner resistance".

Stern quoted a passage from the documents saying "prisoners have a right to at least four hours sleep per day ... regardless of how this time is divided up". The magazine said the written instructions contradicted statements from US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who told a Senate Armed Services Committee ten days ago that US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan are ordered to respect the Geneva conventions for prisoners of war.

Stern said the treatment of prisoners as described in the documents found in Afghanistan clearly violated the Geneva conventions and United Nations anti-torture conventions.

The US is investigating two complaints of prisoner abuse while in custody, including allegations by a former police official that he was beaten, stoned, sexually taunted and deprived of sleep while in holding cells in Gardez and Kandahar.

A New Yorker magazine story this week alleged Mr Rumsfeld approved a secret operation that encouraged the physical coercion and humiliation of Iraqi prisoners to obtain intelligence, based on practices already used in Afghanistan. The Pentagon has denied the report.

PUNISHMENT: Afghanistan's government on Tuesday called for any guards accused of mistreating prisoners while in American detention facilities to be punished if the allegations were proven.

"We have been assured that the investigations are ongoing," presidential spokesman Jawed Ludin said, referring to two new inquiries into prisoner abuse launched by the United States military within the past week.

"If the investigations prove that there was prisoner abuse we want them (abusers) to be punished," Mr Ludin told a regular news briefing in Kabul. The government welcomed the announcement by the US-led forces that they would investigate the two complaints of prisoner abuse, he said.

However, the government of President Hamid Karzai wanted investigations to be "accelerated, serious and complete", he said. "We have been assured by coalition forces that the prisoners have been treated humanely," and that the International Committee of the Red Cross was visiting detainees regularly, Mr Ludin told reporters.

"The investigation will reveal the facts." At least two men suspected to be Taliban fighters died in 2002 while in US custody at Bagram Air Base. -AFP