KABUL, July 14: International peacekeeping troops in Kabul said on Wednesday they had unwittingly aided a US vigilante group running a private jail, after being duped into believing they were US special forces.
The revelation is an embarrassment for US-led occupation forces here, who are already under fire from rights groups for allegedly mistreating detainees and raises questions about the role of private security contractors in Afghanistan.
Three US nationals and at least four Afghans were arrested by Afghan authorities last week for conducting a private "war on terror" and holding eight Afghans in a private house for eleven days without authority.
Captain Chris Henderson, spokesman for the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Kabul, said international troops had provided bomb disposal services to the vigilante group, led by a man identified as Jonathan K. Idema.
"The ISAF personnel believed that he was what he purported to be, which was a special operations agency and therefore they believed they were providing legitimate support to a legitimate security agency," Capt Henderson said.
He added that international peacekeeping troops had never been involved in capturing and detaining suspects with Idema's group, but had paid three visits last month to compounds Idema had raided to check for explosives.
On two of the three occasions a group of less than 10 ordnance disposal personnel and a sniffer dog found traces of explosives and on another visit found suspicious electronic components all of which they removed, he added.
Capt Henderson said peacekeeping troops had been hoodwinked by the fact that Idema and his team were wearing US-style military uniforms with US flags on their shoulders.
He said they realised something was amiss after three visits when they discovered Idema was not coordinating with the occupation forces' headquarters in running his operations.
"There was no indication of abuse by anyone," Henderson said, adding he was confident abuses would have been reported. Rights groups said peacekeepers involvement in Idema's special operations highlights the lack of transparency surrounding the detention of Afghan prisoners by US-led forces.
"This recent issue of the private jail of Mr Idema raises lots of questions over why there are different places to detain people and why there is no transparency about where these places are and who is running them," said Ahmad Nader Nadery, head of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission.
Mr Nadery said the atmosphere of secrecy provided an ideal climate for one-man vigilantes to operate. Afghan police who arrived at a house where Idema and his team had arrested four Afghan men last month were turned away and believed Idema was working with US authorities, he said.
"We started looking into this case in June after the family of the victim came to us and the women of the house said the men had been made to stand with their faces to the wall for eight hours which is an obvious form of torture," Mr Nadery said.
No investigation is underway to determine how international peacekeeping forces had failed to check the identity of Idema and his two US cohorts, a man named Brent Bennett and another man who could not be identified.
"There's not much you can do except to say, you know what, we made a mistake," Capt Henderson said. The US State Department took the unusual step last week of issuing a statement that Idema was in no way linked with the US government. -AFP
