KABUL, May 22: The United Nations condemned new allegations of abuse of prisoners by US troops in Afghanistan and called for tough action to deal with the offenders, a day before President George Bush and Afghan President Hamid Karzai are due to meet at the White House.
“Such abuses are utterly unacceptable and are an affront to everything the international community stands for in Afghanistan,” Jean Arnault, UN special representative in Afghanistan said in a strongly worded statement.
Two Afghan prisoners held in a US-run prison at Bagram Airbase were tortured to death by American soldiers, the New York Times reported on Friday, citing a leaked 2,000-page file on the US Army’s criminal investigation of the case.
The two men died in 2002 after being kicked, beaten and hung from their wrists on the ceiling of their cells in what the paper described as a wider pattern of abuse by young and poorly trained soldiers that bore hallmarks of the Abu Ghraib scandal in Iraq.
The Afghan leader publicly expressed his shock at the alleged abuse ahead of his trip to Washington where he will meet with Bush to discuss the allegations as well as anti-US riots which swept Afghanistan earlier this month killing at least 15. Mr Arnault echoed Karzai’s call for “the punishment of all those involved in these inexcusable crimes”.—AFP
