November 29, 2007	Thursday	Ziqa’ad 18, 1428

KABUL: Afghanistan’s intelligence agency on Wednesday rejected allegations that prisoners transferred to its custody by Nato nations are ill-treated and tortured. The agency said it had looked into the charges in an Amnesty International report this month and found they were based on interviews with opponents of the government and on incorrect data.

“This report is baseless and not based on accurate information,” Afghanistan National Directorate of Security (ANDS) spokesman Sayed Ansari said.

London-based Amnesty said prisoners captured by the Nato-led International Security Assistance Force and transferred to Afghan custody faced whipping, beatings, exposure to extreme cold and food deprivation.

It urged ISAF nations to stop such transfers. Rights groups in Canada, one of the 37 countries in the military alliance, are trying to stop prisoners being handed to Afghan custody because of alleged torture and abuse.

Ansari said the attorney general’s office, authorised to visit prisoners in ANDS custody, had “so far have not found any indications of prisoner abuse.”

He said the International Committee of the Red Cross and Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission had visited the holding cells and said they “appreciated the way prisoners are treated.”

ISAF nations who handed the detainees over were able to visit the suspects in detention and “have never had any such complaints,” the spokesman added.

The report was “based on interviews with people freed from ANDS custody who are in opposition and enmity with the Islamic government of Afghanistan,” he said.

ISAF has also rejected the Amnesty charges, saying it had no evidence of systematic mistreatment and torture of its detainees once they were in the custody of Afghan authorities.—AFP