Human Rights Watch: When the United Nations Committee against Torture grilled Afghanistan’s delegation last month about government efforts to curb torture, members asked about one person in particular: Gen. Abdul Raziq. That was no accident. Raziq, the Afghan National Police chief for the southern city of Kandahar, has become synonymous with systematic torture, extrajudicial killings, and
Tolo News: A number of lawmakers at Meshrano Jirga (Upper House of Parliament) on Sunday lent their support to Kandahar Police Chief General Abdul Raziq following a report by the United Nations Committee against Torture, calling Raziq a “patriotic and champion” police officer. The UN committee alleged that Gen. Raziq had used different methods of torture
Lawfare: For more than a decade, the ICC (International Criminal Court) has maintained a preliminary examination of various alleged crimes in that country, mostly by the Taliban but also allegations of torture by U.S. personnel. In its latest update on the examination, the prosecutor’s office even expanded the enquiry into U.S. activities to cover potential torture
Human Rights Watch: It has been two years since Afghanistan’s president, Ashraf Ghani, vowed to end torture. Instead, it’s on the rise, with 39 percent of detainees subjected to beatings, electric shocks, or near suffocation by the Afghan police and intelligence agents, according to the United Nations Assistance Mission to Afghanistan (UNAMA). Click here to read
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty April 24, 2017 A UN report says cases of torture and mistreatment of detainees in Afghanistan have increased despite promises from President Ashraf Ghani and new laws enacted to curb the widespread practice. At least 39 percent of the conflict-related detainees interviewed by UN investigators “gave credible and reliable accounts” of
Tolo News: Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) on Thursday called for the prosecution of war criminals and violators of human rights including Zardad Faryadi. Zardad Faryadi, a former Hizb-e-Islami commander, arrived back in Kabul on Wednesday after serving more than 10 years in a U.K prison on charges of torture and human rights violations. The
Michael Hughes: The US State Department was practically insulted that the International Criminal Court (ICC) dared to suggest Americans committed war crimes in Afghanistan through the systematic employment of enhanced interrogation techniques – otherwise known as torture. Not only are the crimes themselves appalling, but US officials legitimately believe international law does not and should not
Antiwar.com: Now that President-elect Donald Trump has chosen Flynn as his national security adviser, media coverage has given prominence to the more serious issue of Flynn’s denunciation of Islam as a “cancer” and other manifestations of his embrace of Islamophobia. But the mainstream media view of Flynn’s military record ignores his pivotal role in devising
VOA News November 15, 2016 WASHINGTON — An International Criminal Court investigation of possible war crimes by U.S. forces in Afghanistan is not “warranted or appropriate,” the U.S. State Department said Tuesday after prosecutors in The Hague found initial grounds for such a probe. State Department spokeswoman Elizabeth Trudeau said the United States was not a
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty November 15, 2016 Prosecutors at the International Criminal Court say they have “reasonable basis” to believe the United States committed “war crimes” by torturing prisoners in Afghanistan. The U.S. military subjected at least 61 detainees in Afghanistan to “torture, cruel treatment, [and] outrages upon personal dignity,” an initial investigative report said