It is two years since UNAMA last reported on torture by Afghan security forces of detainees suspected of conflict-related crimes. In the wake of its 2013 report, former President Karzai was stung into investigating the matter and instituted steps to try to root torture out. ISAF also strengthened its monitoring of detainees it transferred to the NDS. UNAMA’s 2015 report is, in some sense, an assessment of those moves. Despite a 14 per cent drop in the incidence of torture, one in three Afghans arrested in relation to the conflict is still being tortured, mainly, UNAMA argues, because torturers continue to enjoy impunity. It has also pointed to torture ‘black spots’ which include Kandahar where it also documents summary executions and disappearances. The government response has been mixed, questioning UNAMA’s methodology and findings, but also promising to develop a national plan to eliminate torture. AAN’s Kate Clark reports.
"Torture tarnishes the image of the state." Photo: ToloNews.
In 2011 and 2013, UNAMA reported that about half of conflict-related detainees had been tortured or ill-treated. In its new report, which covers February 2013 to December 2014, that figure has fallen to about a third (35%), although for children (under-18s), it is 42 per cent. (See AAN analysis of the 2011 report, 2013 report and detailed background on detentions in general.)
Good news or bad news?
The ‘good news’, then is that there is less torture. Overall, the percentage of Afghan conflict-related detainees being tortured or ill-treated by their state has fallen by 14 per cent. (1) Yet, it is difficult to feel too encouraged given the findings that one in three of those Afghans are still being tortured and when reading their individual accounts. For example, this man, quoted in the UNAMA report, was held in December 2014 in NDS Directorate 124 which is in Shashdarak, in the heart of the Afghan capital, a stone’s throw from ISAF, the United States Embassy, the Presidential Palace and the Ministry of Defence:
On Saturday three people came to my cell and one of them told me: ‘Tell us the full truth and do not force us to beat you up.’ They took me from my cell to the upper floor, to a small office. There were three persons. When I entered the room, before even questioning me, one person hit me with a plastic pipe on my legs, back and my hands. My nails turned black [from the beatings]. With some pauses, the beating continued for three hours. They demanded that I confess being a Taliban member, and I did because I couldn’t take it anymore. Then they asked me to tell them who else was with me. I gave them the name of my cousin. After that they left me. On the second day, nobody interrogated me. On the third day in the morning at 9 o’clock they came and hung me on a wall near the bathroom of the cell block for two hours. I had already confessed, but they still hung me.
This account is unusual in that the ill-treatment allegedly carried on after the man had confessed. Usually, the torture stops once a confession has been obtained. More familiar is the location: this particular facility has featured in previous reports on torture by UNAMA as well as a 2012 report by the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) and Open Societies Foundation in 2012. (In earlier times, Department or Riasat-e 124 was known as Riasat-e 90 and before that Riasat-e 5.)
In all, UNAMA visited 128 different facilities in 28 provinces and “randomly interviewed 790 pre-trial detainees and convicted prisoners” detained by the National Directorate of Security (NDS) (which detained 77 per cent of those interviewed), Afghan National Police (ANP), Afghan National Border Police (ANBP) (together 38%), Afghan National Army (ANA) (8%) and Afghan Local Police (ALP) (5%), with some held by more than one agency. (2) It is noticeable that the ANA, usually seen as the ‘cleanest’ section of the Afghan National Security Forces, appears in UNAMA’s reporting of torture for the first time.
UNAMA listed 16 methods of torture which it found were being used:
… prolonged and severe beating with cables, pipes, hoses or wooden sticks (including on the soles of the feet), punching, hitting and kicking all over the body including jumping on the detainee’s body, twisting of genitals including with a wrench-like device, and threats of execution and/or sexual assault. Other forms reported were suspension, electric shock, stress positions, forced prolonged standing including in extremely hot or cold conditions, forced standing and sitting down or squatting repeatedly, forced drinking of excessive amounts of water and denial of food, water and prayer time.
Several incidents of removal of finger and toenails and stuffing cloth or plastic bags in a detainee’s month, holding his nose and choking him causing the detainee to start to asphyxiate and also lose consciousness described as “waterboarding without the water” were reported.
The NDS
Overall, UNAMA reported just over a quarter (26%) of NDS detainees had been tortured (161 out of 611). It said there was credible and reliable evidence of the “regular and prevalent use of torture” (ie more than one in four detainees) in facilities in three provinces: Kabul (32%) Kandahar (13% in provincial headquarters, far higher in particular city precincts and one district facility), and Takhar (36% – an increase from the last reporting period). It found “systematic torture” (ie more than one in two detainees reported torture) in Farah (51%). There, detainees described beatings, in particular with cables on the soles of their feet, electric shocks and sleep deprivation. In earlier reports, no incidents of torture had been found in Farah.
In Kabul, it said there was credible evidence that almost a third (32%) of conflict-related detainees had been tortured (in Departments 124: Counter-Terrorism, 40: Investigations (formerly numbered 17) and 1 (Kabul Province facility). Department 40, however, has been cleaned up during the two year reporting period. In 2011, UNAMA reported that a quarter of detainees were found to have been tortured there and in 2013, it found “multiple incidents of torture… despite ISAF monitoring”. Now, it says, the last incident of torture was reported from March 2013.
This may be due, it says, to the implementation of orders related to presidential decree 129, including installing CCTV cameras in all interrogation rooms, training courses, particularly on interview techniques and forensic evidence, by the UK, the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) and the Ministry of Justice, together with NDS Department 47 (Human Rights).
However, UNAMA was concerned that torture has simply been moved elsewhere. It noted that, of the 73 detainees interviewed at Department 40, 29 were found to have experienced torture or ill-treatment in other NDS facilities prior to their transfer to Department 40.
In Kandahar, UNAMA said 13 per cent of detainees had been subjected to torture or ill-treatment (down from half in its 2011 and 2013 reports). However, again UNAMA found that 46 per cent of those transferred to the provincial headquarters had already been tortured in the districts. (For example, eight of the 12 detainees interviewed who had been held in Spin Boldak.)
In both Kabul and Kandahar then, it looked as if torture may have moved to facilities which were more difficult for inspection teams to visit and monitor.
The police
UNAMA found sufficiently credible and reliable evidence that 31 per cent (93 out of 302) detainees interviewed had been subject to torture or ill-treatment by the ANP or ANBP or in their facilities. The worst places for torture were Baghlan (52% of detainees) and Herat (68% of detainees) – both provinces which had previously not reported high levels of torture – and Kandahar (58%) which featured prominently in both UNAMA’s 2011 and 2013 reports.
In Kandahar, there was a pattern of detainees being tortured in particular police stations in precincts of the city (hawzas) 2, 4, 6, 8, 9 and 13, and in Zheray district police station (eight out of 11 detainees there) before transfer to the provincial police headquarters. One detainee, held in the provincial headquarters for three nights, reported being transferred to Hawza-ye 8 and then being tortured. Torture had increased in these local facilities compared to the last UNAMA report, possibly indicating, said UNAMA, that (as with the NDS Kabul and Kandahar) torture had been “’outsourced’ and decentralized to smaller facilities where UNAMA and other organizations monitoring human rights of detainees did not have access.”
Disappearances, summary executions by the ANP in Kandahar?
As in its 2013 report, UNAMA has again reported alleged enforced disappearances and summary executions by the ANP in Kandahar. It said it had “credible reports of the alleged enforced disappearance of more than 26 individuals who had been taken into ANP custody in Kandahar province over the observation period and whose status remains unknown.” However, the numbers are likely far higher: UNAMA says “international sources familiar with the activities of ANP in Kandahar alleged that ANP members regularly committed serious human rights violations including torture, enforced disappearances and extrajudicial executions.” It cites reporting by United Nations Department of Safety and Security, the AIHRC and Afghan and international media, including a six-page investigative report by journalist Anand Gopal, published in April 2014, which begins:
The first bodies were found early in the morning, after the call to prayer, in the tall reeds abutting the southern edge of Kandahar city. One was lying face up, lower lip split, stab wounds to the face and stomach, a hole where the left eye had been. The second, a few yards away, had brown-black mottled skin and burnt hair. The third body’s neck was partially sawed through, and the face bore the same pattern of black scarring and singed hair. All three were handcuffed. The next day, in Sub district 7, a working-class area to the north of the city, a shopkeeper discovered a corpse in a canal…. Two days later, at Mirwais hospital, Kandahar’s main health center, two bodies came in without any visible marks except a small hole, apparently made with a drill bit, in each of the skulls. By the end of that week, early last October [2013], ten bodies had surfaced around the city. By the following week, the count had swelled to nearly forty across Kandahar province.
Cases documented by UNAMA included that of eight men driving on 9 August 2014 to Spin Boldak from the area of Qazi following a night-time meeting between individuals who were pro- and anti-government. UNAMA said they were questioned at a ANBP checkpoint and then stopped again at a second checkpoint when four of the men were detained, including one who was separated and reportedly tortured until he disclosed the names of two individuals in Wesh, who were then arrested by ANBP. “When local elders called on the ANBP to release the detainees they were verbally insulted,” reported UNAMA.
It said the tortured man was reportedly shot by ANBP in Landai village and the two men from Wesh killed by ANBP in the Mullah Wali Waleh area of Spin Boldak district. The body of one of the Wesh men was reported to have been tied to a car and dragged through the streets by the ANBP. “All killings were reportedly witnessed by local residents,” said UNAMA, “who notified the men’s families. When relatives arrived to collect the three bodies they found notes pinned to them prohibiting any removal for 20 days. Following complaints to the ANBP and district authorities the bodies were released after one and two days, respectively.”
UNAMA also documented a case in late September 2013 of “at least four men” aged between 19 and 40 years who were reportedly arrested in Hawzas 2 and 8 of Kandahar city, shortly after a Taleban assault on an ANP checkpoint in Hawza 2, in which three police officers had been killed. On 1 and 2 October 2013, it said, local residents found the bodies of all four men with gunshot injuries to their heads and other injuries, in two separate locations in District 6 and 7 on the western outskirts of Kandahar. The police told UNAMA the men had been insurgents killed during search operations and had never been in their custody; however, it also reported that those asking questions about these and other deaths said they had been threatened.
There are also allegations of mass arbitrary detentions and extra-judicial killings in Zheray district in August 2014 when it was being infiltrated by large numbers of Taleban, some of whom had overrun several ANP checkpoints. UNAMA reports the ANP conducting a large-scale counter-insurgency operation together with ANA, ALP and NDS personnel and that bus passengers travelling on the Herat-Kandahar road, which crosses Zheray, said they had seen “scores of bodies piled beside the road.”
In a two-week period in late July and early August 2014, UNAMA said 55 dead bodies were collected along the road – they may have included fighters, civilians, persons hors de combat and persons detained by ANSF before their death. It said “workers taking the bodies away reported that three… had their hands tied and gunshot wounds to their heads.”
Concerning one specific incident during this period, it reported “credible allegations” that ten men travelling from Shah Wali Kot district to Zheray to visit a local mullah were stopped, beaten and shot dead by ANA soldiers.
One of the victims survived by pretending to be dead and alerted a local resident who reprimanded the soldiers for their conduct, only to be beaten and briefly detained himself. According to the resident, the soldiers then killed the one survivor of the previous alleged mass execution.
On 7 August 2014, Kandahar’s provincial chief of police, General Abdul Razeq, made comments in Zheray district that journalists and others interpreted as calling for detainees to be killed, rather than captured: he said he was “extremely grateful to… all security forces for identifying and targeting [insurgents] on the spot,” an act that avoided “giving a chance to [corrupt] judges or prosecutors to take money from them and release them [for a bribe].”
Razeq’s career as border chief at Spin Boldak, Kandahar police chief and chief of security for the southern zone has been littered with credible and well-sourced allegations of abuses, including summary executions perpetrated with impunity (see here, here and here). However, he was not the only senior official, because of the fear corrupt judges would release detainees, to apparently declare no quarter (ie giving enemy fighters no chance to surrender) or encouraging security forces to kill prisoners – both illegal and possibly amounting to war crimes. UNAMA said that between August and October 2014, it recorded at least six ANSF commanders and one district governor making similar statements. (3)
Afghan Local Police
Of 42 people detained by the ALP, UNAMA documented torture or ill-treatment of more than one in two (22 out of 42) detainees suspected of conflict-related crimes, with particular problems in Baghlan, Daykundi, Kunduz and Paktika provinces. It had also documented “four extrajudicial executions of detainees by ALP members in Farah and Herat provinces and credible reports of the extrajudicial execution of two detainees under 18 years old by ALP members in Arghandab district of Kandahar province.”
The Army
UNAMA found that 20 of 60 detainees interviewed (31 per cent) held in ANA facilities or by ANA soldiers were found to have been tortured or ill-treated. However, if you take out those held in the ANA-controlled facility at Bagram where no torture was reported, the rate rises to more than one in two (55%). Torture and ill-treatment at the hands of the ANA appears to be something which occurs in some district or provincial facilities, including Paktia, Farah, Kandahar, Herat and Khost. Methods reported including beatings with pipes and cables, suspension and punching were reported.
Why the reduction in overall incidents of torture? Why still such high numbers?
Two major changes in the ‘torture climate’ happened during the last two years. One was President Hamed Karzai’s Decree 129 (read the text at the end of this dispatch) issued on 16 February 2013. Torture had already been multiply illegal – banned by the constitution, penal code and the Convention Against Torture which Afghanistan signed in 1987. However, after reacting largely with denial to the three earlier torture reports by UNAMA and the AIHRC, in January 2013, Karzai sent his own commission out to investigate. Realising, presumably, how widespread torture actually was, he issued the decree and made this strongly worded statement (broadcast on National TV and translated by BBC Monitoring):
The UN issued a report suggesting that there is torture in the Afghan prisons and detention centres. I have worked for 10 years to safeguard the human rights of the Afghans and I have argued with the USA and the world over this issue. It is a shame and regrettable that we prevent America, NATO and foreigners from violating the rights of our people and are arguing with them, but we ourselves are violating the rights of our people’.
The decree was potentially a game-changer in that it put prosecution at the heart of efforts to wipe out torture. Article 1 said the Attorney General was duty-bound (4) to “prosecute those who violate the law” in the light of the findings of the presidential investigation which “reported on the torture and mistreatment of detainees and prisoners” and in order to “prevent torture and mistreatment and the conviction of any innocent detainee in the future.”
The decree also put the president at the centre of efforts to stamp out torture. Other senior dignitaries (Chief Justice, Attorney General, Minister of Justice, Minister of Interior, the Director of the National Directorate of Security) were tasked with observing how the decree was implemented in their agencies, but had to report back to the president every three months. It would be interesting to find out if this happened in practice and whether President Ashraf Ghani has also started or continued getting quarterly briefings on the ill-treatment and torture of detainees.
When the decree was issued, AAN wrote that “sackings and prosecutions – of major players responsible for torture within the NDS and the police and not just of underlings – would signal real political intent by the Afghan leadership.” Unfortunately, there has been almost none, just one prosecution of NDS officials in which two were found guilty of torturing detainees in Uruzgan and given prison sentences of eight months. There has been no investigation, prosecution of or even disciplinary proceedings against ANP officials. UNAMA concluded:
The Government’s efforts, however, have not embraced accountability for torture and ill-treatment… UNAMA has observed a persistent lack of accountability for perpetrators of torture with flawed investigations of allegations of torture by prosecutors and very few prosecutions, loss of jobs or disciplinary sanctions for those responsible for torture.
Torture also continues because NDS and ANP officials, as well as those in the justice system, still think it is an effective way to get a confession in order to secure convictions of people they believe are guilty of conflict-related crimes and get them off the ‘battlefield’. Prosecutions based solely on confessions regularly form the sole basis of cases and are accepted by the courts, even when a defendant tells the judge the confession was coerced.
ISAF’s role
The second major shift in the last two years of UNAMA’s reporting was ISAF’s changing role. It finally started monitoring detainees it transferred to NDS, being shamed into action by UNAMA’s 2011 report and various legal actions and scandals in home countries over transferred detainees being tortured. When UNAMA’s 2013 report found torture persisted even in some facilities which ISAF had certified as ‘torture free’, ISAF strengthened its monitoring. In its new report, UNAMA recognises that:
ISAF’s programme contributed to efforts to prevent most international forces from transferring detainees to Afghan facilities where they faced a risk of torture. The programme also improved awareness among NDS and ANP of the prohibition of torture with fewer incidents of transfer to facilities where torture was used.
ISAF’s successor, NATO’s non-combat training mission, Resolute Support, has no such mandate and does not monitor Afghan detention facilities, (5) so whatever benefits ISAF’s monitoring may have brought could slip away. Enduring Freedom, the US’s separate counter-terrorism mission, which had abided by ISAF’s transfer and monitoring rules, has also been replaced. It is not clear what rules its successor, Freedom’s Sentinel, now involved in joint combat operations with Afghan forces, will abide by. The same holds for CIA paramilitaries operating in Afghanistan. However, refusals by the ANSF and US military to admit civilian casualties in joint operations as reported last week by UNAMA (with AAN analysis) are not encouraging, in this respect.
It should also be noticed that international forces were involved in some of the cases of torture and ill-treatment in the 2013-14 reporting period, a time when they were drawing down. (6) There was credible evidence, said UNAMA, that two of those who were held at international military facilities were tortured with repeated beatings and death threats – one in Wardak in September 2013, the other in Baghlan in October 2013. Seven others, said UNAMA, were subjected to ill-treatment – two deprived of sleep at a US-run facility on Bagram Airbase, known as ‘Tor Jail’ or the Black Jail (see AAN reporting), three were beaten on arrest in Logar and two put in stress positions at US Sheng Camp, also in Logar, and two others said they were slapped and kicked by Afghan interpreters or members of the ANA.
Five other detainees arrested in 2013 and 2014 by the Khost Protection Forces (KPF), together with international military forces were detained at the CIA Base, Camp Chapman, in Khost and, reports UNAMA, subjected to ill-treatment by the KPF. The KPF is a ‘Campaign Force’ which was created and funded by the US and operates (still) outside formal Afghan government chain of command.
What happens next? The government response
“While encouraging,” says UNAMA, “the decline in the use of torture is insufficient to show that remedial measures taken to date have been effective.” So far, it argues, most of the efforts to stop torture have focused on training, policy and monitoring. Rather, “robust and active deterrents” are needed, including “independent and empowered anti-torture watchdogs, strict adherence to laws obliging courts to dismiss forced confessions and an end to impunity for perpetrators of torture.” It adds:
This situation mirrors pervasive impunity in Afghanistan for human rights violations, crimes and corruption that is caused, encouraged and sustained by weak State institutions, insecurity and lack of rule of law facilitated by decades of conflict. Such conditions not only shield perpetrators from justified prosecution, but also weaken, discourage and potentially endanger those who advocate for accountability and speak out against injustice, human rights abuses and warlordism.
UNAMA shared a draft of its report with the government and received a detailed response through the National Security Council (it can be read as an annex to the UNAMA’s report). It said there was no official policy to torture, that some incidents in the report were not correct or the result of the actions of individuals. It also said the government did acknowledge problems and was committed, at the highest levels, to eliminating torture and ill-treatment.
President Ghani does appear to be concerned about detainees. One of his first acts as president was to visit Pul-e Charkhi prison, for example. He has also met an Afghan legal rights’ advocacy body, the Detentions Working Group who, in a statement emailed to AAN, reported that he wanted to make institutions accountable. However, signs that at the ‘grass roots’, thinking may be different came from the Interior Ministry spokesman, Sediq Sediqqi, who said that they would “investigate and look into the findings of the report, but also claimed: “Torture is not systematic, it’s only committed by a few people.” According to the BBC, the NDS denied the report, saying it was not accurate or balanced and did not provide evidence to back up its claims. (The report itself has an annex answering these points. (7))
Another type of Afghan response came from the Detentions Working Group, which, while accepting that the war put the ANSF under more pressure than the security forces of most other countries, said: “It is a serious worry that the authorities who are in charge of countering crime themselves commit crime. This kind of behaviour can damage the image of the government and of rule of law, and can actually boost insecurity and violence.”
This last point needs highlighting. Practically speaking, torture tarnishes the image of the state, and abusing detainees has been shown to be a driver of the insurgency. It is also of dubious practical use. As the November 2014 US Senate report into CIA torture (see AAN reporting here) concluded, the CIA torture “was not an effective means of acquiring intelligence or gaining cooperation from detainees.”
Indeed, said the Senate investigation, torture led to fabricated reporting, with detainees giving information just to stop the pain. This in itself led to faulty intelligence with potentially disastrous consequences. The accusation that Iraq was helping al-Qaida produce chemical and biological weapons, which was used by the US to justify its 2003 invasion of Iraq, for example, partly emerged from tortured detainees. Moreover, torture is always illegal, never justified by war or national emergency: in this respect, the International Criminal Court (8) has just assessed that Afghan security forces in their torture of conflict-related detainees may have committed war crimes.
(Editing by Thomas Ruttig)
(1) UNAMA spends seven pages going through its methodology.
(2) Of the 790 detainees interviewed (with percentages as calculated by AAN):
611 had been held – at any one point during their detention – in NDS detention facilities or by NDS personnel (77%)
302 had been held in ANP and/or ANBP facilities or by such personnel (38%)
60 by ANA or in ANA detention facilities (8%)
42 detainees had been held by ALP (5 %)
54 detainees had been held by international military forces or foreign government intelligence agencies either alone or with Afghan security forces and transferred to NDS, ANP or ANA custody (9 %)
Some detainees had been held by more than one agency (which explains the total of more than one hundred per cent.)
(3) UNAMA reports:
13 August 2014: General Aminullah Amarkhel, Baghlan provincial chief of police, stated he had ordered his officers to “kill captured Taliban to prevent their release by the justice system.”
13 August 2014: Abdul Khaleq Maref, district governor of Hesarak district (Nangarhar province), publicly urged police commanders “not to show any mercy towards Taliban fighters.”
23 August 2014: General Murad Ali Murad, Chief of ANA Infantry Forces, Ministry of Defense, stated to the press in Herat that the Ministry of Defence had “ordered all ANA forces to use any means to kill and eliminate those insurgents who are fighting against ANSF in the field.”
24 August 2014: Mir Hashem, ANA Officer, Paktia province, spoke to journalists and said “Taliban militants should be killed in battle or executed in case of capture.”
18 October 2014: General Aminullah Azad, deputy provincial chief of police of Herat province, speaking to media said “Taliban should not be shown mercy and should be killed on the battlefield.”
(4) It appears the Attorney General’s Office has failed in its mandated task. “According to AGO officials,” said UNAMA, three AGO delegations in Herat, Kabul and Kandahar who were tasked with reviewing torture allegations “reviewed and documented 133 allegations of torture (over an unspecified time frame) against NDS and ANP officials in Kabul, Kandahar and Herat.
Of the 133 allegations, 78 were dismissed or closed and 55 were referred for investigation and prosecution. Of the 55, 52 cases, all from Kabul jurisdiction, were referred for a second investigation phase. All the cases were closed following investigations and none referred for trial. UNAMA questioned whether investigations were conducted appropriately and in accordance with Afghan and international law. “UNAMA found that institutional independence and impartiality were lacking in the AGO delegations, as prosecutors assigned to investigate allegations of torture were under the authority of the same institution whose alleged misconduct they were investigating or were the prosecutor of record in the detainee’s alleged national security case.”
(5) UNAMA says that international law requires all international forces – even if they only train, advise and assist – to monitor the treatment of detainees in operations which they accompany for the duration of the accompanied operation, and to include efforts to prevent the use of torture and ill-treatment in their training, advisory and assistance tasks.
(6) UNAMA interviewed 71 detainees who had been captured by international military forces or other (foreign) government agencies (presumably CIA) acting alone or together with Afghan security forces and transferred to NDS, ANA or ANP custody (26 individuals) or by Afghan forces in operations that had some international military involvement (35 individuals), including air transport, collecting biometric data.
(7) As one example, the government alleged there was a high likelihood of detainees lying and making false allegations and that the Taleban trained their people to do this. UNAMA responded by saying:
The nation-wide pattern of allegations from the large sample size is inconsistent with a substantial proportion of detainees interviewed having been trained prior to their capture and detention in what lies to tell about their treatment if detained. First, the nature of the torture and ill-treatment reported was generally distinctive and specific to the facility at which it was alleged to have occurred. It is improbable that training would be so well tailored to specific facilities. Second, the same forms of torture and ill-treatment at the same facilities were reported by different detainees interviewed at different times and often months apart. Interviewees also belonged to a variety of networks, such as local criminal gangs and a range of insurgent groups. Training is unlikely to have been provided consistently across this diverse range of groups, and the pattern of allegations of torture and ill-treatment did not correspond with any identifiable ideological agenda.
(8) Its November 2013 assessment of potential war crimes cases in Afghanistan: The information available suggests that the war crimes of cruel treatment and torture, and outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment… may have been committed by members of the Afghan government forces against conflict-related detainees in different detention facilities throughout Afghanistan.
Revisions:
This article was last updated on 9 Mar 2020
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