KABUL: Afghanistan’s President Ashraf Ghani vowed yesterday to investigate CIA abuse at a detention centre in his country, saying torture described in a US Senate report “violates all accepted norms of human rights in the world”.
In a sign of how important the issue of US treatment of prisoners remains just weeks before the formal end of the 13-year American-led war in Afghanistan, Ghani delivered a televised address to respond to the US Senate report.
Yesterday’s report disclosed that a secret CIA centre known as Detention Site Cobalt, believed to be outside Kabul, was one of the first places where interrogators tortured detainees with techniques that included beatings, sleep deprivation, chaining to walls and exposure to cold.
Shortly after the September 11, 2001 attacks on US soil, the United States launched an intervention to topple the Taliban government that sheltered Al Qaeda leaders blamed for the attacks. US forces have been fighting in Afghanistan ever since, the longest war in American history.
Allegations of US abuse of detainees captured in Afghanistan have been an emotive issue for Afghans throughout the war. The Senate report is the first time Washington has acknowledged the full extent of the CIA’s secret programme.
“The report is a shocking one. It violates all accepted norms of human rights in the world,” said Ghani, who took office two months ago. “There is no justification for such acts and human torture in the world.”
He vowed to investigate how many Afghans had suffered abuse at US detention centres which also housed suspected militants from other countries, and reiterated that by January 1, the United States would no longer have the right to hold detainees in Afghanistan.
REUTERS
