Tag: InternationalNews

{{Afghan authorities are still torturing prisoners, such as hanging them by their wrists and beating them with cables, the United Nations said, a year after it first documented the abuse and won government promises of detention reform.}}

The latest report shows little progress in curbing abuse in Afghan prisons despite efforts by the U.N. and international military forces in Afghanistan. The report released Sunday also cites instances where Afghan authorities have tried to hide mistreatment from U.N. monitors.

The slow progress on prison reform has prompted NATO forces to once again stop many transfers of detainees to Afghan authorities out of concern that they would be tortured.

In multiple detention centers, Afghan authorities leave detainees hanging from the ceiling by their wrists, beat them with cables and wooden sticks, administer electric shocks, twist their genitals and threaten to shove bottles up their anuses or to kill them, the report said.

In a letter responding to the latest report, the Afghan government said that its internal monitoring committee found that “the allegations of torture of detainees were untrue and thus disproved.”

The Afghan government said that it would not completely rule out the possibility of torture at its detention facilities, but that it was nowhere near the levels described in the report and that it was checking on reports of abuse.

The findings, however, highlight the type of human rights abuses that many activists worry could become more prevalent in Afghanistan as international forces draw down and the country’s Western allies become less watchful over a government that so far has taken few concrete actions to reform the system.

As one detainee in the western province of Farah told the U.N. team: “They laid me on the ground. One of them sat on my feet and another one sat on my head, and the third one took a pipe and started beating me with it. They were beating me for some time like one hour and were frequently telling me that, ‘You are with Taliban and this is what you deserve.’”

More than half of the 635 detainees interviewed had been tortured, according to the report titled Treatment of Conflict-Related Detainees in Afghan Custody: One Year On. That is about the same ratio the U.N. found in its first report in 2011.

It’s a troubling finding given the amount of international attention and pledges of reform that came after the first report. At that time, the NATO military alliance temporarily stopped transferring Afghans it had picked up to national authorities until they could set up a system free of abuse.

Though it said the findings were exaggerated, the Afghan government promised after the first report to increase monitoring.

But little appears to have changed. Once NATO forces resumed the transfers and decreased inspections, torture quickly returned to earlier levels, the report said.

And even though the international military force was making a serious effort to delay transfers if there was risk of torture, about 30 percent of 79 detainees who had been transferred to Afghan custody by foreign governments ended up being tortured, the report said.

That’s higher than in 2011, when the U.N. found that 24 percent of transferred detainees were tortured.

“Torture cannot be addressed by training, inspections and directives alone,” said Georgette Gagnon, the head of human rights for the U.N. mission in Afghanistan, explaining that there has been little follow-through by the Afghan government.

In particular, the U.N. report found that the Afghan government appeared to be trying to hide the mistreatment and refusing to prosecute those accused of torturing prisoners.

The U.N. team received “multiple credible reports” that in some places detainees were hidden from international observers in secret locations underground or separate from the main facility being inspected.

Also, the observers said they saw what appeared to be a suspicious increase in detainees held at police facilities when an intelligence service facility nearby was being monitored.

And particularly in the southern province of Kandahar, the U.N. received reports that authorities were using unofficial sites to torture detainees before transporting them to the regular prison.

In a letter responding to the U.N. report, Gen. John Allen, the commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, said that his staff had written letters to Afghan ministers urging them to investigate more than 80 separate allegations of detainee abuse during the past 18 months.

“To date, Afghan officials have acted in only one instance,” Allen said in the letter. In that case Afghan authorities did not fire the official in question, but transferred him from Kandahar province to Sar-e-Pul in the north.

The report documents what it called a “persistent lack of accountability for perpetrators of torture,” noting that no one has been prosecuted for prisoner abuse since the first report was released.

Aimal Faizi, a spokesman for the Afghan president, said torture and abuse of prisoners was not Afghan policy.

“However, there may be certain cases of abuse and we have begun to investigate these cases mentioned in the U.N. report,” he said. “We will take actions accordingly.”

But he said that while the Afghan government takes the allegations in the report very seriously, “we also question the motivations behind this report and the way it was conducted.” He did not elaborate.

The NATO military alliance responded to the most recent report by stopping transfers of detainees to seven facilities in Kabul, Laghman, Herat, Khost and Kunduz provinces — most of them the same facilities that were flagged a year ago.

The transfers were halted in October, when the U.N. shared its preliminary findings with the military coalition.

“This action is a result of concerns over detainee treatment at certain Afghan detention facilities,” said Jamie Graybeal, a spokesman for the international military alliance in Kabul.

He said there has been no suspension of transfers to the massive detention center next to Bagram Air Field outside of Kabul. That facility has been particularly contentious because the U.S. has held back from transferring all the detainees it holds there to Afghan custody.

But as international troops draw down in Afghanistan, there will be fewer people to monitor the Afghan detention centers. Allen said in his letter that the NATO military alliance planned to focus on monitoring only a subset of Afghan facilities in the future.

And even the manner in which the U.N. report was compiled and released shows the waning influence of Western allies over the Afghan government. Both last year and again on Sunday, the report was released without a news conference.

Instead, it was quietly posted on the U.N. website in what appeared to be an effort to avoid publicly antagonizing the Afghan government that it criticizes in the report.

“I think it’s being dealt with in the appropriate way. Maybe we don’t need to do it publicly,” Gagnon said, noting that there have been plenty of discussions with the Afghan government about how to improve the prison system.

Asked what actual improvements have been made to prisoner conditions since 2011, Gagnon was at a loss to give an example. But, she stressed: “There has been quite a lot of effort.”

aGENCIES

{{U.S. President Barack Obama’s message of hope and change has inspired his half-brother Malik to launch a political career of his own, with his eye on elections in Kenya in March.}}

“If my brother is doing great things for people in the United States, why can’t I do great things for Kenyans here?” Malik Obama told Reuters in the village of Kogelo, President Obama’s ancestral homeland.

Malik, 54, is running for governorship of the rural Siaya county as an independent candidate.

His sibling’s message resonates with a Kenyan electorate angry over a political class widely regarded as greedy and corrupt.

However, the odds are stacked against lone candidates in a country where ideology is trumped by tribe or clan ties. This is the first time independents have been permitted to run in an election after a constitutional change in 2010.

For Obama, the inspiration comes from elsewhere.
“He is an inspiration to me and I feel that he is an embodiment of my father’s dream,” he said of the U.S. leader.

“All he told me is ‘brother, it is not an easy thing to get into public office. Just have a thick skin because people will be targeting you. The media will be saying this and that. There will be people who love you and people who won’t love you’.”

He said his younger brother has flourished by following the footsteps of their father, Barack Obama Snr – the first African to attend the University of Hawaii before returning home to work in the senior echelons of the Kenyan civil service.

“The old and tested way has not really worked for us. Right now we need a bold, radical and fresh approach,” he said.

Running late for the interview, Obama apologized, explaining he had to stop his car several times to talk to locals, who would routinely flag him down for greetings.

He says his race in the election is motivated by a desire to foster economic development and to answer the call of duty.

Obama, who said he is a polygamist with 10 children, has a campaign team that includes some family members and volunteers. He is unsure if the big name recognition he brings to the race will put him at an advantage.

President Obama visited Kogelo before his first election victory in 2008 which led to wild jubilation, dancing and parties. His November re-election was greeted with similar enthusiasm.

yahoonews

{{U.N. nuclear watchdog and Iran appear to have failed again in talks this week to finalize a deal to unblock an investigation into suspected atom bomb research in the Islamic state, a diplomatic source said on Thursday.}}

The U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and Iran were expected to hold a further meeting on February 12, following two days of negotiations in Tehran that ended on Thursday, the source added, giving no further details.

The apparent absence of a breakthrough in the January 16-17 discussions in the Iranian capital signaled a new setback for efforts to allay mounting international concern over Tehran’s atomic aims and help avert the threat of a new Middle East war.

The Vienna-based U.N. agency had hoped to clinch an elusive framework agreement with Iran that would allow the IAEA to resume a long-stalled inquiry into suspected military dimensions to the country’s nuclear program.

The IAEA, whose mission is to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons, has been trying for a year to negotiate a so-called structured approach with Iran giving the inspectors access to sites, officials and documents for their investigation.

The IAEA team led by Deputy Director General Herman Nackaerts was due to return to Vienna early on Friday.

There was no immediate comment from the U.N. agency, which after a previous meeting with Iran in mid-December said it expected an agreement to be concluded in this month’s talks. Western diplomats later said key differences remained.

World powers were monitoring the IAEA-Iran talks for any signs as to whether Tehran, facing intensifying sanctions pressure, might be prepared to finally start tackling mounting international concerns about its nuclear activity.

The six powers – the United States, France, Germany, China, Russia and Britain – and Iran may resume their separate negotiations later in January to try to reach a broader diplomatic settlement.

They last met in June.

{Agencies}

{{Pakistani officials struck a deal late Thursday with a fiery Muslim cleric to end four days of anti-government protests by thousands of his supporters that largely paralyzed the capital and put intense pressure on the government.}}

The demonstration came at a time when the government is facing challenges on several fronts, including from the country’s top court. The Supreme Court ordered the arrest of the prime minister earlier in the week in connection with a corruption case, but the government’s anti-corruption chief refused to act on Thursday, citing a lack of evidence.

Tahir-ul-Qadri, the 61-year-old cleric who led the protests in Islamabad, galvanized many Pakistanis with his message alleging that the nation’s politicians are corrupt thieves who care more about lining their pockets than dealing with the country’s pressing problems, such as electricity shortages, high unemployment and deadly attacks by Islamic militants.

He demanded electoral reform to prevent corrupt politicians from standing for elections.

But his demand that the government be dissolved and replaced by a military-backed caretaker administration raised concerns that he was being used by the nation’s powerful army to try to delay parliamentary elections expected this spring.

Qadri has denied any connection to the army, which has a history of toppling civilian governments in military coups and has done little to hide its disdain for the country’s politicians.

Qadri returned late last year from Canada and became a significant political force almost overnight, leveraging support from a large cadre of religious followers in Pakistan and abroad.

Tens of thousands of people responded to his call to hold a protest in Islamabad and camped out in the main avenue running through the city, huddling beneath blankets at night to ward off the cold.

But Qadri was left politically isolated Wednesday when a large group of opposition parties collectively announced that they would not support the protest and opposed any movement that threatened democracy.

Their response and suggestions by the country’s interior minister that the government would use force to disperse the protesters might have factored into the cleric’s decision to strike a deal, which appeared to fall short of his demands.

The protesters also were being drenched by heavy rain.

The government agreed to meet with Qadri after he announced that Thursday would be the last day of the protest while warning that he would let the protesters decide how to respond if the government failed to meet his demands by the afternoon.

{Agencies}

{{Algerian forces stormed a desert gas complex to free hundreds of hostages but 30, including several Westerners, were killed in the assault along with at least 11 of their Islamist captors, an Algerian security source told Reuters.}}

Western leaders whose compatriots were being held did little to disguise their irritation at being kept in the dark by Algeria before the raid – and over its bloody outcome. French, British and Japanese staff were among the dead, the source said.

An Irish engineer who survived said he saw four jeeps full of hostages blown up by Algerian troops whose commanders said they moved in about 30 hours after the siege began because the gunmen had demanded to be allowed to take their captives abroad.

And while a crisis has ended that posed a serious dilemma for Paris and its allies as French troops attacked the hostage-takers’ al Qaeda allies in neighboring Mali, it left question marks over the ability of OPEC-member Algeria to protect vital energy resources and strained its relations with Western powers.

Two Japanese, two Britons and a French national were among at least seven foreigners killed, the source told Reuters. Eight dead hostages were Algerian.

The nationalities of the rest, as well as of perhaps dozens more who escaped, were unclear. Some 600 local Algerian workers, less well guarded, survived.

Fourteen Japanese were among those still unaccounted for by the early hours of Friday, their Japanese employer said.

Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has cancelled part of his trip in Southeast Asia, his first overseas trip since taking office, and is considering flying home early due to the hostage crisis, Japan’s top government spokesman said on Friday.

“The action of Algerian forces was regrettable,” said Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, adding Tokyo had not been informed of the operation in advance.

Americans, Norwegians, Romanians and an Austrian have also been mentioned by their governments as having been captured by the militants who called themselves the “Battalion of Blood” and had demanded France end its week-old offensive in Mali.

Underlining the view of African and Western leaders that they face a multinational Islamist insurgency across the Sahara – a conflict that prompted France to send hundreds of troops to Mali last week – the official source said only two of the 11 dead militants were Algerian, including the squad’s leader.

The bodies of three Egyptians, two Tunisians, two Libyans, a Malian and a Frenchman were found, the security source said.

The group had claimed to have dozens of guerrillas on site and it was unclear whether any militants had managed to escape.

The overall commander, Algerian officials said, was Mokhtar Belmokhtar, a veteran of Afghanistan in the 1980s and Algeria’s bloody civil war of the 1990s.

He appears not to have been present and has now risen in stature among a host of Saharan Islamists, flush with arms and fighters from chaotic Libya, whom Western powers fear could spread violence far beyond the desert.