By Peter Symonds 11 December 2002
US authorities last week reported that one of the detainees being held by the military for interrogation at the Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan had died. Almost nothing is known about who he was, why he was detained or the circumstances surrounding his death.
A terse official statement explained that the man was in his 30s and had been captured in Afghanistan during the previous week. He died, allegedly from natural causes, at around 1 pm on December 4 after being taken to the base hospital. "The matter will be fully investigated," the statement added.
Citing US military regulations, spokesman Colonel Roger King refused to release the prisoner's name, hometown or nationality, or to state the reasons for his detention. It is not even clear whether the man's family and friends have been notified of his death.
A New York Times report noted: "The man was among those Taliban and Al Qaeda suspects held in a large warehouse on the base while undergoing interrogation. The detention building has remained off limits to journalists, but released detainees have described being held in barbed-wire pens inside the large building, under constant electric light. Some have complained of beatings or injuries received when they were captured."
Neither the New York Times nor other media outlets have raised any questions about the death or criticised the treatment being meted out to alleged terrorist suspects, in breach of their most basic democratic rights. A man can be detained indefinitely without charge and die in unexplained circumstances-and the media, including the so-called liberal New York Times, passes over the matter in silence....
<http://www.wsws.org/articles/2002/dec2002/afgh-d11.shtml> *****
***** New York Times 5 December 2002
Detainee at Base in Afghanistan Dies
By THE NEW YORK TIMES
KABUL, Afghanistan, Dec. 4 - The American military said today that a man in United States custody at Bagram Air Base just north of Kabul had died. In a tersely worded statement, American authorities here said only that the man died Tuesday night, apparently from natural causes.
"The matter will be fully investigated," the statement read.
The man was among those Taliban and Al Qaeda suspects held in a large warehouse on the base while undergoing interrogation. The detention building has remained off limits to journalists, but released detainees have described being held in barbed-wire pens inside the large building, under constant electric light. Some have complained of beatings or injuries received when they were captured.
Some detainees have been elderly and sick. Two of three Afghan prisoners released in November after months of detention in Afghanistan and then the Guantánamo Naval Base in Cuba, were over 70. The confused state of one of them about his circumstances prompted the government of President Hamid Karzai to announce that he was sending a delegation to Guantánamo to check on the condition of other Afghan detainees.
American military officials say the detainees are afforded rights according to international conventions. They say that prisoners have been visited by officials of the international Red Cross, and that the injured have been treated in a field hospital run by the coalition forces at Bagram.
<http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/05/international/asia/05BAGR.html> ***** -- Yoshie
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