Dilawar (torture victim)

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For other persons of the same name, see Dilawar.
A sketch by Thomas V. Curtis, a former Reserve M.P. sergeant, showing how Dilawar was chained to the ceiling of his cell
A sketch by Thomas V. Curtis, a former Reserve M.P. sergeant, showing how Dilawar was chained to the ceiling of his cell

Dilawar (c.1979–December 5, 2002) was an Afghan prisoner at the Bagram Collection Point military detention center in Afghanistan. He arrived at the prison on December 5, 2002, and was declared dead on December 10, 2002. He was a 22-year-old taxi driver and farmer who weighed 122 pounds and was 5 ft 9 in tall. He is survived by his daughter, Bibi Rashida. Leaked internal U.S. Army documentation has ruled that his death is due to a direct result of assaults and attacks he sustained at the hands of interrogators of the 519th Battalion of the U.S. Army during his stay at Bagram.

Contents

[edit] Arrest

The New York Times reported on May 20, 2005 that:[1]

"Four days before, on the eve of the Muslim holiday of Id al-Fitr, Mr. Dilawar set out from his tiny village of Yakubi in a prized new possession, a used Toyota sedan that his family bought for him a few weeks earlier to drive as a taxi.
"On the day that he disappeared, Mr. Dilawar's mother had asked him to gather his three sisters from their nearby villages and bring them home for the holiday. However, he needed gas money and decided instead to drive to the provincial capital, Khost, about 45 minutes away, to look for fares.
"At a taxi stand there, he found three men headed back toward Yakubi. On the way, they passed a base used by American troops, Camp Salerno, which had been the target of a rocket attack that morning.
"Militiamen loyal to the guerrilla commander guarding the base, Jan Baz Khan, stopped the Toyota at a checkpoint. They confiscated a broken walkie-talkie from one of Mr. Dilawar's passengers. In the trunk, they found an electric stabilizer used to regulate current from a generator. (Mr. Dilawar's family said the stabilizer was not theirs; at the time, they said, they had no electricity at all.)
"The four men were detained and turned over to American soldiers at the base as suspects in the attack. Mr. Dilawar and his passengers spent their first night there handcuffed to a fence, so they would be unable to sleep. When a doctor examined them the next morning, he said later, he found Mr. Dilawar tired and suffering from headaches but otherwise fine.
"In February, an American military official disclosed that the Afghan guerrilla commander whose men had arrested Mr. Dilawar and his passengers had himself been detained. The commander, Jan Baz Khan, was suspected of attacking Camp Salerno himself and then turning over innocent "suspects" to the Americans in a ploy to win their trust, the military official said.
"The three passengers in Mr. Dilawar's taxi were sent home from Guantánamo in March 2004, 15 months after their capture, with letters saying they posed "no threat" to American forces."

[edit] Torture

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The various accounts of torture have been detailed as follows:

  • A black hood pulled over his head limiting his ability to breathe
  • Knee strikes to the abdomen
  • Over 100 peroneal (a nerve behind the kneecap) strikes
  • Shoved against a wall
  • Pulled by his beard
  • His bare feet stepped on
  • Kicks to the groin
  • Chained to the ceiling for extended hours, depriving him of sleep
  • Slammed his chest into a table front

The Times reported that: On the day of his death, Dilawar had been chained by the wrists to the top of his cell for much of the previous four days. "A guard tried to force the young man to his knees. But his legs, which had been pummeled by guards for several days, could no longer bend. An interrogator told Mr. Dilawar that he could see a doctor after they finished with him. When he was finally sent back to his cell, though, the guards were instructed only to chain the prisoner back to the ceiling. "Leave him up," one of the guards quoted Specialist Claus as saying. Several hours passed before an emergency room doctor finally saw Mr. Dilawar. By then he was dead, his body beginning to stiffen. It would be many months before Army investigators learned that most of the interrogators had in fact believed Mr. Dilawar to be an innocent man who simply drove his taxi past the American base at the wrong time.

[edit] Death

The findings of Mr. Dilawar's autopsy were succinct.[2] A death certificate for Dilawar, aged 22, from Yakubi in eastern Afghanistan, and signed by Major Elizabeth Rouse, pathologist with the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology in Washington, states that the cause of death was "blunt-force injuries to lower extremities complicating coronary artery disease".[3]

According to the death certificate shown in the documentary Taxi to the Dark Side, the box marked Homicide had been checked as the ultimate cause of death. Despite this, the military publicly claimed that Dilawar had died from natural causes.

[edit] Culpability

In August 2005, Specialist Glendale Wells of the U.S. Army pleaded guilty at a military court to pushing Dilawar against a wall and doing nothing to prevent other soldiers from abusing him. Wells was subsequently sentenced to two months in a military prison. Two other soldiers convicted in connection with the case escaped custodial sentences. The sentences were criticized by Human Rights Watch[citation needed].

[edit] 2007 inquiry in civil court

In July 2007 a grand jury opened a civil inquiry into the Bagram abuse.[4]

Alicia A. Caldwell, writing in the Huffington Post, quoted a former military defense lawyer, named Michael Waddington, who said:

"...he had never heard of such a prosecution before June 2006, when federal authorities in Kentucky charged former Pfc. Steven D. Green with shooting and killing an Iraqi girl after he and other soldiers raped her."

Duane Grubb, Darin Broady, Christopher Greatorex and Christopher Beiring, four of the GIs in who served at the centre at the time of the deaths, acknowledge that they had been called before the Grand Jury.[4]

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ Tim Golden, In U.S. Report, Brutal Details of 2 Afghan Inmates' Deaths, New York Times, May 20, 2005 - - mirror
  2. ^ Autopsy. American Civil Liberties Union. Retrieved on 2007-09-14.
  3. ^ 'They said this is America . . . if a soldier orders you to take off your clothes, you must obey', The Guardian, June 23, 2004
  4. ^ a b Alicia A. Caldwell. "Witnesses: Feds Probe 2 Detainee Deaths", Huffington Post, July 31, 2007. Retrieved on 2007-08-27. 

[edit] External links