Sunday, January 13, 2008

U.S. Army Regularly Tricked in Afganistan

In a Documentary called "Taxi to the Dark Side" the makers of the film focus on the story of an innocent Afgan taxi driver and how he ended up dead after 5 days in the custody of U.S. forces.
The taxi driver's name was Diliwar, and his story sheds light on the practices that go on at Bagram Airforce Base and the similarities between them and the practices at Guantanimo Bay, Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, and other less well known places in terms of detainee abuse.
According to an army coroner, the victim died from a pulminary embulism that went to his lungs. His condition was caused by the soldiers who were detaining him and their repeated use of an interrogation technique known as a "Perennial Strike", which is a repeated motion of hitting or striking the subject in the upper thigh with the knee caps of the soldiers doing the interrogation. The result in this particular case was that it caused the subjects legs to become "pulpified" according to the army coroner, which led to his embulism and his death several days later. Had he lived both his legs would have had to have been amputated.
The Way Diliwar came to the attention of the American forces was that he was handed over by an Afgan militia who were claiming that he was responsible for a rocket attack. As it turned out it was the militia who handed him over that actually committed the attack and gave over the innocent villager to gain favor from the Americans so as not to be suspected themselves and also to appear to U.S. forces to be allied with them. This practice is a common occurance in the villages in Afganistan and the result is that the U.S. ends up detaining and torturing innocent Afgans while the militia members go free and later return to resume their attacks another day.
When Diliwar's body was returned to his family in his village it came with a tag that listed the cause of death as homicide. The family did not speak or understand english and only became aware of this fact when a New York Times reporter came to them inquiring about Diliwar's story.

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