Looks like Abu Graibh wasn't just a few rotten apples in an isolated
incident....

This horrific story, one of many contained in a US military report on
prisoner abuse at Baghram in Afghanistan, makes it clear that abusing
prisoners is the norm in the American Gulag.

Extracts:

The prisoner, a slight, 22-year-old taxi driver known only as Dilawar, was
hauled from his cell at the detention center in Bagram, Afghanistan, at
around 2 a.m. to answer questions about a rocket attack on an American
base. When he arrived in the interrogation room, an interpreter who was
present said, his legs were bouncing uncontrollably in the plastic chair
and his hands were numb. He had been chained by the wrists to the top of
his cell for much of the previous four days.

Mr. Dilawar asked for a drink of water, and one of the two interrogators,
Specialist Joshua R. Claus, 21, picked up a large plastic bottle. But
first
he punched a hole in the bottom, the interpreter said, so as the prisoner
fumbled weakly with the cap, the water poured out over his orange prison
scrubs. The soldier then grabbed the bottle back and began squirting the
water forcefully into Mr. Dilawar's face.

"Come on, drink!" the interpreter said Specialist Claus had shouted, as
the
prisoner gagged on the spray. "Drink!"

At the interrogators' behest, 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 a final horrific detail:
Most
of the interrogators had believed Mr. Dilawar was an innocent man who
simply drove his taxi past the American base at the wrong time.

.......

"The story of Mr. Dilawar's brutal death at the Bagram Collection Point -
and that of another detainee, Habibullah, who died there six days earlier
in December 2002 - emerge from a nearly 2,000-page confidential file of
the
Army's criminal investigation into the case, a copy of which was obtained
by The New York Times.

Like a narrative counterpart to the digital images from Abu Ghraib, the
Bagram file depicts young, poorly trained soldiers in repeated incidents
of
abuse. The harsh treatment, which has resulted in criminal charges against
seven soldiers, went well beyond the two deaths.

.........

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/20/international/asia/20abuse.html?th&emc=th

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