UN report on torture notes Kabul progress

The Afghan government is making progress in reducing the torture of conflict detainees, the UN said yesterday, though more than a third still suffer mistreatment.

In a new report, the UN said there was credible evidence that 35 per cent of detainees they interviewed between February 2013 and December 2014 had suffered ill-treatment while in the custody of Afghan security forces. This marks a fall from the UN’s last report on torture, which found that 49 per cent of detainees were mistreated.

The head of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) Nicholas Haysom welcomed the progress and urged the new government of President Ashraf Ghani to make good on its commitment to end torture.

“The government of Afghanistan’s efforts to prevent torture and ill-treatment have shown some progress over the last two years,” Haysom said.

“UNAMA welcomes the incoming government’s commitment to implement a new national plan on elimination of torture.”

Ill-treatment

The report highlights illtreatment and torture during arrest and interrogation in numerous centres run by the National Directorate of Security — the Afghan intelligence agency — as well as the national police, local police and the army.

Detainees, mostly alleged members of the Taliban and other militant groups, were subjected to 16 torture techniques aimed at forcing them to confess, the report said.

These included severe beatings with pipes, cables and sticks, electric shocks and near-asphyxiation, it said.

The report found that 44 out of 105 child detainees, or 42 per cent of those they interviewed, were mistreated — down from 73 per cent in the last report.

After the last report, published in 2013, the president at the time Hamid Karzai issued a decree aimed at stopping torture.