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ianstone
09-26-2010, 05:34 PM
Afghan prisoners handcuffed, blindfolded
<LI class="byline first ">Brendan Nicholson <LI class="source ">From: The Australian (http://www.theaustralian.com.au/)
September 27, 2010 12:00AM









http://resources3.news.com.au/images/2010/09/26/1225929/708515-stephen-smith-100927.jpg
Stephen Smith, on his first visit to Afghanistan as Minister of Defence, arrives at Patrol Base Razaq in the Deh Rawud region west of Tarin Kowt. Picture: ADF Source: Supplied



SUSPECT insurgents held by Australian troops are spending time handcuffed, blindfolded and wearing earmuffs to stop them talking to each other.

Australian troops in Afghanistan are holding the suspected insurgents in a new jail.
The first glimpse inside the purpose-built facility, which is inside the Tarin Kowt base in Oruzgan province, was revealed on Friday during Stephen Smith's first visit to the war-torn country as new Defence Minister.
When Mr Smith, accompanied by The Australian, visited the jail, it held three prisoners, who were sitting, unmoving, in a concrete courtyard.
Two of the men were surrounded by large patches of what could have been water, sweat or urine. A guard said some prisoners came from areas so remote they did not know how taps worked and had to be stopped from washing in the cell toilets.
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The three prisoners on view wore handcuffs, blindfolds and industrial-style hearing protectors -- standard practice when they were taken from their cells into a central courtyard.
Since it opened last month, the centre has held 156 suspected insurgents, most of them picked up by Australian special forces, who scour the surrounding mountains and valleys for Taliban bomb makers, the biggest killers of coalition and Afghan troops, the police and Afghan civilians.
Previously, Australian troops handed their prisoners to the Dutch personnel who had the lead role in Oruzgan province.
The new jail was opened to provide an alternative process once the Dutch troops pulled out.
Those detained can be held for only 96 hours and must then be either handed over to Afghan authorities for trial or released.
Before that time, evidence is collected and the likelihood of a conviction is assessed by an Australian army legal officer, whose identity cannot be revealed. He said those detained were not treated as prisoners of war but as suspected criminals alleged to have broken Afghan law by taking part in the insurgency.
Only 15 of the 156 suspects picked up so far have been handed over to the Afghan authorities.
Don Rothwell, a specialist in international law from the Australian National University, said the conditions in which the suspected insurgents were held appeared appropriate in the Afghanistan situation, which he said was a non-international armed conflict.
Professor Rothwell said a significant difference that applied to soldiers taken prisoner of war in a conflict between nations was that they could not be charged with a crime for killing an opposing soldier in battle. In a conflict such as that being waged in Afghanistan, the insurgents could be charged with crimes under that country's laws.
The opening of the Australian facility could, however, turn the spotlight on the fact that Australian military personnel faced much less rigorous human rights obligations than European countries did, he said.
Neil James, of the Australia Defence Association, said Australian troops had to take the belligerents out of the conflict wherever possible, and the process being followed in Tarin Kowt was justifiable.
The legal officer at the jail said some of the 156 men detained had been picked up because they tested positive for explosives residue. If there was no further evidence against them, a conviction was considered unlikely and they were freed. So too were those who were found with automatic weapons who turned out to be bodyguards or local militia members.
"They could just be local farmers who've accepted a $10 fee to do minor jobs for the insurgents," he said. "If you are going to lay a roadside bomb, someone's got to dig the hole and it doesn't take a lot of ideological commitment to do that. Even if there is not enough evidence to convict them, they've been given a short sharp lesson that will make them think about doing it again. And they know we know who they are."
The evidence needed to convict bombmakers and other terrorists was often collected by the soldiers who detained them.
"The soldiers are trained to be effectively battlefield policemen," he said.
When they were brought to the jail, they were given full medical checks and stripped and their bodies were photographed in case they claimed later to have been injured in the facility.
Biometric facial recognition technology was used to take pictures of them and the information was sent to Australia.