Thursday, September 22, 2005

KARACHI: Child rape suspect held ---By Dawn Staff Reporter

KARACHI, Sept 11: The alleged rapist of four-year-old girl was arrested here on Sunday. The girl was sexually assaulted and subjected to brutal torture in a shantytown of North Nazimabad in the mid of August. She was admitted to the Civil Hospital Karachi in serious condition on August 30. Doctors said that her two arms and a leg were fractured. She was suffering from infection due to assault, and cigarette burns were found on her chest. Besides, she had lost sight due to the brutal torture.

The mother of the girl accused her son-in-law of subjecting the minor girl to torture and sexually assaulting her. Since the girl was admitted to the hospital, the alleged rapist had disappeared and police were after him.

On Sunday, the police took him into custody and started questioning him. The North Nazimabad Town Investigation Officer, Inspector Kunwar Asif, said that the police had picked Kamran Mazhar. He said that the suspect had married the elder sister of the victim in 2002. The couple were childless. Kamran went to his in-laws on Aug 14, and took the minor girl with him telling his mother-in-law that he would adopt her as daughter.

Mr Asif said that the suspect had been giving contradictory statements and the investigators were grilling him to know the truth. “We will also record the statements of suspect’s wife and his mother-in-law again,” he added.

SSP Investigation Zone-III, Mir Zubair Mehmood, said: “At this stage, it is premature to say that Kamran is responsible for the incident. We have some evidence and we will interrogate him and his other family members. It will take at least 24 hours to get the things clear.”

He said that there was a lack of coherence between the sentences of the suspect. “Either he (Kamran) had done it or he knows who had done it, and we will investigate it,” Mr Zubair added.

Earlier, Sindh Home Minister Rauf Siddiqui had visited

the Civil Hospital for inquir-

ing after the health of the

victim on Saturday night, adds APP.

He ordered that she should be shifted to the Aga Khan Hospital so that she could get the best possible medical care.

The minister also announced reward money of Rs500,000 for informer leading to the arrest of the suspect.

Meanwhile, he ordered suspension of SHO Shahrah-i-Noorjehan Police Station and Investigation Officer for their alleged negligence in discharge of duties.

Thursday, September 08, 2005

Suffering by The Dawn News Correspondent

A jirga on Tuesday fined the husband, Dholan Chandio, and father-in-law, Buggoo Chandio, of an 11-year-old girl Rs20,000 for torturing her and breaking her limbs.

The jirga was held at the Autaq of one Kamal Din Shar near Mundh Jamrao in which more than 20 people from both sides participated. The jirga also decided that the girl, Nazia, would live at the house of her father, who is a peasant, for three years and after that she would decide whether to stay with father or go to her husband's house.

The girl had been forced to marry when she was only eight in exchange of her brother's wife. When area police station SHO Mohammad Ahmad Bhatti was contacted, he confirmed that the girl had been subjected to torture but said the family of the girl was cooperating and her father and brother were not ready to lodge a formal FIR.

The SHO said the girl's family feared that if they lodged an FIR, their clansmen would get infuriated and, therefore, they decided to resolve the matter through elders. The first wife of Nazia's husband had committed suicide a few years ago after she had allegedly been severely tortured by her father-in-law and husband.

Wednesday, September 07, 2005

TORTURE AT ABU GHRAIB by SEYMOUR M. HERSH

In the era of Saddam Hussein, Abu Ghraib, twenty miles west of Baghdad, was one of the world’s most notorious prisons, with torture, weekly executions, and vile living conditions. As many as fifty thousand men and women—no accurate count is possible—were jammed into Abu Ghraib at one time, in twelve-by-twelve-foot cells that were little more than human holding pits.
In the looting that followed the regime’s collapse, last April, the huge prison complex, by then deserted, was stripped of everything that could be removed, including doors, windows, and bricks. The coalition authorities had the floors tiled, cells cleaned and repaired, and toilets, showers, and a new medical center added. Abu Ghraib was now a U.S. military prison. Most of the prisoners, however—by the fall there were several thousand, including women and teen-agers—were civilians, many of whom had been picked up in random military sweeps and at highway checkpoints.


Between October and December of 2003 there were numerous instances of “sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses” at Abu Ghraib.


Breaking chemical lights and pouring the phosphoric liquid on detainees; pouring cold water on naked detainees; beating detainees with a broom handle and a chair; threatening male detainees with rape; allowing a military police guard to stitch the wound of a detainee who was injured after being slammed against the wall in his cell; sodomizing a detainee with a chemical light and perhaps a broom stick, and using military working dogs to frighten and intimidate detainees with threats of attack, and in one instance actually biting a detainee.

Wisdom
"SFC Snider grabbed my prisoner and threw him into a pile. . . . I do not think it was right to put them in a pile. I saw SSG Frederic, SGT Davis and CPL Graner walking around the pile hitting the prisoners. I remember SSG Frederick hitting one prisoner in the side of its [sic] ribcage. The prisoner was no danger to SSG Frederick. . . . I left after that. "

In letters and e-mails to family members, Frederick repeatedly noted that the military-intelligence teams, which included C.I.A. officers and linguists and interrogation specialists from private defense contractors, were the dominant force inside Abu Ghraib. In a letter written in January, he said:

"I questioned some of the things that I saw . . . such things as leaving inmates in their cell with no clothes or in female underpants, handcuffing them to the door of their cell—and the answer I got was, “This is how military intelligence (MI) wants it done.” . . . . "MI has also instructed us to place a prisoner in an isolation cell with little or no clothes, no toilet or running water, no ventilation or window, for as much as three days."

Another witness, Sergeant Javal Davis, who is also one of the accused, told C.I.D. investigators, “I witnessed prisoners in the MI hold section . . . being made to do various things that I would question morally. . . . We were told that they had different rules.”

“Davis also stated that he had heard MI insinuate to the guards to abuse the inmates. When asked what MI said he stated: ‘Loosen this guy up for us.’ ‘Make sure he has a bad night.’ ‘Make sure he gets the treatment.

“I suspect,” Taguba concluded, that Pappas, Jordan, Stephanowicz, and Israel “were either directly or indirectly responsible for the abuse at Abu Ghraib,” and strongly recommended immediate disciplinary action.