Monday, March 08, 2004

In a 60-page report issued Sunday, the group, Human Rights Watch, also called on the United States military to release the results of investigations into the deaths of three Afghans in American custody in 2002 and 2003. Initial military medical investigators declared two of the deaths homicides.

The report also said it had received "numerous reports" of American forces relying on faulty intelligence or using "excessive or indiscriminate force" that resulted in avoidable civilian deaths and the detention of innocent people. It contended that the United States was employing interrogation techniques, like shackling prisoners, stripping them naked or depriving them of sleep, that the State Department had condemned as torture in countries like Libya, North Korea and Iran.

Waiflike, draped in a pale blue veil, Madina, 20, sits on her hospital bed, bandages covering the terrible, raw burns on her neck and chest. Her hands tremble. She picks nervously at the soles of her feet and confesses that three months earlier she set herself on fire with kerosene.

Beside her, on the next bed, her mother-in-law, Bibi Khanum, and her brother-in-law, Abdul Muhammad, 18, confirm her account but deny her reason, which Madina would explain only outside on a terrace, away from her husband's family. "All the time they beat me," she said. "They broke my arm. But what should I do? This was my home."

Accounts like Madina's are repeated across Afghanistan, doctors and human rights workers say. They are discovering more and more young women who have set themselves on fire, desperate to escape the cruelties of family life and harsh tribal traditions that show no sign of changing despite the end of Taliban rule and the dawn of democracy.

9:46 AM |