“They said they would rape me, and one time they took a stick and dipped it into chili powder and threatened to insert the stick into my anus. They tried to pull off my pants. When they did that, I confessed to everything they wanted.”-prisoner at Kandahar prison

“After [the torture] was finished I told them that I only confessed because of the beating. But they responded to that by beating me again. I swear by God and by my children that I am innocent.”-prisoner at Kandahar prison

U.S. forces know prisons use torture because they were told about it in an order in 2011!  However, the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission has evidence of several cases where people were sent to the torture prisons, after U.S. personnel were ordered to stop such practices, and it looks like U.S. forces also operate their own torture centers!

The United States detains thousands of individuals all across Afghanistan, with the majority held in the Detention Facility in Parwan (DFIP) as well as a number of temporary detention sites, including a secretive U.S. screening facility at Bagram Air Base run by the U.S. Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC).-report titled Torture, Transfers, and Denial of Due Process: The Treatment of Conflict-Related Detainees in Afghanistan

Investigators discovered there are U.S. units that officially operate outside NATO/ISAF command, even though there’s only one commander for Afghan operations: USMC General John Allen.  However there are some U.S. units that are even exempt from General Allen’s authority!

It is important to note that some U.S. forces in Afghanistan operate as a part of Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF), a U.S. led counter-terrorism coalition that is separate from ISAF forces. Known as U.S. Forces Afghanistan (USFOR-A), most of these non-ISAF U.S. forces are special operations forces and also referred to as Combined Forces Special Operations Component Command-Afghanistan (CFSOCC-A). CFSOCC-A forces frequently conduct operations in which individuals are detained. USFOR-A is under the command of General John Allen, who also serves as the commander of ISAF (COM-ISAF). There are also a number of U.S. military units that operate separately from ISAF and USFOR-A forces, and are not under the command of General Allen.-report titled Torture, Transfers, and Denial of Due Process: The Treatment of Conflict-Related Detainees in Afghanistan

Investigators also discovered that prisoners have tried to report the torture, but are punished for doing so: “I have nothing else to say. They will put me somewhere else after I talk to you. They will disappear me.”-prisoner in Herat prison

They even torture children: “We wrote a complaint letter once, but the director found out, and then we got hit very hard with the pipe after that.”-child prisoner Juvenile Corrections Center in Helmand

The latest investigation was conducted between February 2011 and January 2012.  In September 2011, the United Nations said they found evidence of torture at 16 detention centers in Afghanistan.

The latest report also talks about coalition forces and goes into detail about torture run by U.S. supported Afghan prisons.  Torture, Transfers, and Denial of Due Process:The Treatment of Conflict-Related Detainees in Afghanistan