Jeralyn Merritt Sun Jan 8, 3:35 AM ET
In December, 2002, Mullah Habibullah and a man named Dilawar died while being held for interrogation at Bagram Airbase in Afghanistan. Their deaths were ruled homicides, caused by blunt force trauma. In other words, they were beaten to death.
An investigation ensued but the military would not release the details. Subsequently it was revealed that both died while shackled to the ceiling of their cells, after repeatedly being kneed in the legs. (More details of the beatings and deaths are below.)
Capt. Christopher M. Beiring, then the leader of the military police company guarding the prisoners, was charged with lying to investigators and being derelict in his duties. He was the only officer charged in the deaths.
Friday, the military announced that charges against Beiring have been dropped.
pse of the case is the latest and most embarrassing of several setbacks for the team of Army prosecutors that has been working for more than a year on the deaths, which occurred at the military detention center in Bagram, 40 miles north of Kabul." "Captain Beiring is the third member of the 377th Military Police Company, based in Cincinnati and Bloomington, Ind., to have had charges dismissed before trial. Four enlisted soldiers in the unit have been acquitted, two others pleaded guilty to assault and one was convicted of assault, maiming and other charges."
How did Dilawar, the 22 year-old father of two, die? The New York Times reported, having reviewed the FOIA documents obtained by the ACLU:
The prisoner, a slight, 22-year-old taxi driver known only as Dilawar, was hauled from his cell at the detention center in Bagram, Afghanistan, at around 2 a.m. to answer questions about a rocket attack on an American base. When he arrived in the interrogation room, an interpreter who was present said, his legs were bouncing uncontrollably in the plastic chair and his hands were numb. He had been chained by the wrists to the top of his cell for much of the previous four days. Mr. Dilawar asked for a drink of water, and one of the two interrogators, Specialist Joshua R. Claus, 21, picked up a large plastic bottle. But first he punched a hole in the bottom, the interpreter said, so as the prisoner fumbled weakly with the cap, the water poured out over his orange prison scrubs. The soldier then grabbed the bottle back and began squirting the water forcefully into Mr. Dilawar's face. "Come on, drink!" the interpreter said Specialist Claus had shouted, as the prisoner gagged on the spray. "Drink!"
At the interrogators' behest, a guard tried to force the young man to his knees. But his legs, which had been pummeled by guards for several days, could no longer bend. An interrogator told Mr. Dilawar that he could see a doctor after they finished with him. When he was finally sent back to his cell, though, the guards were instructed only to chain the prisoner back to the ceiling.
"Leave him up," one of the guards quoted Specialist Claus as saying. Several hours passed before an emergency room doctor finally saw Mr. Dilawar. By then he was dead, his body beginning to stiffen.
It would be many months before Army investigators learned a final horrific detail: Most of the interrogators had believed Mr. Dilawar was an innocent man who simply drove his taxi past the American base at the wrong time.
28 U.S. soldiers faced charges over the deaths, but only three have been held accountable. One is James P. Boland, charged with assault and dereliction in the deaths. Another, Pfc. Willie V. Brand, was charged with striking Dilawar 37 times and maiming him. He was convicted, after which his rank was reduced to private. (This NYT article reports that even if Dilawar had lived, both his legs would have had to have been amputated.)
As to Captain Beiring, the same New York Times article reported:
An Army report dated June 1, 2004, about Mr. Habibullah's death identifies Capt. Christopher Beiring of the 377th Military Police Company as having been "culpably inefficient in the performance of his duties, which allowed a number of his soldiers to mistreat detainees, ultimately leading to Habibullah's death, thus constituting negligent homicide." At Captain Beiring's Article 32 hearing in December, this was some of the testimony:
Maj. Jeff Bovarnick said that after a detainee known as Habibullah died in December 2002 he ordered Beiring to make sure his MPs stopped chaining detainees with their hands above their heads, a common practice that he said was not illegal. He did not think his order was followed, Bovarnick said. "I had 0.0 percent confidence that Captain Beiring had done anything or told anyone about this, so I went over his head," Bovarnick said, referring to a conversation he had with a higher-ranking commander after a second detainee, a man known as Dilawar, died at the Bagram detention center.
Why were charges dropped against Captain Beiring? The Washington Times has this quote from the Article 32 hearing findings of Lt. Col. Thomas S. Berg, who made the recommendation:
I see no evidence ... that Capt. Beiring failed to perform his duty to the best of his ability. As a newly classified MP, newly assigned to command MP guard company that was going off to war to do an ill-defined mission for which it was not designed for or even notionally trained, in a crud-hold like the [Bagram Collection Point] in 2002 with [military intelligence] calling the shots, Capt. Beiring was sorely challenged at every step." Bagram was a torture facility. The New York Times had more horrific details here.
Still, President Bush tells us, the U.S. does not torture. And thanks to Senators Lindsay Graham and Carl Levin who effectively gutted the McCain torture amendment, detainees can no longer bring cases challenging their conditions of confinement, including torture, to federal court.
This is beyond shameful. Dilawar and Habibullah and who knows how many others deserved better. So do Americans, in whose name these disgraceful acts were committed.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/01/08/news/afghan.php
U.S. drops charges in Afghan jail deaths By Tim Golden The New York Times
SUNDAY, JANUARY 8, 2006
The U.S. Army has dropped its case against the only officer to face criminal charges in connection with the beating deaths of two prisoners held by the United States in Afghanistan, according to the military.
The officer, Captain Christopher Beiring, led a reservist military police company that was guarding the main U.S. detention center in Afghanistan when the two men were killed within days of each other in December 2002. The prisoners died after guards kneed them repeatedly in the legs while each was shackled to the ceiling of his cell.
Beiring, 39, had been charged with lying to investigators and being derelict in his duties, in part by failing after the first death to order his soldiers to stop chaining up prisoners by the arms at the behest of military interrogators who wanted to deprive them of sleep before questioning.
"They certainly had a case to investigate - two guys died," Beiring said in a telephone interview. "And, obviously, some soldiers did some stuff wrong and needed to be punished. But I think it got blown out of proportion. At some point, they were just playing politics."
The collapse of the case is the latest and most embarrassing of several setbacks for the army prosecutors who have been working for more than a year on the deaths, which occurred at the military detention center in Bagram, 65 kilometers, or 40 miles, north of Kabul.
Beiring is the third member of the 377th Military Police Company, based in Cincinnati, Ohio, and Bloomington, Indiana, to have had charges against them dismissed before trial. Four enlisted soldiers in the unit have been acquitted, two others pleaded guilty to assault and one was convicted of assault, maiming and other charges.
Four former interrogators from the 519th Military Intelligence Battalion, based at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, have pleaded guilty to charges including assault, maltreatment and dereliction of duty.
In Beiring's case, the decision by the commander of the Air Defense Artillery Center at Fort Bliss, Texas, where the Bagram cases are being tried, followed the recommendation of an investigating judge that it not proceed to a court-martial.
A Fort Bliss spokesman, Luke Elliott, said Saturday that Beiring had been issued a letter of reprimand for dereliction of duty.
Beiring said he would formally rebut the accusations in the letter, which he described as "a bunch of stuff that has already been proven to some degree to be untrue."
The judge who oversaw the pretrial inquiry, Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Berg, sharply criticized the prosecutors' case, concluding in a 22-page report that they had failed to present sufficient evidence to support any of the charges.
The accusation that Beiring lied about his efforts to train his soldiers after they arrived in Afghanistan was based on "one slightly ambiguous response" in one of a half-dozen sworn statements he gave to various military investigators, Berg noted. He added that Beiring's response was then "significantly misquoted" by the prosecutors in the charges they filed.
On Dec. 18 Beiring's civilian lawyer, Charles Gittins, wrote to the Fort Bliss commander, Brigadier General Robert Lennox, complaining that the charge of making a false statement represented "egregious and demonstrably unprofessional and unethical" conduct by the prosecutors.
Gittins said Lennox had not responded to his letter.
In two charges of dereliction of duty, prosecutors had argued that the captain failed to properly train his soldiers to handle the detainees and did not order them to stop chaining the prisoners overhead.
Though Berg noted that the company had scarcely been trained for its specific mission at Bagram, he said Beiring had sought more training for his company before it was deployed, a request that was denied. The unit spent barely one day learning from the company it replaced before that unit left Afghanistan.
Berg said "substantial evidence" also showed that Beiring had instructed his junior and noncommissioned officers to stop the overhead chaining of detainees after two more senior officers insisted that he do so. The fact that a second prisoner died while similarly shackled "only shows that someone else either did not get the word about standing restraints or, more likely, got the word and chose to disregard it.
The U.S. Army has dropped its case against the only officer to face criminal charges in connection with the beating deaths of two prisoners held by the United States in Afghanistan, according to the military.
The officer, Captain Christopher Beiring, led a reservist military police company that was guarding the main U.S. detention center in Afghanistan when the two men were killed within days of each other in December 2002. The prisoners died after guards kneed them repeatedly in the legs while each was shackled to the ceiling of his cell.
Beiring, 39, had been charged with lying to investigators and being derelict in his duties, in part by failing after the first death to order his soldiers to stop chaining up prisoners by the arms at the behest of military interrogators who wanted to deprive them of sleep before questioning.
"They certainly had a case to investigate - two guys died," Beiring said in a telephone interview. "And, obviously, some soldiers did some stuff wrong and needed to be punished. But I think it got blown out of proportion. At some point, they were just playing politics."
The collapse of the case is the latest and most embarrassing of several setbacks for the army prosecutors who have been working for more than a year on the deaths, which occurred at the military detention center in Bagram, 65 kilometers, or 40 miles, north of Kabul.
Beiring is the third member of the 377th Military Police Company, based in Cincinnati, Ohio, and Bloomington, Indiana, to have had charges against them dismissed before trial. Four enlisted soldiers in the unit have been acquitted, two others pleaded guilty to assault and one was convicted of assault, maiming and other charges.
Four former interrogators from the 519th Military Intelligence Battalion, based at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, have pleaded guilty to charges including assault, maltreatment and dereliction of duty.
In Beiring's case, the decision by the commander of the Air Defense Artillery Center at Fort Bliss, Texas, where the Bagram cases are being tried, followed the recommendation of an investigating judge that it not proceed to a court-martial.
A Fort Bliss spokesman, Luke Elliott, said Saturday that Beiring had been issued a letter of reprimand for dereliction of duty.
Beiring said he would formally rebut the accusations in the letter, which he described as "a bunch of stuff that has already been proven to some degree to be untrue."
The judge who oversaw the pretrial inquiry, Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Berg, sharply criticized the prosecutors' case, concluding in a 22-page report that they had failed to present sufficient evidence to support any of the charges.
The accusation that Beiring lied about his efforts to train his soldiers after they arrived in Afghanistan was based on "one slightly ambiguous response" in one of a half-dozen sworn statements he gave to various military investigators, Berg noted. He added that Beiring's response was then "significantly misquoted" by the prosecutors in the charges they filed.
On Dec. 18 Beiring's civilian lawyer, Charles Gittins, wrote to the Fort Bliss commander, Brigadier General Robert Lennox, complaining that the charge of making a false statement represented "egregious and demonstrably unprofessional and unethical" conduct by the prosecutors.
Gittins said Lennox had not responded to his letter.
In two charges of dereliction of duty, prosecutors had argued that the captain failed to properly train his soldiers to handle the detainees and did not order them to stop chaining the prisoners overhead.
Though Berg noted that the company had scarcely been trained for its specific mission at Bagram, he said Beiring had sought more training for his company before it was deployed, a request that was denied. The unit spent barely one day learning from the company it replaced before that unit left Afghanistan.
Berg said "substantial evidence" also showed that Beiring had instructed his junior and noncommissioned officers to stop the overhead chaining of detainees after two more senior officers insisted that he do so. The fact that a second prisoner died while similarly shackled "only shows that someone else either did not get the word about standing restraints or, more likely, got the word and chose to disregard it.
The U.S. Army has dropped its case against the only officer to face criminal charges in connection with the beating deaths of two prisoners held by the United States in Afghanistan, according to the military.
The officer, Captain Christopher Beiring, led a reservist military police company that was guarding the main U.S. detention center in Afghanistan when the two men were killed within days of each other in December 2002. The prisoners died after guards kneed them repeatedly in the legs while each was shackled to the ceiling of his cell.
Beiring, 39, had been charged with lying to investigators and being derelict in his duties, in part by failing after the first death to order his soldiers to stop chaining up prisoners by the arms at the behest of military interrogators who wanted to deprive them of sleep before questioning.
"They certainly had a case to investigate - two guys died," Beiring said in a telephone interview. "And, obviously, some soldiers did some stuff wrong and needed to be punished. But I think it got blown out of proportion. At some point, they were just playing politics."
The collapse of the case is the latest and most embarrassing of several setbacks for the army prosecutors who have been working for more than a year on the deaths, which occurred at the military detention center in Bagram, 65 kilometers, or 40 miles, north of Kabul.
Beiring is the third member of the 377th Military Police Company, based in Cincinnati, Ohio, and Bloomington, Indiana, to have had charges against them dismissed before trial. Four enlisted soldiers in the unit have been acquitted, two others pleaded guilty to assault and one was convicted of assault, maiming and other charges.
Four former interrogators from the 519th Military Intelligence Battalion, based at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, have pleaded guilty to charges including assault, maltreatment and dereliction of duty.
In Beiring's case, the decision by the commander of the Air Defense Artillery Center at Fort Bliss, Texas, where the Bagram cases are being tried, followed the recommendation of an investigating judge that it not proceed to a court-martial.
A Fort Bliss spokesman, Luke Elliott, said Saturday that Beiring had been issued a letter of reprimand for dereliction of duty.
Beiring said he would formally rebut the accusations in the letter, which he described as "a bunch of stuff that has already been proven to some degree to be untrue."
The judge who oversaw the pretrial inquiry, Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Berg, sharply criticized the prosecutors' case, concluding in a 22-page report that they had failed to present sufficient evidence to support any of the charges.
The accusation that Beiring lied about his efforts to train his soldiers after they arrived in Afghanistan was based on "one slightly ambiguous response" in one of a half-dozen sworn statements he gave to various military investigators, Berg noted. He added that Beiring's response was then "significantly misquoted" by the prosecutors in the charges they filed.
On Dec. 18 Beiring's civilian lawyer, Charles Gittins, wrote to the Fort Bliss commander, Brigadier General Robert Lennox, complaining that the charge of making a false statement represented "egregious and demonstrably unprofessional and unethical" conduct by the prosecutors.
Gittins said Lennox had not responded to his letter.
In two charges of dereliction of duty, prosecutors had argued that the captain failed to properly train his soldiers to handle the detainees and did not order them to stop chaining the prisoners overhead.
Though Berg noted that the company had scarcely been trained for its specific mission at Bagram, he said Beiring had sought more training for his company before it was deployed, a request that was denied. The unit spent barely one day learning from the company it replaced before that unit left Afghanistan.
Berg said "substantial evidence" also showed that Beiring had instructed his junior and noncommissioned officers to stop the overhead chaining of detainees after two more senior officers insisted that he do so. The fact that a second prisoner died while similarly shackled "only shows that someone else either did not get the word about standing restraints or, more likely, got the word and chose to disregard it.
The U.S. Army has dropped its case against the only officer to face criminal charges in connection with the beating deaths of two prisoners held by the United States in Afghanistan, according to the military.
The officer, Captain Christopher Beiring, led a reservist military police company that was guarding the main U.S. detention center in Afghanistan when the two men were killed within days of each other in December 2002. The prisoners died after guards kneed them repeatedly in the legs while each was shackled to the ceiling of his cell.
Beiring, 39, had been charged with lying to investigators and being derelict in his duties, in part by failing after the first death to order his soldiers to stop chaining up prisoners by the arms at the behest of military interrogators who wanted to deprive them of sleep before questioning.
"They certainly had a case to investigate - two guys died," Beiring said in a telephone interview. "And, obviously, some soldiers did some stuff wrong and needed to be punished. But I think it got blown out of proportion. At some point, they were just playing politics."
The collapse of the case is the latest and most embarrassing of several setbacks for the army prosecutors who have been working for more than