Nato 'sending Afghans to torture camps'

The Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission and New York-based Open Society Foundations published a report on Saturday detailing 11 "recent, credible cases" of Afghans being seized by US soldiers or spooks and sent to NDS Kandahar, a jail where the UN had found evidence of torture.

These all took place after July, when the US and Nato said they wouldn't send any more people to the prison.

The Torture, Transfers and Denial of Due Process report details credible evidence that personnel at Kandahar jail continue to subject detainees to "beatings, suspension from the ceiling, electric shocks, threatened or actual sexual abuse and other forms of mental and physical abuse."

It says that torture is "routinely used to obtain confessions or other information.

"Monitors received 10 credible allegations of abuse in NDS Kandahar as recently as January 2012."

The study records abuse at that prison and eight others run by Afghan spooks and police based on interviews with more than 100 detainees between February 2011 and January 2012 as well as with lawyers, aid workers, prison guards and government officials.

A UN report issued in September found evidence of torture at 16 Afghan prisons.

'20 US soldiers' carried out massacre

Afghan MPs investigating the massacre of 16 civilians in Kandahar told the Daily Outlook Afghanistan newspaper today that more than a dozen US soldiers took part.

The paper said the MPs think that "two groups of US soldiers totalling 15 to 20 troops carried out the planned attack with air support."