What is Amnesty saying about the treatment of prisoners detained in Afghanistan?
Amnesty International has growing concerns for the welfare of thousands of prisoners held by the Afghan Interim Authority. Visitors to detention facilities are reporting that prisons are dangerously overcrowded and that prisoners lack adequate food and medicine and are not sheltered from severe winter conditions. At Shibarghan prison in northern Afghanistan, a team from the organization Physicians for Human Rights has just reported that diseases – including dysentery, pneumonia and hepatitis – are rampant, the water supply is unclean and sanitation is virtually absent (see: A Report on Conditions at Sheberghan Prison, Northern Afghanistan, January 28, 2002 at www.phrusa.org/research/afghanistan/report.html). The facility’s commander told the team that “many” prisoners had already died but that he had had “minimal” response from the international community to his requests for help in dealing with the situation. The prison was designed to hold 800 prisoners but currently has more than 3,
