American soldiers may have committed war crimes in Afghanistan — including the “cruel and violent” interrogation of prisoners, says the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court.
The prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, announced in an annual report Monday that a preliminary probe found “reasonable basis to believe that, in the course of interrogating these detainees … members of the US armed forces and the US Central Intelligence Agency resorted to techniques amounting to the commission of the war crimes of torture, cruel treatment, outrages upon personal dignity, and rape.”
The atrocities were believed to have all taken place “in secret detention facilities” operated by the CIA, Bensouda said.
“Members of US armed forces appear to have subjected at least 61 detained persons to torture, cruel treatment, outrages upon personal dignity on the territory of Afghanistan,” Bensouda wrote in the report.
She added that members of the CIA appeared to have subjected at least 27 detained persons to the same methods between December 2002 and March 2008 in both Afghanistan and “and other States Parties to the Statute (namely Poland, Romania and Lithuania).”
While Bensouda alleged that most of the war crimes in Afghanistan took place between 2003 and 2004, she said the offenses were “continuing in some cases until 2014.”
The prosecutor has been weighing a probe into potential war crimes in Afghanistan for years, and her announcement is likely a sign of an oncoming investigation.
Since the US is not a participant with the ICC, officials will probably be opposed to working with investigators — but Afghanistan is a member of the court and will be forced to play ball.
The probe would likely ruffle the feathers of President-elect Donald Trump, who has been a vocal supporter of certain torture methods as a way to combat terrorism.
With Post wires