Govt investigating what happened to Afghan prisoners

SAS troops in Afghanistan. Photo / Philip Poupin

The Government is looking into whether any prisoners arrested by an Afghanistan military unit being mentored by New Zealand troops were handed over to torturers.

Questions have been raised about whether New Zealand's Special Air Service (SAS) were responsible for sending prisoners to the Afghan National Directorate of Security (NDS), the troubled country's intelligence service.

The British military has been banned - after a High Court ruling - from handing prisoners to the directorate in Kabul as it is so notorious for torture.

The NZ SAS deployment, about 70-strong, has been working with Afghanistan's Crisis Response Unit (CRU) in Kabul, but Prime Minister John Key said it was not directly responsible for any prisoners captured by the unit.

"New Zealand, if it accepts in a capacity where it detains an insurgent or someone in Afghanistan, then we abide by the recognised international obligations, the likes of the Geneva convention," he told reporters.

New Zealand had not actually detained anyone in Afghanistan. "But if we did then we would honour those agreements."

The Government would look at what happened to prisoners detained by the CRU.

"In terms of the Crisis Response Unit where they have detained someone and New Zealand has worked alongside them a full registry of all the names is kept and that is open and given to, for instance, the likes of the Red Cross."

Defence Minister Wayne Mapp said previously it was likely some prisoners were transferred to the NDS facilities and Mr Key said it was the "place of choice actually for ISAF (International Security Assistance Forces) to send detainees because of its reputation".

Mr Key said the Government wanted to verify if that was the case.

"Obviously we are concerned, as others might be, by the findings of the UK High Court and I think we owe it to ourselves to at least get a better answer on that."

He said the findings of that review were likely to be made public.

Amnesty International New Zealand chief executive Patrick Holmes welcomed that.

"Afghanistan's intelligence service, the NDS, has demonstrated a persistent pattern of human rights violations perpetrated with impunity. Dozens of NDS detainees, some arrested arbitrarily and detained incommunicado without access to defence lawyers, families, courts or other outside bodies, have been subjected to torture and other ill-treatment, including being whipped, exposed to extreme cold and deprived of food," he said.

Amnesty International believed New Zealand had a responsibility under international humanitarian law not to transfer detainees where there are grounds for believing that they would be in danger of being subjected to torture.

"Irrespective of whether the SAS is the detaining power, New Zealand must ensure that the Afghan government prohibits the NDS from detaining prisoners and allows independent human rights monitoring of all detainees, including by the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission, with access to all places of detention and all detainees."

Green Party MP Keith Locke said the New Zealand Defence Force had to share responsibility for what happened to insurgents it captured.

He supported the withdrawal of the SAS from Afghanistan.

"We don't want New Zealand's good name muddied by links for the torture of prisoners, which is reputed to include beatings, electric shock treatment, and sleep, food and water deprivation."

The SAS is due to be withdrawn in March but has sought an extension of a smaller deployment for longer which the Government is yet to decide on.

- NZPA