Bahrain: Independent Commissioners Urge Prisoner Release

President Barack Obama should halt plans by the US military to expand the Afghan Local Police program until significant reforms are made in training, supervision, and accountability, Human Rights Watch said today. On December 10, 2011, the commander of US Special Operations Command, Adm. William McRaven, suggested in a media briefing that the Afghan Local Police (ALP), locally based paramilitary units, would be increased from its current strength of 9,800 to more than 30,000.

A September 2011 Human Rights Watch report, "Just Don't Call it a Militia: Impunity, Militias, and the 'Afghan Local Police,'" detailed abuses by the ALP and various militias created or supported by the US since the defeat of Taliban rule in 2001. The report, while acknowledging that ALP units had contributed recently to improved security in some areas, documented serious abuses by ALP and other US-backed forces in several provinces, including looting, illegal detention, beatings, killings, sexual assault, and extortion. The report also described how the establishment of the ALP had inflamed ethnic tensions in some areas.

"The Afghan Local Police needs to be fixed before it can be expanded," said Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch. "Instead of rushing to triple the size of the Afghan Local Police, the US and Afghan governments should be adopting mechanisms to ensure these forces abide by the law."

The Afghan government has not yet confirmed McRaven's statement. When it approved the ALP program in 2010, the government set a target of 10,000 members.

In response to the Human Rights Watch report, the US military in October ordered an investigation into the alleged abuses. An unclassified summary of the results released on December 15 stated that the investigation substantiated in whole or in part many of Human Rights Watch's allegations. The US military report also contained general findings, including:

• "There is a need for increased awareness of what constitutes improper conduct."
• "ALP procedures do not specifically address policy or procedures to discipline or fire ALP members."
• There is "friction between ANP [Afghan National Police] and ALP units in the field."

The Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry, in its recommendation to review convictions of people for exercising their basic rights, intended that the government should free them and void their convictions, Human Rights Watch said today.

Sir Nigel Rodley, one of the commissioners and a former UN special rapporteur on torture, told Human Rights Watch that the commissioners, in calling on authorities to review convictions and commute sentences of persons charged for attempting to exercise their basic political rights, intended that they be released and their criminal records expunged of these charges.

"I can confirm that our collective understanding was that the purpose of the review would be to exonerate from criminal responsibility those who have acted peacefully in the pursuit of the internationally recognized rights of freedom of expression and assembly," Rodley said in a statement to Human Rights Watch. "In the absence of any prior criminal charges, or any other charges, such persons should be released from all criminal responsibility and their records expunged."

Human Rights Watch has called on Bahrain to immediately release hundreds of people wrongfully convicted and void all verdicts against persons convicted of speech-related offenses, including leading opposition activists like Ibrahim Sharif, Abdul Hadi al-Khawaja, and Abdul Wahhab Hussein.