EYES WIDER SHUT

Last month, we published a major investigation into SAS activity in Afghanistan. In our article, we alleged that New Zealand troops have handed prisoners to American and Afghan forces, knowing they could be tortured, despite persistent denials by the government that this happens. Was it true? The Prime Minister, John Key, says the author of the story, Jon Stephenson, has been discredited. The Defence Force says the story is founded upon a number of factual inaccuracies. The Minister of Defence, Wayne Mapp, told Parliament that many of Mr Stephensons allegations have been disproven by the New Zealand Defence Force. Yet, despite all these claims, a closer examination of government and Defence Force statements reveals that most of the original story is accepted. And even where there is dispute, the government has presented no evidence at all to suggest we were wrong. Instead, despite its attempts to dismiss our investigation, the government response suggests it is confused about what it should say.
STORY JON STEPHENSON and SIMON WILSON

The bulk of the original story described events during and after the raid on Band e Timur in Helmand province and was based on statements by Afghans and New Zealanders who were there (see Eyes Wide Shut: The Original Story, page 41). Most of the allegations relating to this raid had been routinely denied by New Zealand governments, both Labour and National, before the article was published. Since publication, however, none of it has been disputed. On the contrary, Defence Minister Wayne Mapp admitted to TV3 that our SAS troops saw and heard of abuse by the Americans and complained about it and they did so not once, but twice. Mapp confirmed that again when he told Parliament on May 3 that US forces mistreated prisoners transferred by the SAS to them in 2002. He added that the mistreating authority was, in fact, the United States. Surely, the responsibility must lie with the United States and not New Zealand. Mapps admission marks a remarkable turnaround in the governments statements on these matters. However, he is wrong that the responsibility for prisoners lies only with the imprisoning force. As we explained at length, under the international commitments New Zealand has signed up to, we are required to satisfy ourselves about the welfare of any prisoners we take.

Band e 1 The Timur raid

What happens to the prisoners?

The focus of the original story, Eyes Wide Shut, and the debate that has followed is on five key issues:

The government and Defence Force have insisted that they, and the SAS, are behaving ethically. The implication that members of the NZSAS would hand over prisoners knowing they would be tortured is abhorrent, says NZDF chief Lieutenant General Rhys Jones. Last year, the organisation Transparency International ranked Afghanistan 176th out of 178 in the world for corruption and human rights abuses. Only Somalia and Myanmar were ranked lower. The reasonable assumption for anyone operating in a country ranked that low is that corruption is the norm: every activity, every agreement, every deal, is at risk of being corrupted. The New Zealand government and the Defence Force are well placed to understand

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 n SAS-led raid on the village of Band e Timur in 2002 in which people were killed A and prisoners were taken, handed over to US care and in some cases tortured. None of the allegations made in relation to this appears to be in dispute. The question of whether New Zealand can be confident any prisoners it takes are not abused or tortured. The government says proper procedures are in place.  n alleged incident in Wardak province in which SAS troops prevented Afghan army A personnel dragging an insurgent to his death behind a vehicle. The Defence Force says the SAS has never operated in Wardak and this incident did not happen. A visit by Jon Stephenson to the base of the Afghan Crisis Response Unit (CRU) in Kabul. The Defence Force says this visit did not take place.  n SAS raid on Christmas Eve 2010, on the offices of a company called Tiger A International in Kabul. The government has made conflicting statements about whether the SAS took prisoners in this raid.

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he replied on May 7: No. These NZSAS were fired on at the commencement of the operation. They returned fire and then asked everyone to remain in place or get down for a few minutes until Afghan authorities took over. Neither the NZSAS nor the Afghan authorities detained anyone at the conclusion of the operation. There are two issues under scrutiny here.
Lieutenant General Rhys Jones. Wayne Mapp and Lieutenant General Jerry Mateparae. John Key.

However, in March 2010, he said: NZSAS personnel have been in the vicinity when members of the Afghan National Security Forces have arrested or detained Afghans, [but] NZSAS members have not assisted in detaining persons or making those arrests. It is difficult to see how both statements can be true. Then on May 3 Wayne Mapp confessed to Parliament the SAS had detained a midlevel Taliban commander and that Afghan authorities... were not available at the time. It seems the rules about SAS activity having an Afghan face and being limited to assisting the CRU do not always apply. Example: The Defence Force legal chief, Brigadier Kevin Riordan, has stated that the SAS did not take the names of the prisoners they handed to the Americans in 2002 because there were problems with translating, and the SAS troopers were not trained to do interrogation in the field.

However, the SASs own official history says the SAS located and interviewed those suspects. If you can interview someone, you can surely take their name. Wayne Mapp has confirmed to Parliament that he will be releasing a report on prisoner treatment in the near future. This is the report he first promised to release on August 16 last year. Amnesty International, one of the worlds leading human rights organisations, has expressed deep concern about our governments policy on detainee transfers, and has asked Mapp on several occasions to release the report. Phil Goff, now Leader of the Opposition, has joined the Green Party in calling for an inquiry into issues surrounding the transfer of prisoners by the SAS to US and Afghan authorities. Amnesty International has added its voice to calls for an inquiry. We support those calls too.

First, the role of the Afghan authorities. Previously, as we noted in our story, Mapp and former Defence Force chief Lieutenant General Jerry Mateparae have both told a parliamentary select committee that when the SAS is involved in operations, they have an Afghan face and are led by the CRU and therefore it is the CRU that makes any arrests. Yet no one has suggested the CRU led the Tiger raid. The Afghan authorities who turned up at the Tiger building did so later, and they were from the NDS. Second, there is the definition of the term detain. Many people would say that if soldiers burst in on them waving their guns and ordered them to get down on the floor, they had been detained. It may be that when the government says the SAS does not detain prisoners, it is using some other definition. Its worth remembering that the only reason no prisoners were detained at the conclusion of the operation is that the NDS recognised the Tiger men as contractors to the NATO/ISAF forces. They were on the same side, so they were quickly released. If that had not been the case, these men, whom the SAS asked to remain in place or get down at gunpoint, but supposedly did not detain, would have been dragged off to the fearsome prison of the NDS. The SAS, as the detaining authority, would have been legally responsible for their transfer to an organisation with a well-established track-record of mistreating and torturing detainees.

this. Yet our government says it has a written agreement with the Afghan government that safeguards the human rights of prisoners. It will not release the agreement to the public, but insists it is reliable. One reason for this is that the government also claims it has an agreement with the Red Cross to monitor prisoners transferred by the SAS to US or Afghan custody. Wayne Mapp and former defence minister Phil Goff have both cited the Red Cross in this way. The Red Cross has said, in response to both, that there is no such agreement. It is reassuring to hear from General Jones that the SAS would find it abhorrent to hand over prisoners to be tortured. Indeed, our article did not question the way SAS troops have treated their prisoners. To the contrary, we stressed there was no evidence the SAS was in any way directly involved in mistreating or torturing detainees. government identification card confirming his membership of that unit. He was not offered, and nor did he ask for, any money or other favours in return for the information and he did not receive any. The source was questioned extensively, and he repeatedly claimed that New Zealand special forces were present during the raid in Wardak province. He gave specific details about the SAS mission in Afghanistan that Stephenson had previously confirmed from other sources. S ome weeks after the interview, Stephenson sent the journalist who had organised the initial meeting to interview the source independently and check some of the details. There were no inconsistencies between the second statement and the information the source had given earlier. Extensive efforts were made to establish the veracity of the information the source provided about this alleged operation, and the information Stephenson received was reported accurately.

NZDF, SAS members had been very, very involved in detaining insurgent suspects

his notes from the interview were taken on distinctive notepaper supplied by the colonel.

during joint SAS-CRU operations. According to General Jones, Colonel M denies he has ever spoken to Stephenson. Jones also says Stephenson was denied access to the base. In fact, Stephenson entered the base on Monday, April 26 last year, accompanied by a translator. His presence was witnessed by more than a dozen members of the CRU, some of whom were playing a game of volleyball. His notes from the interview, which he still has, were taken on distinctive notepaper supplied by the colonel. During the interview, the colonel showed Stephenson documents, maps and photos relating to recent SAS-CRU operations. He divulged other details about the work of the SAS, including the names of prisoners, the dates they were detained and that they had been transferred to an Afghan organisation later confirmed as the Afghan secret police, the National Directorate of Security (NDS). As Stephenson left the compound after the interview, he encountered a uniformed SAS soldier emerging from a New Zealand hut which had a Maori carving hanging above it. The New Zealand flag was flying from a nearby flagpole.

EYES WIDE SHUT: THE ORIGINAL STORY

Jon Stephensons article Eyes Wide Shut dealt with the issue of New Zealands involvement and complicity in the transfer of detainees captured in Afghanistan to US and Afghan forces transfers that have taken place in spite of evidence US and Afghan forces mistreat or torture prisoners. Mistreating or torturing detainees is illegal under numerous international laws that New Zealand has signed, including the Geneva Conventions and the Convention Against Torture. It is also a serious breach of international law for one country to transfer detainees to another unless it is satisfied the receiving country will not mistreat or torture them. Stephenson tracked down Afghans from Band e Timur in Helmand province who had been detained by New Zealand SAS troops in a raid on their village in May 2002. Two 70-year-old men and a six-year-old girl died in the raid, which was carried out by US and Canadian troops but led by the SAS. Fifty-five men and boys from Band e Timur the youngest a 12-year-old were taken to a notorious US detention centre at Kandahar and say they were abused there by the guards. They reported being humiliated and degraded by having their heads and beards shaven and being stripped naked and paraded in front of US soldiers. They also described being roughed up, rushed by dogs, deprived of food and sleep, placed for prolonged periods in stress positions and, in some cases, being beaten. One man was reportedly beaten so badly he was crippled. The accounts the men gave Metro were consistent with accounts given by other people who say they were mistreated or tortured at the Kandahar detention centre, and consistent with evidence from investigations by human rights groups and the US military itself. Moreover, this testimony was consistent with a wider pattern of US abuse of detainees that began in Afghanistan in 2001 and continued at US detention centres at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba and Abu Ghraib in Iraq. The purpose of Eyes Wide Shut was to question the detainee transfer policy of successive governments and the New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) leadership. Indeed, much of the information in the article was provided by present and former members of the NZDF, who were not impressed by the inhumane behaviour of the US guards. Eyes Wide Shut argued that New Zealand political and military leaders put our SAS troops in an invidious position, requiring them to hand prisoners to US and later Afghan forces, despite strong evidence those prisoners would not be treated as they should be.

The Wardak claims

In our story, we recounted an incident in which SAS troops were said to have prevented a captured insurgent being tied and dragged behind a vehicle by the Afghan National Army in the Wardak province. Wardak is near to both Kabul and Bamiyan, the places where New Zealand troops are stationed. General Jones insists that no such operation has occurred and that the SAS has never operated in Wardak. He adds: The NZSAS has never witnessed nor had to intervene to prevent a person being dragged behind a vehicle as the article describes. Our account of this incident was based on the testimony of a member of the Afghan security forces who said he participated in the operation. He was interviewed by Jon Stephenson, with an interpreter, in the presence of three witnesses, and the interview was recorded. The source was introduced to Stephenson by a highly respected Afghan journalist. The source was wearing the uniform of his unit, and had an Afghanistan

The Tiger raid

In our story, we described a raid by SAS troops on the Kabul offices of Tiger International on Christmas Eve last year. We reported that the SAS killed two Tiger guards and detained other Tiger personnel, before handing them to the NDS, who arrived later. General Jones denies this. In fact, he says in his statement, no detainees were taken by either the NZSAS or anybody else. In Parliament, Wayne Mapp managed to both confirm and deny our claims. Asked in a written question specifically if the SAS detained anyone in the raid, and if they handed anyone to the NDS,

In our article, we reported details of an interview conducted with Colonel M, then commander of Afghanistans special forces, the Crisis Response Unit (CRU) in Kabul, which members of the SAS have been working with since September 2009. In the interview, which took place at the CRU base, Colonel M said that, contrary to claims by the New Zealand government and

Visiting the CRU base

Confusion in the ranks

There is a great deal in our original story that has simply not been responded to. Although government and Defence Force personnel have denied there has been a coverup, much of the evidence suggests otherwise. Example: In January 2010, General Mateparae the NZDF chief at the time and now the governor-general-designate stated that the SAS had assisted Afghan forces in detaining people.

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