While there is no overt evidence of US pressure, it is striking that the U.N. decided to can the respected international law expert a week after he released a report detailing a pattern of abuses by the United States forces in Afghanistan. Just as the perfect crime is the one that no one knows has been committed, the perfect exercise of diplomatic muscle is so deft that the party on the receiving end takes full credit for doing what it heretofore had no intention of doing.
As the New York Times reports Bassiouni identified a very troubling pattern of human rights abuses.
Despite the lack of cooperation, he said, he had no trouble learning of rights
violations. "Arbitrary arrest and detention are common knowledge in Afghanistan
because the coalition forces are known to go to villages and towns and break
down doors and arrest people and take them whenever they want," he said.
He said victims' descriptions of their American captors' appearance had
struck a grim note of recognition because of his past experience. "It was very
reminiscent of what I had seen in the former Yugoslavia, where you would ask
victims of beatings and torture who had abused them and they would say they
couldn't identify them because they wore battle fatigues with no names and no
insignias."
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