Rafiullah Bidar

Rafiullah Bidar is the regional director of the
Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission in Gardez.cite news
url=http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2005/mar/19/terrorism.afghanistan
title='One huge US jail'
publisher=The Guardian
author=Adrian Levy, Cathy Scott-Clark
date=Saturday March 19 2005
accessdate=2008-03-17
quote=] cite news
url=http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4844217
title=Afghan Security Concerns as Election Nears
publisher=National Public Radio
author=Ivan Watson
date=September 13, 2005
accessdate=2008-03-17
quote=] cite news
url=http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=ffbb68d31819f008a1ede7e9b9162e2d
title=Afghanistan -- Hub for Secret U.S. Torture Centers
publisher=New America Media
author=A.C. Thompson
date=October 2, 2006
accessdate=2008-03-17
quote=In 2005 [the U.S. military] admitted they have 20 jails all over Afghanistan and 500 detainees," said Bidar during an interview. "It was a good achievement for us to get them to admit this. Unfortunately, we were not allowed to go see these prisons. Finally, we decided to do interviews with detainees released from jails. They told us how they were tortured.] cite news
url=http://www.harpers.org/archive/2006/09/0081194
title=American Gulag: prisoners' tales from the war on terror
page=6
pages=
publisher=Harper's magazine
author=Eliza Griswold
date=September 2006
accessdate=2008-03-17
quote='Every journalist comes through this office,' Dr. Bidar said as we sat on his couch. He handed around a plate of wilted cookies and told a story about a young humanrights worker recently killed in Iraq, and how, just months earlier, she had sat on this very couch saying that she didn't want to go back to Baghdad. [http://www.opensourcesinfo.org/journal/2006/9/30/american-gulag.html alternate link] ] The Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission was set up with funding from the United States Congress.In an interview with the UK newspaper "The Guardian" Bidar said: quotation
"All I do nowadays is chart complaints against the US military. Many thousands of people have been rounded up and detained by them. Those who have been freed say that they were held alongside foreign detainees who've been brought to this country to be processed. No one is charged. No one is identified. No international monitors are allowed into the US jails. People who have been arrested say they've been brutalised - the tactics used are beyond belief."

According to "National Public Radio" Bidar was educated in Russia.

Bidar maintains extensive records of exit interviews he conducts with released prisoners, because American authorities will not allow him to interview captives currently in detention.

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