Fire Base Tycz
Introduction
Fire base in Deh Rawood, Oruzgan, used by Dutch, US and other coalition forces. Reported originally by the now defunct Uruzgan Weblog, but confirmed by other sources. In 2004 Fire Base TYCZ was the location of abuse of prisoners by US army soldiers, in a case which resurfaced in mid-2009 when President Obama declined to release photographs associated with the case. It is not clear whether the base has been used by ADF.
Source: Uruzgan weblog
Source: Source: U.S. Special Forces A-Team, Military photos.net, 09-17-2005.
Government sources
Analysis
U.S. Special Forces A-Team, Military photos.net, 09-17-2005.
U.S. Special Forces A-Team members lead a convoy of two “jingle trucks” carrying nearly 10 tons of munitions to be detonated in the hills near Firebase Tycz after removal from the bunker complex under the Oruzgan district headquarters.
Prisoner abuse at Fire Base TYCZ
Army Documents Contain Descriptions of Prisoner Abuse Photos, Jason Leopold, The Public Record, 15 May 2009
U.S. Army soldiers in Afghanistan took dozens of pictures of their colleagues pointing assault rifles and pistols at the heads and backs of hooded and bound detainees and another photograph showed two male soldiers and one female soldier pointing a broom to one detainee “as if I was sticking the end of a broom stick into [his] rectum,” according to the female soldier’s account as told to an Army criminal investigator. I found the documents that describes many of the photographs that were set for release at the end of the month on the website of the American Civil Liberties Union. The ACLU has been trying to gain access to the photographs for nearly six years. The ACLU obtained the files describing the pictures in 2005 as part of the organization’s wide-ranging Freedom of information Act lawsuit against the Bush administration seeking documents related to the treatment of “war on terror” prisoners in U.S. custody. About 31 digital photographs contained on a compact disc discovered in June 2004 during an office clean-up at Bagram Airfield also depicted the corpse of “local national” who died from “apparent gunshot wounds” and uniformed U.S. soldiers from the Second Platoon of the 22nd Infantry Battalion stationed at Fire Base Tycze and Dae Rah Wod (DRW) kicking and punching prisoners whose heads were covered with “sand bags” and blindfolds and hands were “zipped-tied,” according to a U.S. Army criminal investigation. The documents related to that investigation can be found in these five separate files: [Part 1] [Part 2] [Part 3] [Part 4] [Part 5]. The soldiers said they intended to keep the prisoner abuse photographs as “mementos” to recall their deployment in Afghanistan, according to an Army criminal investigation.
GIs Were Punished in Afghan Abuse Case, Los Angeles Times, 19 February 2005
Army officials said Friday that eight soldiers were disciplined last year for threatening to kill detainees in Afghanistan and taking photographs of the abuse in a series of incidents with parallels to the scandal at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. The soldiers, from a platoon based at Ft. Drum, N.Y., were accused of dereliction of duty and were demoted, ordered to forfeit some pay and given other “nonjudicial punishments” for their roles in the events a year ago at Firebase Tycz near the Afghan village of Deh Rawod. The case was disclosed in military documents released Thursday and reported in The Times, but it was not clear whether the soldiers had been disciplined. According to Army investigators, the soldiers posed with rifles and pistols aimed at the heads of bound prisoners while other soldiers took their photographs. Other photos appeared to show beatings of prisoners. Troops also mugged for “trophy shots” with the corpse of an enemy fighter who had invaded their camp.
See also
Updated: 17 June 2009