ICRC refrains from commenting on WikiLeaks’ Kashmir expose
By IANSFriday, December 17, 2010
NEW DELHI - The International Committee of the Red Cross Friday declined to comment on a leaked diplomatic cable on custodial violence in Kashmir, stating that it was an internal communication within the US government.
The ICRC will refrain from commenting on the contents of the cable as the latter is an internal communication between the US Embassy in New Delhi and Washington DC, said ICRC India’s spokesperson, Alexis Heeb, in a statement issued here.
The ICRC said it is looking at the matter “internally particularly because these reported events took place prior to 2005″.
British daily Guardian Friday said that cables released by WikiLeaks have revealed that US diplomats were secretly briefed by ICRC staff about the use of electrocution, beatings, sexual humiliation and other methods of systematic abuse against hundreds of detainees in Kashmir in 2005.
The most highly charged dispatch is likely to be an April 2005 cable from the US embassy in Delhi which reports that the ICRC had become frustrated with the Indian government which, it said, had not acted to halt the “continued ill-treatment of detainees”.
The embassy reported that the ICRC concluded that India “condones torture” and that the torture victims were civilians as militants were routinely killed.
