Eyes Averted Emails Show U.S. Officials Secretly Feared Ban on Military Training in Nepal with Human Rights Abusers

American officials in Kathmandu and at US Pacific Command in Hawaii, a regional seat of American military power, argued strenuously against disqualifying the training center under US human rights laws, according to newly released documents obtained by 100Reporters under a Freedom of Information Act request. Instead, Washington persisted in uninterrupted relations with Nepal’s armed forces — responsible for the bulk of killings and disappearances after a ten-year civil conflict that left 13,000 dead. Nepal went on to become an important US partner in the development of UN peacekeeping forces.

In the meantime, Maina Sunuwar’s killers enjoyed years of impunity. US officials failed to use the murder as leverage over a weak local judicial system meant to serve countless families victimized in similar situations.

Mandira Sharma, a founder of the Nepali human rights group Advocacy Forum, told 100Reporters she believed the United States had missed a chance to strengthen the rule of law in her country.

“I very much think that if the US had suspended its support on the grounds of this case, Maina’s family would have got justice long ago,” she said.

With pressure, a chastened Nepali military could have been led to cooperate in this case and many others like it, she contended.

According to the UN, the Nepali military had attempted to keep secret the findings of a court of inquiry board looking into Maina Sunuwar’s death.

But a report from investigators nevertheless made its way into the hands of the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.

According to the UN report which summarized the findings, the inquiry determined that soldiers had taken Maina from her home on February 17, 2004 and delivered her to the training center, where she was tortured for 90 minutes in the presence of seven officers and enlisted men.

The training center’s acting chief, then-Lt. Col. Babi Khatri, ordered that her head be forced into a large pot of water six or seven times and held down for a minute each time, the report said.

Her captors “then administered electric shocks to her wet hands and feet four or five times.” After this, she was blindfolded, handcuffed and held in a training center building.

“She later began vomiting and foaming at the mouth, and died without having received medical treatment,” the report said.

The men then attempted to cover up the killing — firing a bullet into the back of her corpse and burying it on the training center grounds, according to the report.

The commanding officer issued an internal report “stating that Maina Sunuwar had been shot while trying to escape.”

But the inquiry concluded this was a transparent lie, finding instead that “[i]t was indeed as a result of torture inflicted during the course of the interrogation that the death of Maina Sunuwar occurred.”

The killing also represented a deepening cycle of violence and repression in Nepal, with the army killing Maina Sunuwar in an attempt to stifle controversy over the murder and alleged rape of her cousin Reena Rasaili, who had been suspected of supporting the Maoist insurgency just days before Maina’s killing.

For years, the army stonewalled civilian authorities investigating Maina Sunuwar’s disappearance and murder.

“There are 4 individuals implicated in this case and All [sic] were in some way connected to BPOTC,” he added. “This is strong enough evidence, as we have see [sic] recently, to blacklist entire units so the likelihood of this happening to BPOTC are [sic] high.”

The timing of the hit was particularly bad: Just the month before, troops from 24 nations had completed the Shanti Prayas II “capstone” exercise for peacekeepers at the Birendra Center, making a sudden cut-off of aid a particularly painful and embarrassing prospect. Such a cut-off could raise questions about the legality of the just-completed exercises.

Luqman said he and others were working with people responsible for human rights vetting “to provide arguments for why BPOTC should not be blacklisted.”

“Our arguments center around the fact that three of the four individuals implicated in the case were court-martialed and punished and are now out of the army,” wrote Luqman.

He acknowledged, however, that,

Indeed, according to the UN Office of High Commissioner for Human Rights, or OHCHR, a court-martial had sentenced three of the men involved to just six months’ imprisonment for negligence in disposing of Maina’s body.

They were together ordered to pay the equivalent of just under $1,100 in compensation to the family.

the agency said in a statement in 2006, because the outcome placed no blame for the killing and was unlikely to deter future abuses.

Luqman told Pacific Command headquarters that he and others would argue that the center was not a unit with fixed personnel assigned to it — and so it would be unfair to bar the whole center and not just the men responsible.

“This argument has not been particularly successful in the recent past as we are barred from engaging entire battalions even though the individuals have long since departed and the [human rights] violations occurred nearly a decade ago,” he wrote.

Luqman did not respond to a request for comment from 100Reporters.

In Hawaii, Scott A. Weidie, a program manager in charge of peacekeeping training efforts at US Pacific Command, leapt to the defense of the training center.

Nepal had trained thousands of peacekeepers at the center and supplied 95,000 troops to 37 different UN missions over 53 years, sacrificing the lives of 59 personnel members in the process, he wrote back at 9:24 pm Hawaiian time on May 20^th, 2013.

“[I]t is evident that the personnel assigned there are some of the most qualified peacekeeping trainers in any peacekeeping training center in the whole region, and possibly the world,” he wrote, pointing out that his views were his own and not an official US position.

“This is not the School of the Americas of the Cold War educating dictators with torture as part of the curriculum nor is it a center where human rights abuses got out of hand like at Abu Ghraib prison,” wrote Weidie.

As a result of US engagement, training at the Birendra Center included human rights instruction, he added, saying that blacklisting the center and not the individuals responsible would be “completely misguided.”

“I wish I could provide a stronger and more coherent argument but I am not a human rights scholar or lawyer. But I do know when I see and hear something wrong,” wrote Weidie.

“The torture and murder of [redacted] was wrong. The fact that justice was not adequately served and the family of the victims [sic] cannot have justice is wrong,” he wrote.

“But to blacklist a model peacekeeping training center is also wrong. It is the height of hypocrisy for the US to blacklist such a training center while many actions during the US War on Terrorism are so openly questioned,” wrote Weidie.

It also showed the embassy was aware of the fact that UN officials had reviewed a Nepal Army “investigation file” on the murder.

“I think the US Embassy must have known this already in 2004,” said Sharma of Advocacy Forum.

Her organization had interviewed a person tortured at the Birendra Center who confirmed that Maina Sunuwar had been taken there, she said.

“AF shared this information to the UN and the US embassy,” she told 100Reporters.

But a State Department spokesperson confirmed to 100Reporters that, as a result of the 2004 Maina Sunuwar case, US officials had reviewed the Birendra Center’s eligibility under the Leahy laws only in 2013.

“In light of the courts-martial of the perpetrators of the gross violations of human rights, and other actions taken by the Nepali government, we determined that assistance could continue,” the spokesperson said.

“In 2016, as part of the normal vetting process, we determined that the BPOTC met the standard of a fundamentally different unit from the one that had committed a gross violation of human rights in 2004.

“There had been complete turnover in BPOTC’s personnel, its mission had changed and since then none of its personnel have been implicated in any other gross violations of human rights.”

In March of this year, the United States again staged peacekeeping exercises at the Birendra Center, inviting troops from 34 nations to participate.

The following month, 13 years after the murder, a civilian court in Nepal finally sentenced three of the killers to life in prison — in absentia.

The case marked the first time a civilian court had ever convicted army personnel for a killing committed during the conflict, even though it had been over for a decade, according to The Kathmandu Post.

But it was unclear whether any of the men would ever serve their sentences.

The court also acquitted Maj. Niranjan Basnet, finding he was not directly involved in the killing. Amnesty International called on prosecutors to appeal.

In 2009, the United Nations had expelled Basnet from a UN peacekeeping mission because he had been charged in the case in 2007.

In May, Maina Sunuwar’s mother Devi appealed to the public to call on Nepal’s Attorney General to pursue the case against Maj. Basnet. She lamented the fact that the convicts were not in custody and 13 years on no one had been punished.

If the officers have their way, they will never face punishment, despite guilty verdicts after all these years. Last month, the three petitioned the court to overturn their convictions.