. The Maoists have also struck in the capital, Katmandu, staging several high-profile assassinations and, in September, a bomb attack against a cultural center affiliated with the U.S. Embassy. The bombing caused no casualties but helped precipitate the withdrawal of Peace Corps volunteers from the country. U.S. officials contend that a Maoist takeover could be disastrous for the region, especially for India, an increasingly close ally that is battling several Maoist insurgencies of its own. The United States is supplying Nepal's army with M-16 rifles, night-vision gear and body armor and has dispatched Special Forces instructors to train troops in counterinsurgency tactics. Human Rights Watch accused the United States of paying insufficient attention to complaints of abuses by the army. It said that the U.S. Embassy had not issued any statements critical of army actions, though it has routinely condemned Maoist atrocities. In an interview, U.S. Ambassador James F. Moriarty described that statement as "flat-out wrong." But he added: "I do not think abuses are part of government policy. . . . We have seen individuals tried and convicted, court-martialed." The military aid is necessary, he said, for the simple reason that without it, the Maoists might win. "You should never underrate the possibility of a Maoist takeover, particularly given the horrors that that would entail," he said. Sigdel, the lawyer, seems an unlikely participant in the conflict. A farmer's son with a wife and three children, he works out of a grubby second-floor walk-up with no computer, earning a modest living, he said, from land disputes, commercial cases and other routine civil matters. He described himself as apolitical, but once served on a human rights committee of the Nepal Bar Association. On several occasions, he has represented families trying to learn the whereabouts of relatives picked up by security forces on suspicion of involvement with the Maoists, he said. On the morning of Jan. 22, Sigdel said, he was confronted in his office by three men in civilian clothes, who refused to identify themselves or produce an arrest warrant. He was bundled into a small van, blindfolded with dark goggles and a cloth sack and driven to what he presumed was an army facility in Katmandu. For the next 50 days, he said, he was kept alone in a tent and repeatedly questioned about his political views as well as his purported associations with Maoists, of whom he claimed to have no knowledge. During the dunking session, he recalled, he struggled so violently for air that he opened wounds on both knees. Shortly after his disappearance, Sigdel's wife, Sharda, filed a legal petition demanding that the army produce her husband in court, but the government denied knowledge of his whereabouts, Sigdel said. He was returned to his home one evening after signing a document falsely stating that he had been treated well, Sigdel said. Gurung, the military spokesman, confirmed that Sigdel had been held in army custody. "I don't think he was that brutally handled -- maybe a bit roughed up," Gurung said. Asked specifically about the immersion treatment, a technique known to human rights workers as "submarining," Gurung acknowledged the possibility that it had occurred: "We don't have truth serum," he said. He added: "If it happened, he should lodge a protest." -http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A680-2004Nov20.html