HRW Reports Severe Abuse of Iraqi Detainees
by TChris
A new report by Human Rights Watch, relying on interviews with members of the 82nd Airborne, concludes that "Army troops subjected Iraqi detainees to severe beatings and other torture at a base in central Iraq from 2003 through 2004, often under orders or with the approval of superior officers."
Three U.S. army personnel—two sergeants and a captain—describe routine, severe beatings of prisoners and other cruel and inhumane treatment. In one incident, a soldier is alleged to have broken a detainee’s leg with a baseball bat. Detainees were also forced to hold five-gallon jugs of water with their arms outstretched and perform other acts until they passed out. Soldiers also applied chemical substances to detainees’ skin and eyes, and subjected detainees to forced stress positions, sleep deprivation, and extremes of hot and cold.
Mistreatment was ordered by Military Intelligence personnel as an interrogation tactic, but was also used to "relieve stress," according to the soldiers.
The accounts show that abuses resulted from civilian and military failures of leadership and confusion about interrogation standards and the application of the Geneva Conventions. They contradict claims by the Bush administration that detainee abuses by U.S. forces abroad have been infrequent, exceptional and unrelated to policy.
The Pentagon, trying to sell the belief that a few rogue soldiers engaged in abuse without the knowledge of their superiors, labored to keep the truth from reaching the public.
The officer who spoke to Human Rights Watch made persistent efforts over 17 months to raise concerns about detainee abuse with his chain of command and to obtain clearer rules on the proper treatment of detainees, but was consistently told to ignore abuses and to “consider your career.” He believes he was not taken seriously until he approached members of Congress to raise his concerns. When the officer made an appointment this month with Senate staff members of Senators John McCain and John Warner, he says his commanding officer denied him a pass to leave his base.
While the administration wants the world to believe that abusive treatment of prisoners is contrary to policy, the officer who spoke to Human Rights Watch disagrees:
“[In Afghanistan,] I thought that the chain on command all the way up to the National Command Authority [President Bush and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld] had made it a policy that we were going to interrogate these guys harshly. . . . We knew where the Geneva Conventions drew the line, but then you get that confusion when the Sec Def [Secretary of Defense] and the President make that statement [that Geneva did not apply to detainees] . . . . Had I thought we were following the Geneva Conventions as an officer I would have investigated what was clearly a very suspicious situation.”
Forced to confront this latest scandal, now that it's been made public, the Army has launched a criminal investigation. Will its object be to limit the exposure of top Pentagon officials while casting the entire blame on soldiers in the field?
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