On July 23, 2003, Amnesty International accused the coalition forces in Iraq to torture detainees. Sleep deprivation, loud music, bright light, hooding and prolonged restraints in painful position are routinely used. All this by countries proclaiming that they live by the law!!
On August 27, 2003, four US Military Police reservists are appearing before a military court charged with beating up Iraqi prisoners. They plead self-defence.
On January 17, 2004, it was revealed that many Iraqis, soldiers and civilians, taken prisoners have been "tortured" by American soldiers. Accusations of beatings, electric shocks with electric cattle prods, pulling out of toes nails, bad food including pork that Muslims cannot eat, sleeping in tents in the hot weather, deprived of food and water, standing up, for many hours, etc. Most of the civilians were released after a few months having never been charged of anything. No compensation was ever offered to these people illegally detained. Official inquiries have been launched at top level -or is it white wash!
On May 7, 2004, a report of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) confirmed that they knew that the Iraqi prisoners was subjected to torture all over Iraq by the American soldiers but also by the British. According to them there was a pattern and system to the abuse. They informed the coalition in February but nothing changed. The ICRC reports the following serious violations of International humanitarian Laws during the period from March to November 2003:
Main violations;
- Brutality against captured person and initial custody, sometimes causing
death or serious injury.
- Absence of notification of arrest of persons to their families.
- Physical or psychological coercion during interrogation to get information.
- Prolonged solitary confinement in cells without daylight.
- Excessive and disproportionate use of force, resulting in death or injury.
- Serious problems of conduct:
- Seizure and confiscation of prisoners' personal belongings.
- Exposure of detainees to dangerous tasks.
- Holding detainees in place where they are not protected from shelling.
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Where mistreatment took place:
- Battle group unit stations.
- Military intelligence sections of Camp Cropper and Abu Ghraib prison.
- Al-Baghdadi, Heat Base and Hubbania Camp in Ramadi province.
- Tikrit holding area (former Saddam Hussein Islamic school).
- Former train station al-Khain near Syrian border.
- Ministry of Defence and presidential palace in Baghdad.
- Former mukhabarat (Saddam Hussein's secret police) in Basra.
- Several police stations in Baghdad.
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Method of ill treatment:
- Hooding.
- Handcuffing with flexi-cuffs sometimes made so tight and used so long as
to create skin and muscle lesions.
- Beating with hard objects, slapping, punching, and kicking.
- Pressing the face into the ground with boots.
- Threat of ill treatment, reprisals against family, transfer to Guantanamo
Bay.
- Stripped naked for several days in confinement.
- Paraded naked in front of other detainees and guards.
- Acts of humiliation in presence of guards, males and females.
- Attached for hours during many days with handcuffs to the cell bars in painful
or humiliating position.
- Exposure while hooded to loud noise, music, to the sun over many hours.
- Kept in painful positions such as squatting for hours.
On May 7, 2004, it is becoming clear that the sexual humiliation and torture of Iraqi prisoners is not the fact of a few "Bad apples" among the good soldiers of the coalition. It is part of a system (known as R21 or Resistance to Interrogation) of humiliation and torture used by Special Forces soldiers that has contaminated ordinary soldiers and contractors who, often, do not know what they are doing and the reason for it. British and American military intelligence soldiers are trained in these techniques at the joint interrogation centre in Ashford, Kent (now transferred to the former US base at Chicksands).
On May 10, 2004, facing criticism for not acting on the International Red Cross and Amnesty International reports (most ministers did not read these reports until a week ago). Even Ann Clwyd, the Prime Minister human right envoy to Iraq was not shown them. Geoff Hoon, the Defence Secretary, admitted that some British soldiers broke the law in Iraq. Among other things, some civilians were killed (including a 8 year-old girl, Faleh Matrud) placing hoods on the prisoners' head is unacceptable and had been forbidden for about 30 years. Criticisms came from Conservative, Liberal Democrat but also from many Labour Members of the Parliament including some who agreed to the invasion.
On May 15, 2004, the US military authorities banned all coercitive interrogation practices (keeping prisoners in stressful position, depriving them from sleep,…).
On June 23, 2004, the Bush administration's views on the use of torture in the war on terror were made public. The memos from February 2002 to April 2003 are giving some information but raised many new questions by Democrats and Human Rights activists. None of the documents apply to the treatment of prisoners in Iraq. One secret order signed by Bush in February 2002 reserves the right for the USA to suspend the protections offered by the Geneva Conventions on treatment of the detainees not only in Afghanistan and Iraq but in any future conflict too. He nevertheless says that the detainees should be humanely treated. Donald Rumsfeld approved the methods authorised to extract information from the Guantanamo Bay's detainees on November 27, 2002; they include measures forbidden by the Geneva Conventions such as the use of dogs, stripping or hooding prisoners, and stress positions for long periods of time. Donald "Duck" added of his own hand: "I stand for eight-ten hours a day. Why is standing limited to four hours." On January 15, 2003, Donald Rumsfeld reversed his decisions. On august 1, 2002, the then assistant attorney general, Jay Bybee, said that torture and even the killing of prisoners could be justified to protect US security. The inquiring committees of the US Congress will request more information and they will be released.
On August 25, 2004, we were told that the aggressive tactics used by American military interrogators at Abu Ghraib prison were interrogation techniques developed by Special Operations forces and the Central Intelligence Agency in Afghanistan and at Guantanamo Bay.The report released by Major General George R. Fay said military procedures used by C.I.A. officers induced soldiers and civilians to follow Army rules.'' The suggestion that the agency's practices were in part responsible for what went wrong at Abu Ghraib has reinforced a clash of cultures between the by-the-books Army and the C.I.A, which is known to operate by its own rules. The Fay and Schlesinger reports have provided the clearest picture that the origins of some of the harsh interrogation procedures used at Abu Ghraib rested in those drawn up for use in Afghanistan. The details of C.I.A. interrogation practices at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere remain secret, and were not explained out in either of the Pentagon reports this week. The Fay Report does describe a case in which a C.I.A. officer working at Abu Ghraib brandished a loaded weapon in an interrogation room, in violation of military rules. In the future, the report urged, all government agencies operating in Iraq should follow a uniform set of interrogation practices. The report also describes sharp tensions between the military and the C.I.A. at Abu Ghraib, particularly over the agency's use of the prison to hide so-called ghost detainees, in violation of military rules.
Washington has, for the first time on June 24, 2005, acknowledged to the United Nations that prisoners have been tortured at US detention centres in Guantanamo Bay, as well as Afghanistan and Iraq. The acknowledgement was made in a report submitted to the UN Committee against Torture. They are no longer trying to duck this and have respected their obligation to inform the UN. UN sources said this is the first time the world body has received such a frank statement on torture from US authorities.
Five U.S. soldiers from the 75th Ranger Regiment were charged on Saturday
November 5, 2005, over the alleged abuse of detainees. On September 7 three
detainees were allegedly punched and kicked by the soldiers as they were awaiting
movement to a detention facility.
In September 2005, U.S. soldier Lynndie England was sentenced to three years'
jail after being convicted of abuse, including being photographed pointing
to the genitals of a naked Iraqi detainee in Abu Ghraib prison. England was
the last of a group of U.S. soldiers to be convicted of abuse at Abu Ghraib
in a scandal, which provoked global outrage and deepened Iraqi resentment
of occupying U.S. troops.
On November 12, 2005, the Guardian revealed that The British tortured German prisoners of war and even German civilians from 1940 to 1948.In fact they operated at least one secret torture centre in the heart of London. Apparently three mansions in one of London most expensive neighbourhoods, Kensington Palace Garden, were used to extract information from German prisoners of war and later on, of civilians. More than 3,000 prisoners passed through the centre where many were systematically beaten, deprived of sleep, forced to stand still for more than 24 hours at a time and threatened with execution or unnecessary surgery. Some were also starved and subjected to extremes of temperature, hot or cold. Some were threatened with electric shock or menaced by red-hot iron pokers. Of course the centre was not mentioned to the Red Cross and when the organisation heard of it, its inspectors were denied entry. It was obvious that the centre operated in clear breach of the Geneva conventions and international laws. There is nothing new under the sky!
On November 12, 2005, we were told that the CIA was running a web of secret prisons in Eastern Europe and in other countries all over the world. The Republican leaders in the Congress asked for an immediate inquiry. However they were not targeting the prisons where torture was practised. All they wanted to know was the name of the source of the leak!
A poll made in many countries asked the people:" Do you feel the use of torture against suspected terrorists to obtain information against terrorism activities are justified? The answers varied from country to country. In Italy 60% of the people said "never". In Spain t was 54%, in Canada 49%, in the UK and Germany 48%, in France and Mexico, 40%, in the USA 36% and in South Korea only 10%. In the USA 61% of the people said that it was justified at least in some occasions! Surprised?
On December 8, 2005, the British top judges, the Law Lords, decided that evidences obtained through torture in other countries couldn't be used in British courts.
On January 12, 2006, we were told that the US Army closed a criminal investigation of abuse allegations made by an Iraqi detainee. The Army did not believe him although they never questioned the American soldiers involved. More than 500 investigations took place since the invasion of Iraq and 251 military personnel have been court-martialled or punished in a different way.
Reports of killings and torture by the Iraqi government and its agents increased in 2005, a US report said on March 8, 2006. The state department's annual report says Iraqi police abuses included threats, intimidation and beatings, as well as the use of electric shocks. However the report did not mention the American abuses.
On May 4, 2006, the US Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights Barry
Lowenkron defended its treatment of suspects detained in the war on terror,
telling a UN committee that it considers the use of torture as wrong. Senior
US officials are testifying before the committee for the first time since
the 11 September 2001 attacks. Rights groups accuse the US of flouting the
UN Convention against Torture. They say the US allows the torture and inhumane
treatment of foreign terror suspects at their detention centres in Afghanistan,
Iraq, Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere.