[lbo-talk] LAT: The US torture rooms in Iraq

Michael Pollak mpollak at panix.com
Tue Jan 25 16:45:20 PST 2005


[And then of course there's the gulag our boys run. Sodomy, killing, electrodes. What makes us different? We investigate first, and then dismiss the allegations. Evil tyrants dismiss the allegations without first pretending to investigate.]

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/iraq/la-fg-abuse25jan25,0,3011482.story?coll=la-home-headlines

January 25, 2005 LOS ANGELES TIMES

Documents contain descriptions of severe detainee mistreatment beyond Abu Ghraib.

By John Hendren

Times Staff Writer

WASHINGTON -- Pentagon documents released Monday disclosed that Iraqi

prisoners had lodged dozens of abuse complaints against U.S. and Iraqi

personnel who guarded them at a little-known palace in Baghdad

converted to a U.S. prison. Among the allegations was that guards had

sodomized a disabled man and killed his brother, whose dying body was

tossed into a cell, atop his sister.

The documents, obtained in a lawsuit against the federal government by

the American Civil Liberties Union, suggest for the first time that

numerous detainees were abused at Adhamiya Palace, one of Saddam

Hussein's villas in eastern Baghdad that was used by his son Uday.

Previous cases of abuse of Iraqi prisoners have focused mainly on Abu

Ghraib prison.

A government contractor who was interviewed by U.S. investigators said

that as many as 90 incidents of possible abuse took place at the

palace, but only a few were detailed in the hundreds of pages of

documents released Monday.

The documents also touch on alleged abuses in other U.S.-run lockups

in Iraq. The papers include investigative reports linking some abuses

to ultrasecret Pentagon counter-terrorism units.

The latest allegations add to a pattern that human rights activists

said suggested systematic abuse of prisoners at U.S. military

detention facilities across the globe. ACLU officials, who have

obtained and released thousands of documents in recent months, on

Monday accused the Pentagon of a "woefully inadequate" response to

hundreds of incidents of alleged abuse.

"Some of the investigations have basically whitewashed the torture and

abuse," said the group's director, Anthony D. Romero. "The documents

that the ACLU has obtained tell a damning story of widespread torture

reaching well beyond the walls of Abu Ghraib."

Responding to the latest allegations, U.S. military officials

maintained that a few low-level troops had committed the abuses,

independent of senior commanders. They noted that more than 300

criminal investigations had examined allegations of prisoner

mistreatment and subjected 100 soldiers to court-martial proceedings

and administrative punishments.

"The Army and Department of Defense have aggressively investigated all

credible allegations of detainee abuse and held individuals

accountable," said Lt. Col. Gerard Healy, an Army spokesman.

Few of the alleged abuses at the Adhamiya palace have previously

received attention from Pentagon investigators or human rights groups.

The palace is a prison overseen by the U.S. Army's 1st Cavalry

Division, with interrogations conducted at least in part by members of

the 5th Special Forces Group of Ft. Campbell, Ky.

The alleged abuse at the palace included forced sodomy, electric

shocks, cigarette burns and severe beatings. Some allegations by

prisoners were corroborated by U.S. civilian military contractors

hired to help interrogate detainees, according to the Pentagon

documents.

One prisoner held at the palace during 2004 said an Iraqi security

officer had burned him with cigarettes and struck him repeatedly, the

documents state. Another said Iraqi interrogators had pinched his nose

and poured water in his mouth, raped him with a wooden stick and

shocked his testicles.

In one of the more detailed cases, Iraqi security troops arrested

several members of a family accused of supplying arms and money to

members of the fedayeen, paramilitaries who had been allied with

Hussein's regime.

A woman whose name was blacked out from the documents claimed in

interviews with U.S. Army investigators that the bloody, bruised body

of her brother had been tossed into her cell on top of her sister. Her

brother died shortly afterward, according to her account.

Another brother, who is disabled, said guards pulled him around by his

penis. The guards forced a water bottle up his rectum, he told

investigators.

Military investigators noted in reports released Monday that the man's

legs and arms are uneven in length from a bone deficiency.

A woman who recounted a similar incident to the French newspaper Le

Monde was identified recently as Houda Azzawi. Her brother who died

was identified in the newspaper's article as Ayad.

The family's complaints were supported by a sworn statement of a

military contractor from CACI International Inc., who was interviewed

at the Abu Ghraib prison, where the disabled brother was later sent.

The contractor, whose name was redacted from the documents given to

the ACLU, recalled "a detainee who was handicapped and was beaten up

very bad."

A second CACI contractor corroborated the story, saying that he did

not witness abuse by Americans or Iraqis working with them, but noted

in an interview with Army investigators "one incident of rape with a

bottle and a death of a brother" in January at the palace.

"I heard that the Iraqis recently killed him and hung him. I heard

this through interpreters but not official channels yet," the

contractor said. "One of the individuals who had been abused said he

remembers one of the Americans had a flag on his arm."

An Army Criminal Investigation Command document dated Oct. 14, 2004,

concluded that there was insufficient evidence to prove the allegation

that one of the detainees was abused by U.S. troops.

"However, it appears he may have been abused by the Iraqi Civil

Defense Corps," the document stated. After an ICDC captain turned over

the detainee to U.S. troops, he "was received from the ICDC with

visible injuries."

The Army report, whose author's name also was blacked out, concluded

that the investigation was "terminated" because continuing would be

"of little or no value."

Many detainees from Adhamiya who were transferred to Abu Ghraib

complained of abuse to civilian interrogators, according to the

documents. The interrogators said another detainee complained he was

unable to sit after bottles were inserted into his rectum.

"There were many detainees who came in abused. While we were screening

the detainees, they would ask us, 'Are they going to beat us here

too?' " the first interrogator said in a statement to investigators.

"Some would have broken shoulders, others came in on crutches."

The documents detailed dozens of other alleged abuses in other

locations. ACLU officials said the documents suggested that Army

criminal investigators failed to pursue leads in abuse cases.

The documents released Monday raised questions about some activities

of elite Special Forces teams. One investigation was based on Red

Cross reports revealing that an Iraqi detainee turned over to a

special U.S. commando unit known as Task Force 6-26 in April 2004 at a

base in Fallouja had been abused.

The Red Cross said the detainee had been suspended by his thighs and

was beaten while hooded and restrained. The same reports indicated

that the Iraqi had been shot in the arm and beaten in the shins with a

rubber hose.

However, the case was dropped after investigators concluded he was

abused while in the custody of Kurds, before he was turned over to the

commando unit, a conclusion ACLU officials continue to question.

In another case involving a group known as Task Force 20, a collection

of Special Forces soldiers and CIA officers, a 73-year-old woman

complained she was arrested, flown to an undisclosed location and

questioned for several days. She said one male captor "rode" her and

called her names. She added that two of her fingers were broken and

that she was sexually abused with a stick. That case was dropped

because "the investigation did not develop sufficient evidence" to

prove wrongdoing, investigators wrote.

One investigation was begun in response to a May 11, 2004, Los Angeles

Times article detailing the abuses suffered by Iraqi women in U.S.

custody as described by their Iraqi attorneys. The matter was quickly

dropped when investigators were unable to learn the names and

locations of any victims.

In another incident last July, according to the Army documents, a

photo emerged showing an Army private pointing a gun at the head of a

hooded and bound detainee.

During questioning, the soldier in the photo, whose name was redacted,

told investigators that his duties as a guard at an unnamed safe house

operated by Special Forces and CIA personnel included requiring

detainees to "maintain stressful positions" and preventing them from

sleeping by playing loud music, dousing them with water or poking,

prodding or slapping them, according to the documents.

Although Army criminal investigators concluded there was probable

cause to believe the soldier had committed aggravated assault by

pointing his pistol at the detainee, there was no record of punishment

or further investigation of the treatment of detainees at the safe

house.

An investigation into an alleged beating of an Iraqi detainee in

February 2004 found "probable cause" that an unnamed lieutenant

colonel had made a death threat and fired a pistol next to the

detainee's head at a base in Taji.

Four enlisted soldiers from the 2-20th Field Artillery Battalion of

the Army's 4th Infantry Division and a civilian interpreter allegedly

punched and kicked the detainee "numerous times while they were

interrogating him."

According to the Army documents, the soldiers received light

administrative punishment and the interpreter does not appear to have

been sanctioned at all.

In a Nov. 14, 2003, statement, a U.S. soldier said he "saw what I

think were war crimes" while assigned to a Baghdad facility known as

Camp Red. In the statement, the soldier reported seeing U.S. troops

assault detainees at the camp and the use of prolonged hooding,

exposure to heat and cold and excessive restraints.

"In my mind," the soldier said, "my chain of command did nothing to

stop these war crimes, and allowed them to happen."

Despite the soldier's testimony, the investigation was closed due to

"insufficient evidence."

Times staff writer Esther Schrader contributed to this report.

Copyright 2005 Los Angeles Times



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