Sunday, Jan 29, 2006
International
Iraq: women held to 'leverage' husbands' surrender
A U.S. task force once locked up the young mother of a nursing baby
NEW YORK: The U.S. Army in Iraq has at least twice seized and jailed the wives of suspected militants in hopes of "leveraging" their husbands into surrender, U.S. military documents show.
In one case, a secretive task force locked up the young mother of a nursing baby, a U.S. intelligence officer reported. In the case of a second detenu, one American colonel suggested to another that they catch her husband by tacking a note to the family's door telling him "to come get his wife." The issue of female detentions in Iraq has taken on a higher profile since kidnappers seized American journalist Jill Carroll on January 7 and threatened to kill her unless all Iraqi women detenus are freed.
The U.S. military on Thursday freed five of what it said were 11 women among the 14,000 detenus held in the 2 1/2-year-old militancy. All were accused of "aiding terrorists or planting explosives," but an Iraqi government commission found that evidence was lacking.
Iraqi human rights activist Hind al-Salehi contends that U.S. anti-militant units, coming up empty-handed in raids on suspects' houses, have at times detained wives to pressure men into turning themselves in.
Iraq's Deputy Justice Minister Busho Ibrahim Ali dismissed such claims, saying hostage-holding was a tactic used under the former Saddam Hussein dictatorship, and "we are not Saddam."
Imperative threat
A U.S. command spokesman in Baghdad, Lt. Col. Barry Johnson, said only Iraqis who pose an "imperative threat" are held in U.S.-run detention facilities. But documents describing two 2004 episodes tell a different story. The documents are among hundreds the Pentagon has released periodically under U.S. court order to meet an American Civil Liberties Union request for information on detention practices. - AP
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