Abuse of Iraqi prisoners 'systematic' - Red Cross
The international Red Cross saw US military intelligence officers mistreating prisoners under interrogation at Abu Ghraib prison and heard coalition estimates that up to 90% of Iraqi detainees were arrested by mistake, according to a report by the agency disclosed in Geneva.
US President George Bush said the mistreatment “was the wrongdoing of a few,” but the report by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) backs up with detail the neutral agency’s contention that US prisoner abuse was broad and part of a system, “not individual acts”.
The report said “high value detainees” were singled out for special mistreatment.
The report did not specify who they were, but it was thought they included some of the 55 “deck of cards” top officials of the former regime of Saddam Hussein.
“Since June 2003 over a hundred ‘high value detainees’ have been held for nearly 23 hours a day in strict solitary confinement in small concrete cells devoid of daylight,” said the report.
“ICRC delegates directly witnessed and documented a variety of methods used to secure the cooperation of the persons deprived of their liberty with their interrogators,” said the confidential report.
The delegates saw how detainees were kept “completely naked in totally empty concrete cells and in total darkness”, the report said.
“Upon witnessing such cases, the ICRC interrupted its visits and requested an explanation from the authorities. The military intelligence officer in charge of the interrogation explained that this practice was ‘part of the process’.”
This apparently meant that detainees were progressively given clothing, bedding, lighting and other items in exchange for cooperation, it said.
It said it found evidence supporting prisoners’ allegations of other forms of abuse during arrest, initial detention and interrogation.
Among the evidence were burns, bruises and other injuries consistent with the abuse prisoners alleged, it said.
The 24-page document, confirmed by the ICRC as authentic after it was published by the Wall Street Journal, said the abuses were primarily during the interrogation stage by military intelligence.
Once the detainees were moved to regular prison facilities the abuses typically stopped, it said.
The report cites abuses – some “tantamount to torture” – including brutality, hooding, humiliation and threats of “imminent execution”.
“These methods of physical and psychological coercion were used by the military intelligence in a systematic way to gain confessions and extract information and other forms of cooperation from persons who had been arrested in connection with suspected security offences or deemed to have an ‘intelligence value'."
The agency said arrests allegedly tended to follow a pattern.
“Arresting authorities entered houses usually after dark, breaking down doors, waking up residents roughly, yelling orders, forcing family members into one room under military guard while searching the rest of the house and further breaking doors, cabinets and other property,” the report said.
“Sometimes they arrested all adult males present in a house, including elderly, handicapped or sick people. Treatment often included pushing people around, insulting, taking aim with rifles, punching and kicking and striking with rifles.”
It said some coalition military intelligence officers estimated “between 70% and 90% of the persons deprived of their liberty in Iraq had been arrested by mistake. They also attributed the brutality of some arrests to the lack of proper supervision of battle group units”.
Pierre Kraehenbuehl, ICRC director of operations, said last Friday that the report had been given to US officials last February, but that it only summarised what the agency had been telling US officials in detail between March and November 2003 “either in direct face-to-face conversations or in written interventions”.
Mr Kraehenbuehl said the abuse of prisoners represented more than isolated acts, and that the problems were not limited to the Abu Ghraib prison.
“We were dealing here with a broad pattern, not individual acts. There was a pattern and a system,” he said, declining to give further details.
The report described how male prisoners were forced to parade around in women’s underwear.
It said that information obtained “suggested the use of ill-treatment against persons deprived of their liberty went beyond exceptional cases and might be considered a practice tolerated by” coalition forces.
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