-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1
Brutal Atrocities by Brits to Captured Iraqis Alleged
Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit
[Two Guardian pieces follow the Prensa Latiina newsbrief.-NYTr]
Prensa Latina, Havana
http://www.plenglish.com
Brits Pressured for Iraq Mutilations
London, Oct 18 (Prensa Latina) Britain's Ministry of Defense is being
pressured to open an independent inquiry into the brutal abuse of
Iraqis by British soldiers after a fierce gun battle with insurgents
three years ago, re****ted The Guardian on Thursday.
According to witness statements, death certificates and a video taken
by relatives of dead Iraqis, the bodies show evidence of gouged-out
eyes, serious injuries to genitals, asphyxiation and hanging.
The statements were taken last month from hospital workers who say they
saw the bodies of Iraqis handed over by the soldiers for burial.
Earlier this week, lawyers acting for the Iraqis were granted legal aid
to help them pursue the case in the British courts, hoping to force the
military into an independent inquiry.
ef ajs **** mf PL-21
***
The Guardian - Oct 19, 2007
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2194553,00.html
A catalogue of abuse
Political leaders as much as military bosses need to face up
to our brutal detention policy in Iraq
by Phil ****ner
What will it take for our government to face the awful facts of British
detention policy in Iraq? Evidence now publicly available proves that
UK forces had a systematic policy that led to the execution of scores
of Iraqis in detention, and the torture of countless more. But most
people remain blissfully unaware of the truth, while the government
chooses to ignore it. It seems that it is too painful for the nation to
recognise that what we did in Iraq is no more than what we have always
done in times of conflict, and that an arrogant, brutal racism that
harks back to colonial times requires urgent exorcism.
The starting point in understanding what we have to confront is the
repeated accusation from the most senior military figures that Britain
failed to plan for the occupation. It was assumed that the United
Nations would be responsible because the security council would
authorise military invasion and occupation in early 2003. When it
refused, the US and UK invaded illegally and found themselves with no
plan for occupation. Britain made up policy on the hoof - with deadly
consequences. To make matters worse, our detention policy reflected our
partner****p with the US, who ran detention facilities with us. When
Lieutenant Colonel Nicholas Mercer, the army's senior legal adviser at
the start of the occupation, complained to senior civil servants and
others about hooding, stressing and the use of noise (all authorised
techniques amounting to torture), he failed to get the policy changed
partly because the US considered our interrogation techniques too soft.
Our current detention policy includes the reintroduction of the five
techniques banned by the Heath government in 1972: hooding, stressing,
sleep and food deprivation, and noise. These techniques are a direct
breach of the Geneva conventions and the UN convention against torture.
Nobody in the chain of command, including at the highest level
politically and within the civil service, attempted to bring our policy
into line with basic legal standards even when they were told what was
happening, by the Red Cross among others. And there were no command
structures in place to inhibit the average soldier, who was expected to
operate all the functions of central and local government in
temperatures of up to 60C, without any training whatsoever in prisoner
treatment.
It is no wonder that senior military figures seek to place the blame
for the horrors of our detention policy on those in political command.
While individual criminal culpability for these atrocities cannot be
escaped, it is easy to see why the military felt so let down.
The public are not meant to know too much, as evidenced by the
desperate, but ultimately unsuccessful, attempt to block my team's
access to the do***entation from the court martial into the case of
Baha Mousa, who died with 93 separate injuries while in British custody
in September 2003. However, what is already in the public domain should
be more than enough to cause outrage. We now have to confront the Amara
incident in May 2004, as re****ted in yesterday's Guardian. It appears
that 22 Iraqis were taken into detention alive, only to be returned in
body bags 20 hours later.
But worse still, the evidence suggests a catalogue of abuse: first,
that soldiers had earlier executed Iraqis in front of a number of
witnesses; second, some of them were executed by shooting at close
range or strangulation; third, many of the bodies show clear evidence
of torture; fourth, bodies had been mutilated with eyes gouged out, and
multiple stab wounds and body parts severed (including a *****); and
fifth, trained Iraqi medical operatives attest that many of the wounds
were fresh and that deaths had occurred just before the bodies were
returned. A survivor's statement gives shocking evidence of hearing the
screams of Iraqis being tortured, and hearing one of my client's
relatives executed by shooting.
The government's response is pathetic. It asserts that a military
investigation (held, of course, in secret) concluded in May 2005 that
there was no evidence of criminal wrongdoing and that all the deceased
died of injuries sustained before detention. This is consistent with
the decision of the present foreign and defence secretaries to shut
their eyes to this evidence of systematic abuse and worse. My offers to
show the foreign secretary this new evidence were ignored. The defence
secretary ignores correspondence from various Christian churches and
their leaders to open these matters up to public scrutiny.
Both prefer to rely on the advice of civil servants, despite it being
obvious that it is the senior civil service that has most to lose. What
makes this response so utterly depressing is that they have deluded
themselves into believing that their response is justified. Ultimately,
whether those responsible, including those who inhabit the shadowy
corridors of power, are held accountable seems to depend on the
response of the public to this evidence.
[Phil ****ner is a solicitor at Public Interest Lawyers which acts for
all the victims mentioned above.]
***
The Guardian - Oct 18, 2007
http://www.guardian.co.uk/frontpage/story/0,,2193554,00.html
Lawyers take MoD to court over Iraqi mutilation claims
Calls for independent inquiry into allegations of abuse
in aftermath of ferocious gun battle
by Richard Norton-Taylor
The Ministry of Defence will come under fresh pressure tomorrow to
launch an independent inquiry into allegations of abuse of Iraqis by
British soldiers after a fierce gun battle with insurgents three years
ago.
Papers to be handed to the high court include witness statements, death
certificates and a video taken by relatives of dead Iraqis showing
bodies being taken to a hospital in Amara and bodybags being opened.
The statements were taken last month in Damascus from hospital workers
who say they saw the bodies of Iraqis handed over by the soldiers for
burial. They claim the bodies show evidence of gouged-out eyes, serious
injuries to genitals, asphyxiation and hanging.
A detainee released by the soldiers says in a statement he was
"continuously punched and kicked" and that he saw blood in the water
under his feet coming from nearby toilets. The statement, from Hussein
Abbas, was taken by telephone this week from Amara.
The five-minute video shows pictures of bodies being taken to hospital,
some in Red Crescent ambulances, and close-ups of some bodies after
bodybags had been unzipped. It is understood there has been no
independent *****sment of the injuries since they were caught on camera.
Earlier this week, lawyers acting for the Iraqis were granted legal aid
to help them pursue the case in the British courts where they are
hoping to force the military into an independent inquiry.
The MoD has consistently denied any wrongdoing by soldiers.
A number of Iraqis were killed, and others seized by British troops,
after one of the fiercest firefights involving British troops on the
road from Amara to Basra, near Majar al-Kabir, on May 14 2004.
The MoD said at the time that 14 Iraqis were known to have been killed
but that there could have been more.
Witnesses said that between nine and 15 others were rounded up and
taken to a British base near Amara, 13 miles to the north. The
following day at least nine were transferred to the Shaibah detention
centre near Basra.
Allegations of ill-treatment of the Iraqis first surfaced in the media
shortly after the incident, which began when British troops were
ambushed by insurgents armed with machine guns and rocket-propelled
grenades.
The Guardian saw death certificates written by Dr Adel Salid Majid,
director of the hospital in Majar al-Kabir, the day after the battle.
Seven of the certificates stated that corpses handed to hospital
authorities by British troops showed signs of "mutilation" and
"torture".
Dr Majid's conclusions were questioned by a senior doctor at the Amara
general hospital, 15 miles to the north. Speaking anonymously to the
Guardian, he disputed Dr Majid's claims after examining one of the
seven corpses in question.
After the media re****ts, the Royal Military Police (RMP) special
investigation branch conducted a year-long internal inquiry into the
allegations. The Ministry of Defence said yesterday: "The RMP carried
out a thorough investigation and found no evidence of deliberate
mutilation of corpses by the British army."
Emphasising the word "deliberate", defence officials said damage to the
skull of at least one body occurred when it was being loaded on to a
Warrior armoured vehicle. They also pointed out that the kind of
multiple weapons systems used in the gun battle could cause very nasty
injuries.
The MoD said last night that the military police saw the video as part
of their investigation into the allegations.
The RMP's full re****t, however, has not been published. Government
lawyers acting for the MoD have told Phil ****ner, of Public Interest
Lawyers, the firm acting for the Iraqis, that he could see a summary of
it "with redactions as appropriate and as necessary to protect
operational information" but only for the purpose of any legal
proceedings.
Mr ****ner is acting for relatives of a number of Iraqis who died as
well as the detainee, Mr Abbas. He was granted legal aid this week to
pursue the case which will be presented by two leading human rights
QCs, Rabinder Singh and Michael Fordham. They want the high court to
order an inquiry into the allegations as required, they say, by the
Human Rights Act.
Mr ****ner said the case raised "the most serious allegations" which
demanded independent scrutiny.
Shami Chakrabarti, director of the civil rights group Liberty, said:
"It's been four months since [in a separate incident] we saw photos of
Baha Mousa's dead body tortured with 93 injuries while in British
custody. In the face of this new evidence, the government still resists
calls for an independent inquiry into the post-conflict treatment of
civilians in Iraq."
She added: "Some will call us unpatriotic for seeking transparency of
this kind but surely the contrary is true? We owe this inquiry as much
to the dozens of British soldiers who gave their lives in good faith as
to the grieving families."
Human rights lawyers say the courts have maintained that it is the duty
of the state to set up a full independent inquiry in cases where a
suspicion of deliberate wrongdoing exists.
In a witness statement taken by Public Interest Lawyers in Damascus
last month, Assad Mozan, a hospital worker, says he was one of those
who went to collect the bodies.
One of the dead was Ali al-Mouzani. "I was amazed as I had seen him
yesterday with the British troops and he was not injured at all," he
says. He adds that Mouzani had been "severely beaten in the genital
area and his reproductive organs were swollen because of the severe
bruising". He also refers to corpses with missing eyes.
In another witness statement also taken last month in Damascus, Khuder
al-Sweady, who describes himself as a laboratory doctor, claims the
genitals of one dead man, Haidar al-Lami, had been mutilated.
He also says he saw the body of his nephew, Hamid, whose cause of
death, he says, was "asphyxiation".
"It was clear he had been hanged," he said. "His neck was broken, and
there was also blood in his ears, which are also consistent with this
diagnosis."
The high court will decide whether the MoD has a case to answer.
*
=================================================================
NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems
Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us
Our main website: http://www.blythe.org
List Archives: http://blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/
Subscribe: http://blythe-systems.com/mailman/listinfo/nytr
=================================================================
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.7 (FreeBSD)
iD8DBQFHGCMciz2i76ou9wQRAhh5AKCkY8p6xRNqu08ZsTk2xqh7IvWrqwCaAvWj
/AINNiU+ypH98kkzdu6NHkQ=
=FUbP
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
|
