Iraq prison abuse scandals
Encyclopedia
About six months after the invasion of Iraq rumors of Iraq prison abuse scandals started to emerge.
The best known abuse incidents occurred at the large Abu Ghraib prison
. Graphic pictures of some of those abuse incidents were made public. Less well-known abuse incidents have been documented at American prisons throughout Iraq
. Coverup operation was extensive, consisting in partly admitting the undeniable, shifting the blame (standard method of diffusion), and minimizing the damage arisen from this unfortunate exposition of daily torture practices of USA soldiery.
-like" methods during the interrogation of suspects. Such methods were reportedly applied to people to find the hiding place of Saddam Hussein
in Operation Red Dawn
. British troops have also on occasion been accused of abusing Iraqi detainees. Such treatment violates article 17 of the Third Geneva Convention
and the USA
and Britain's official policies on combat
and occupation
. Despite numerous complaints by Amnesty International
and Human Rights Watch
, it took a year before the first US soldier was court-martial
ed for their actions concerning abuse of Iraqis.
reservists were investigated for abuse and the death of a prisoner, outside Nasiriyah
.
A photograph leaked after the initial set shows Spc. Sabrina Harman smiling and giving a thumbs up next to the body of Manadel al-Jamadi
. Jamadi was reportedly beaten to death during interrogations in the prison's showers.
Death certificates repeatedly stated that prisoners had died "while sleeping", and of "natural reasons". Iraqi doctors are not allowed to investigate the deaths of prisoners, even if death certificates are allegedly forged. No investigations against US military doctors who are alleged to have forged death certificates have been reported.
Honorably discharged US veteran, Sergeant Frank "Greg" Ford reports that he witnessed war crimes in Samarra, Iraq.
Ather Karen al-Mowafakia died in Basra
, while in British custody. Details about the investigation are not known.
Gary Bartlam, a British soldier of the Desert Rats
, was arrested after submitting film to a photo developers shop in Tamworth, England while on leave. The photographs depict a gagged Iraqi POW suspended hanging by rope from a fork lift, and other pictures seem to show prisoners being forced to perform sexual acts. Bartlam and two other soldiers were convicted at court martial of abuse - a fourth soldier was cleared.
British Lieutenant Colonel Tim Collins
was alleged by US Army Major Re Biastre to have been responsible for mistreatment of Iraqi civilians and prisoners of war. Lieutenant Colonel Collins was later cleared of any wrongdoing by an MOD investigation.
while in British custody, yet his family reports that he had no heart trouble; and the Black Watch regiment arrested the 17-year-old Ahmad Jabber Kareem Ali in Basra, who then drowned after being ordered to swim across a river despite not being able to swim, according to his friend Ayad Salim Hanoon.
Army Reservists
abused Prisoners at Camp Bucca
, and were later court-martial
ed.
Brigadier General
Ennis Whitehead III reported that Master Sergeant
Lisa Marie Girman, a state trooper, "repeatedly kick[ed a prisoner] in the groin
, abdomen
and head, and encouraging her subordinate soldier
s to do the same,"
Lieutenant Colonel
Vic Harris reported that Staff Sergeant
Scott A. McKenzie who worked at a Pennsylvania Department of Corrections
boot-camp-style prison
, and Specialist
Timothy F. Canjar: held prisoners' legs, encouraged others to then kick them in the groin, stepped on their previously injured arms, and made false sworn statements to the Army Criminal Investigation Division.
They received "general under honorable conditions" discharges
, were ordered to forfeit two months' salary, and returned to the United States.
Sergeant
Shawna Edmondson, also involved in the case, received an "other-than-honorable" discharge, after she requested it instead of being court-martialed.
Hossam Shaltout said the abuse at Camp Bucca was similar to that at Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse, and that his torture included scorpion
s placed on his body.
Said Shabram died in custody, but no information of the investigation were made public.
The abuses at Abu Ghraib prison were reportedly committed by MPs. There are allegations that private contractors contributed to them as well and that intelligence agencies such as the CIA ordered them to do so in order to break prisoners for interrogations. It is said to be a usual practice in other US prisons as well, such as in Afghanistan
and Guantanamo Bay
.
The International Committee of the Red Cross
submitted a detailed report to the U.S. Army
in October 2003 about abuses in prisons, and the president of the Red Cross stated he had informed high-ranking members of the Bush
administration about the abuses during a meeting in the White House
in January 2004. A soldier came forward that month with photos of abuse that he found disturbing, some showed the stacking of prisoners into a human pyramid, with one prisoner's skin visibly bearing a slur written in English. Another showed a prisoner being forced to stand on a box with wires attached to his head and hands, who had reportedly been told that if he fell off the box, he would be electrocuted. Photos released to the public later included a person being attacked by a guard dog, which the soldier involved described as being useful for intimidation of prisoners. It was also reported that an Iraqi hired as a translator raped a juvenile male prisoner while a female soldier took pictures. No charges have been brought against the contractor because he does not fall under military jurisdiction; it is questionable whether any charges will or even can be brought against him.
Donald Rumsfeld
had said that army and government had only been informed in January and not in detail. On January 16, 2004, a press release was issued by the United States Central Command
(CENTCOM) stating that an investigation had been initiated in response to allegations of detainee abuse at an unspecified detention facility (now known to be Abu Ghraib prison).
In March 2004, 6 soldiers in Abu Ghraib were charged with dereliction of duty, cruelty and maltreatment, and sexual abuse. 17 others were suspended from duty, including the seven U.S. officers who ran the prison. Also recommended for discipline was Brig. Gen
Janis Karpinski
, the commander of the 800th brigade. The Red Cross, which had access to these prisons, has stated that the instances of torture were not aberrations but were systemic. Some officers have attempted to defend themselves by saying that they were only doing their duty.
In response to ongoing complaints, the US military initiated a program to reform the internment and treatment systems. The reforms are expected to increase safeguards for prisoners' rights, to ensure each prisoner receives a copy of their internment order, and has their charges explained to them within 72 hours. They additionally plan to publicly post information about detainees so that family members can know what happened to their loved ones. Reforms were made in March 2004.
Theft of prisoner's possessions by soldiers, dirty, cramped quarters and bad food, prisoners forced into uncomfortable positions for prolonged periods of time, extreme exposure to the elements, and excessive jailings of people based on the paid testimony of individual informants were reported. 55-year-old cafe owner Mahmoud Khodair, who was arrested and held for six months before being released in early march without ever knowing what he was charged with, stated, "It was just like hell", and "Nothing has changed since Saddam. Before, the Mukhabarat [secret police] would take us away, and at least they wouldn't blow down the door. Now, some informant fingers you and gets $100 even if you're innocent."
During April 2004 the media started to report on the abuse. The journalist Seymour Hersh
(who was awarded the Pulitzer Prize
for his disclosure of the Vietnam War
tragedy at the hamlet of My Lai) published a series of articles in The New Yorker
with photo coverage of U.S. soldiers abusing prisoners in the Abu Ghraib prison
on 2004-04-30.
In an interview with Dan Rather, the deputy director of operations for the US-led coalition, Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt
, stated "We're appalled. These are our fellow soldiers. These are the people we work with every day. They represent us. They wear the same uniform as us, and they let their fellow soldiers down. If we can't hold ourselves up as an example of how to treat people with dignity and respect, we can't ask that other nations do that to our soldiers."
On May 1, 2004, photos of prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq being abused and humiliated by United States soldiers provoke an international outrage.
Furthering the charges, excerpts from the Abu Ghraib
Taguba report
were published on May 3, 2004. The report documented: the sodomizing of a prisoner with a chemical light, pouring phosphoric liquid on detainees, rape of a female prisoner, forced masturbation, "ghost detainees" moved around to avoid the Red Cross, and many other abuses.
The release of the photographs and reports had led to renewed calls for investigations into the abuses reported in other US military prisons, such as Camp X-Ray
and Camp Delta
.
On May 14, 2004, reporters for the Guardian documented a coercive technique which soldiers called "bitch in a box". The prisoner was shoved into the trunk of a car on a hot day, and driven around until the prisoner was near ready to pass out. Another technique documented was "waterboarding", which involves holding a prisoner underwater until the prisoner believed he was about to drown. They also interviewed many soldiers not involved in the current scandal, who claimed that they were taught to use sleep deprivation
, to stage mock executions, and to use other procedures. One platoon leader who objected to these practices was reportedly told that his stand could end his military career.
USA Defence Secretary
Donald Rumsfeld
told an armed services committee of the Senate
on 2004-05-07 that "There are a lot more photographs and videos that exist [...] I looked at them last night and they're hard to believe [...] The pictures I've seen depict conduct, behaviour that is so brutal and so cruel and so inhumane that anyone engaged in it or involved in it would have to be brought to justice." He also said that the abused detainees may be offered compensation.
In a scene described as "surreal" by AFP, it was found in mid May, 2004 that US troops were handing out cash to freed prisoners along with a note stating "You have not been mistreated.". A reporter visiting the prison Camp War Horse described the tour:
in Majar al Kabir; they were released and paid compensation for their injuries.
Sadiq Zoman, 57, is delivered in a vegetative state, to a hospital in Tikrit. His body bearing telltale signs of torture: burn marks on his skin, bludgeon marks on the back of his head, a badly broken thumb, electrical burns on the soles of his feet. Additionally, family members say they found whipmarks across his back and more electrical burns on his genitalia. He had entered US custody healthy barely 1 month earlier.
Hassan Abbad Said died in custody, but no information of the investigation were made public.
now the 1st Battalion, Duke of Lancaster's Regiment (King's, Lancashire and Border), became Britain's first convicted war criminal after pleading guilty to abusing Iraqi detainees, which resulted in the death of one detainee Baha Mousa
.
cameraman, Salah Hassan, reported various abuses in the infamous Abu Ghraib prison complex, such as being forced to strip naked, standing up for 11 hours and being kicked when he collapsed, being forced to wear a vomit-covered jumpsuit, and many other abuses. He later also witnessed a 12- or 13-year-old girl who was stripped naked and beaten. Her brother was held in another cell and heard her screams.
were charged on 2004 June 7 with manslaughter, assault, conspiracy, making false statements, and obstruction of justice. Sgt. Reggie Martinez was charged three weeks later with manslaughter and for making false statements, and Spec. Terry Bowman with assault and making false statements. Martinez' and Bowman's charges were dropped; Perkins got six months in jail. Saville was jailed (45 days) and fined $12,000 for assault but he remained on active duty until his military obligation was fulfilled.
within 48 hours of the breaking of the story of abuses by US troops in the Abu Ghraib prison
in Iraq.
General Sir Mike Jackson
, Chief of the General Staff
, said "if proven, the perpetrators are not fit to wear the Queen's uniform and they have besmirched the Army's good name and conduct".
The authenticity of the photographs was called into question a day later. In particular, a number of specifics in the images, such as the type of rifles the soldiers in the pictures are carrying and the type of truck pictured did not match the equipment used by UK troops in Iraq. The Mirror responded to these criticisms of the photographs on May 3, 2004.
On May 14, 2004, the Daily Mirror reported that the pictures it had published, allegedly showing UK troops abusing an Iraqi prisoner, were fake and that "the Daily Mirror has been the subject of a calculated and malicious hoax." The Daily Mirror editor, Piers Morgan
, was sacked due to the controversy.
City Councilor Chuck Turner and local civil rights activist Sadiki Kambon during which they distributed photographs they alleged showed American soldiers raping Iraqi woman. In its early editions on May 12, photographs from the event clearly showed some of the pictures presented, the Globe later apologized for the error. Other news agencies quickly responded to the story by linking the photographs to American and Hungarian pornography sites. One week prior to the press conference, WorldNetDaily
had published a story detailing the origin of these pictures and how they were being used as propaganda.
claimed that British soldiers had killed innocent civilians who were no threat, had kicked a prisoner to death and that the British military did not investigate the abuses appropriately.
. An autopsy concluded death was caused by a sudden hit to the back of his head and that the cause of death was blunt trauma.
confirms a report in the New York Times that CIA chief George Tenet
was allowed by U.S.
Secretary of Defense
Donald Rumsfeld
to have an Iraq
i prisoner secretly detained at Camp Cropper
in November, preventing the International Committee of the Red Cross from monitoring their treatment, a possible violation of the Geneva Conventions
.
June 29: Oregon national guardsmen intervene in the beating of bound prisoners on the grounds of the Iraqi Interior Ministry; are told to back off and let the newly "sovereign" Iraqis run their own affairs.
Several torture cases were also reported, notably torture by electricity, beatings, and sprayings of prisoners with fire extinguishers.
On 21 December, the ACLU released further documents documenting tortures. Notably, in a case of shooting of suspects without warning, Army commanders are reported to have interfered with the investigation. Procedures of autopsy of detainees who died in unclear circumstances have been canceled by battalion and group commands. Other cases include
Human Rights Watch accused Iraqi security forces of using torture and improper treatments on prisoners. Arbitrary arrests and long periods of isolation are now common. Human Right Watch interviewed 90 prisoners, among which 72 said they had been tortured during interrogation. Sarah Leah Whitson
, HRW director, said that the Iraqi provisional government was not holding to its promise to stand by Human Rights:
"A new Iraqi government requires more than a change of leadership - it requires a change of attitude about basic human dignity" .
Among bad treatments were such elements as beatings with cables, electric shocks, including on genitals, being tied and blindfolded for days, cells so crowded that it is only possible to stand, arbitrary detention, refusal of trials, access to lawyers or contacts with families. These treatments were inflicted to insurgents and criminals alike.
of the 82nd Airborne who made persistent efforts over 17 months to raise concerns about detainee abuse with his chain of command was consistently told to ignore abuses and to “consider your career.” When he made an appointment with Senate staff members of Senators John McCain
and John Warner
, he says his commanding officer denied him a pass to leave his base.
were found starved, beaten
and torture
d.
-Colin Powell's former Chief of Staff, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson
, stated in an interview with Amy Goodman
on November 22 that:
The Haditha killings
occurred on November 19 in the town of Haditha, Iraq. A convoy of United States Marines was attacked with an improvised explosive device
which killed Lance Corporal Miguel Terrazas. Up to twenty-four Iraqis were subsequently killed; it is alleged that they were non-combatant local residents who were massacred by Marines in the aftermath of the insurgent attack.
that there were an estimated 14,000 people being held in prison in Iraq contrary to UN Resolution 1546, according to which the US government claims legal permission to occupy Iraq. In a December 5, 2005, interview, Pace said,
Video of the killing of four Russian diplomats kidnapped in Iraq appear on the Internet. A group called the Mujahideen Shura Council released the hostage video.
The American Civil Liberties Union
(ACLU) said, "[T]he government had long argued that the abuse at Abu Ghraib was isolated and was an aberration. The new photos would show that the abuse was more widespread." President Barack Obama
initially indicated he would not fight the release of the photographs, but "reversed course in May and authorized an appeal to the high court." "The Obama administration believe[d] giving the imminent grant of authority over the release of such pictures to the defense secretary
would short-circuit a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union
under the Freedom of Information Act." On Oct 10, 2009 the US "Congress [was] set to allow the Pentagon
to keep new pictures ... from the public"
activities investigated in 1977 by Senators Kennedy and Inuoye. The allegation supports information contained in a International Red Cross report relative to the expanded role of CIA medical personnel in torture and interrogation.
In 2010, the last of the prisons were turned over to the Iraqi government to run. An Associated Press
article said
In September 2010 Amnesty International
warned in a report titled New Order, Same Abuses; Unlawful Detentions and Torture in Iraq that up to 30,000 prisoners, including many veterans of the US detention system, remain detained without rights in Iraq and are frequently tortured or abused. Furthermore, it describes a detention system that has not evolved since Saddam Hussein
's regime, in which human rights
abuses were endemic with arbitrary arrests and secret detention common and a lack of accountability throughout the security forces. Amnesty's Middle East and North Africa director, Malcolm Smart went on to say that "Iraq's security forces have been responsible for systematically violating detainees' rights and they have been permitted. US authorities, whose own record on detainees' rights has been so poor, have now handed over thousands of people detained by US forces to face this catalogue of illegality, violence and abuse, abdicating any responsibility for their human rights."
On October 22, 2010 nearly 400,000 secret US army field reports and war logs, detailing torture, summary executions and war crimes, were passed on to the British paper, the Guardian
and several other international
media organisations through the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks
. Among others, the logs detail how US authorities failed to investigate hundreds of reports of abuse, torture
, rape
and even murder
by Iraqi
police and soldiers, whose conduct appears to be systematic and normally unpunished and that US troops abused prisoners for years even after the Abu Ghraib scandal. Both the UK and the US have condemned the unauthorised release of classified material.
Seymour Hersh
, who exposed the Abu Ghraib scandal, and reports in Newsweek, has taken the case even further. In 2003, Donald Rumsfeld
instituted a policy that "encouraged physical coercion and sexual humiliation of Iraqi prisoners in an effort to generate more intelligence about the growing insurgency in Iraq.". This policy stemmed from an earlier policy taken toward al-Qaeda prisoners. A memo to the Bush White House from counsel Alberto Gonzales
claimed that the new sort of war renders the Geneva Conventions' limitations on interrogating enemy prisoners "obsolete". The program was approved by the CIA, NSA, and the National Security Council
. President George W. Bush
was informed of it. The undersecretary of Defense for intelligence Steven Cambone administered the operation. His deputy, William Boykin, instructed the head of operations at Camp X-ray
Maj. Gen.
Geoffrey Miller to do the same at Abu Ghraib
. Miller told Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski
that the prison would now be dedicated to gathering intelligence. Douglas Feith
and William Haynes
were also involved in the operation.
On May 18, 2004, a military intelligence analyst named Samuel Provance
came out to the press, stating "There's definitely a cover-up". Provance, who ran a computer network used by military intelligence in the prison and who had been ordered not to speak to the press, told ABC News "Anything [the MPs] were to do legally or otherwise, they were to take those commands from the interrogators," and that the sexual humiliation began as a technique ordered by the investigators. He described several of the goings-on in the prison that he witnessed, such as the punching people in the neck hard enough to knock them unconscious after assuring them they weren't going to be hit, in order to catch them off guard. He also stated that Maj. Gen. George Fay
, the Army's deputy chief of staff for intelligence, has shown little interest in investigating the interrogators and has gone only after the MPs, and that there is a culture of silence right now among those involved, who fear that if they say anything, the investigations will turn to them.
On May 19, 2004, a court martial hearing was held for Cpl. Charles A. Graner Jr.
, who has been accused of being the ringleader of the group employing torture at Abu Ghraib. In an unexpected move, all three key witnesses - Lt. Col. Steven L. Jordan
, Capt. Donald J. Reese, and contractor Adel L. Nakhla - refused to testify. This is an almost unheard of action. Under court martial proceedings, one cannot refuse to testify unless they have a belief that they will be exposed to criminal charges for doing so. Consequently, it is likely that the investigative proceedings will be forced to move higher up the chain of command.
The best known abuse incidents occurred at the large Abu Ghraib prison
Abu Ghraib prison
The Baghdad Central Prison, formerly known as Abu Ghraib prison is in Abu Ghraib, an Iraqi city 32 km west of Baghdad. It was built by British contractors in the 1950s....
. Graphic pictures of some of those abuse incidents were made public. Less well-known abuse incidents have been documented at American prisons throughout Iraq
Iraq
Iraq ; officially the Republic of Iraq is a country in Western Asia spanning most of the northwestern end of the Zagros mountain range, the eastern part of the Syrian Desert and the northern part of the Arabian Desert....
. Coverup operation was extensive, consisting in partly admitting the undeniable, shifting the blame (standard method of diffusion), and minimizing the damage arisen from this unfortunate exposition of daily torture practices of USA soldiery.
Iraqi prisons where abuse incidents have been documented
| Abu Ghraib prison Abu Ghraib prison The Baghdad Central Prison, formerly known as Abu Ghraib prison is in Abu Ghraib, an Iraqi city 32 km west of Baghdad. It was built by British contractors in the 1950s.... |
|
| Camp Bucca Camp Bucca Camp Bucca was a detention facility maintained by the United States military in the vicinity of Umm Qasr, Iraq. As of June 2011, a group of entrepreneurial Iraqis and Americans are re-building Camp Bucca as Basra Gateway, a logistics city and environmentally-friendly industrial hub to lead the new... |
|
| Camp Cropper Camp Cropper Camp Cropper is a holding facility for security detainees operated by the United States Army near Baghdad International Airport in Iraq. The facility was initially operated as a high-value detention site , but has since been expanded increasing its capacity from 163 to 2,000 detainees... |
|
| Camp Whitehorse Camp Whitehorse Camp Whitehorse was a small prison, run by United States Marines, near Tallil Airbase, in Iraq, outside of Nasiriyah.Abuse incidents that have occurred at Camp Whitehorse include:-References:# , Global Security# , CBS News, September 2, 2004... |
Homicide Homicide refers to the act of a human killing another human. Murder, for example, is a type of homicide. It can also describe a person who has committed such an act, though this use is rare in modern English... Stress positions A stress position, also known as a submission position, places the human body in such a way that a great amount of weight is placed on just one or two muscles. For example, a subject may be forced to stand on the balls of his feet, then squat so that his thighs are parallel to the ground... |
| Qaim |
Abed Hamed Mowhoush Abed Hamed Mowhoush was a major general / air vice-marshal believed to be in command of the Iraqi Air Force or Iraqi air defence during the regime of Saddam Hussein immediately prior to the 2003 Invasion of Iraq, until his surrender to United States forces on 10 November 2003. He died on 26... |
| Samarra Samarra Sāmarrā is a city in Iraq. It stands on the east bank of the Tigris in the Salah ad-Din Governorate, north of Baghdad and, in 2003, had an estimated population of 348,700.... |
|
Official investigations into abuse incidents
| common name | mandate |
| Ryder Report Ryder Report (Detention and Corrections in Iraq) Ryder Report refers to the official report produced by an inquiry by U.S Provost Marshal General Donald Ryder into reports of abuse by American troops in Iraq.Ryder's report was completed on November 5, 2003.... |
|
| Taguba Report Taguba Report The Taguba Report is the common name of an official Army Regulation 15-6 military inquiry conducted in 2004 into the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse.-Initiation:... |
|
| Fay Report Fay Report A report commonly known as The Fay Report was appointed to look into the scandal at Abu Ghraib.General Paul Kern was the appointing authority for the report.... |
|
| Church Report Church Report The Church Report is the colloquial name for a report into allegations of the abuse of extrajudicial detainees at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, Cuba, Admiral Albert T. Church III.... |
Timeline of events
According to the Washington Post, the coalition forces regularly use "tortureTorture
Torture is the act of inflicting severe pain as a means of punishment, revenge, forcing information or a confession, or simply as an act of cruelty. Throughout history, torture has often been used as a method of political re-education, interrogation, punishment, and coercion...
-like" methods during the interrogation of suspects. Such methods were reportedly applied to people to find the hiding place of Saddam Hussein
Saddam Hussein
Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti was the fifth President of Iraq, serving in this capacity from 16 July 1979 until 9 April 2003...
in Operation Red Dawn
Operation Red Dawn
Operation Red Dawn was the U.S. military operation conducted on 13 December 2003 in the town of ad-Dawr, Iraq, near Tikrit, that captured Iraq President Saddam Hussein, ending rumours of his death. The operation was named after the 1984 film Red Dawn. The mission was assigned to the 1st Brigade...
. British troops have also on occasion been accused of abusing Iraqi detainees. Such treatment violates article 17 of the Third Geneva Convention
Third Geneva Convention
The Third Geneva Convention, relative to the treatment of prisoners of war, is one of the four treaties of the Geneva Conventions. It was first adopted in 1929, but was significantly updated in 1949...
and the USA
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
and Britain's official policies on combat
Combat
Combat, or fighting, is a purposeful violent conflict meant to establish dominance over the opposition, or to terminate the opposition forever, or drive the opposition away from a location where it is not wanted or needed....
and occupation
Military occupation
Military occupation occurs when the control and authority over a territory passes to a hostile army. The territory then becomes occupied territory.-Military occupation and the laws of war:...
. Despite numerous complaints by Amnesty International
Amnesty International
Amnesty International is an international non-governmental organisation whose stated mission is "to conduct research and generate action to prevent and end grave abuses of human rights, and to demand justice for those whose rights have been violated."Following a publication of Peter Benenson's...
and Human Rights Watch
Human Rights Watch
Human Rights Watch is an international non-governmental organization that conducts research and advocacy on human rights. Its headquarters are in New York City and it has offices in Berlin, Beirut, Brussels, Chicago, Geneva, Johannesburg, London, Los Angeles, Moscow, Paris, San Francisco, Tokyo,...
, it took a year before the first US soldier was court-martial
Court-martial
A court-martial is a military court. A court-martial is empowered to determine the guilt of members of the armed forces subject to military law, and, if the defendant is found guilty, to decide upon punishment.Most militaries maintain a court-martial system to try cases in which a breach of...
ed for their actions concerning abuse of Iraqis.
Unknown date
Eight marineUnited States Marine Corps
The United States Marine Corps is a branch of the United States Armed Forces responsible for providing power projection from the sea, using the mobility of the United States Navy to deliver combined-arms task forces rapidly. It is one of seven uniformed services of the United States...
reservists were investigated for abuse and the death of a prisoner, outside Nasiriyah
Nasiriyah
Nasiriyah is a city in Iraq. It is on the Euphrates about 225 miles southeast of Baghdad, near the ruins of the ancient city of Ur. It is the capital of the province of Dhi Qar...
.
A photograph leaked after the initial set shows Spc. Sabrina Harman smiling and giving a thumbs up next to the body of Manadel al-Jamadi
Manadel al-Jamadi
Manadel al-Jamadi was an Iraqi prisoner who died in United States custody during interrogation at Abu Ghraib Prison on November 4, 2003. His name became known in 2004 when the Abu Ghraib scandal made news; his corpse packed in ice was the background for widely-reprinted photographs of grinning...
. Jamadi was reportedly beaten to death during interrogations in the prison's showers.
Death certificates repeatedly stated that prisoners had died "while sleeping", and of "natural reasons". Iraqi doctors are not allowed to investigate the deaths of prisoners, even if death certificates are allegedly forged. No investigations against US military doctors who are alleged to have forged death certificates have been reported.
Spring 2003
A US veteran sergeant reports witnessing torture of Journalists and writers all over Iraq. Kurdistan region was not an exception. Writers without Borders embarrassed the Iraqi government quite frequently in reports covering minority, women and marginalised Iraqis from all over the country but with much focus on Baghdad, Karkuk, Salahedin and Mosul.Honorably discharged US veteran, Sergeant Frank "Greg" Ford reports that he witnessed war crimes in Samarra, Iraq.
Ather Karen al-Mowafakia died in Basra
Basra
Basra is the capital of Basra Governorate, in southern Iraq near Kuwait and Iran. It had an estimated population of two million as of 2009...
, while in British custody. Details about the investigation are not known.
Gary Bartlam, a British soldier of the Desert Rats
British 7th Armoured Division
The 7th Armoured Division was a British armoured division which saw service during the Second World War where its exploits made it famous as the Desert Rats....
, was arrested after submitting film to a photo developers shop in Tamworth, England while on leave. The photographs depict a gagged Iraqi POW suspended hanging by rope from a fork lift, and other pictures seem to show prisoners being forced to perform sexual acts. Bartlam and two other soldiers were convicted at court martial of abuse - a fourth soldier was cleared.
British Lieutenant Colonel Tim Collins
Tim Collins (soldier)
Colonel Timothy Thomas Cyril Collins OBEMA BSSc PSC+ is a former officer in the British Army. He is best known for his role in the Iraq War in 2003, and his inspirational eve-of-battle speech, a copy of which apparently hung in the White House's Oval Office...
was alleged by US Army Major Re Biastre to have been responsible for mistreatment of Iraqi civilians and prisoners of war. Lieutenant Colonel Collins was later cleared of any wrongdoing by an MOD investigation.
May 2003
In separate incidents, the Royal Military Police declared that Radhi Natna died of a heart attackMyocardial infarction
Myocardial infarction or acute myocardial infarction , commonly known as a heart attack, results from the interruption of blood supply to a part of the heart, causing heart cells to die...
while in British custody, yet his family reports that he had no heart trouble; and the Black Watch regiment arrested the 17-year-old Ahmad Jabber Kareem Ali in Basra, who then drowned after being ordered to swim across a river despite not being able to swim, according to his friend Ayad Salim Hanoon.
Army Reservists
United States Army Reserve
The United States Army Reserve is the federal reserve force of the United States Army. Together, the Army Reserve and the Army National Guard constitute the reserve components of the United States Army....
abused Prisoners at Camp Bucca
Camp Bucca
Camp Bucca was a detention facility maintained by the United States military in the vicinity of Umm Qasr, Iraq. As of June 2011, a group of entrepreneurial Iraqis and Americans are re-building Camp Bucca as Basra Gateway, a logistics city and environmentally-friendly industrial hub to lead the new...
, and were later court-martial
Court-martial
A court-martial is a military court. A court-martial is empowered to determine the guilt of members of the armed forces subject to military law, and, if the defendant is found guilty, to decide upon punishment.Most militaries maintain a court-martial system to try cases in which a breach of...
ed.
Brigadier General
Brigadier general (United States)
A brigadier general in the United States Army, Air Force, and Marine Corps, is a one-star general officer, with the pay grade of O-7. Brigadier general ranks above a colonel and below major general. Brigadier general is equivalent to the rank of rear admiral in the other uniformed...
Ennis Whitehead III reported that Master Sergeant
Master Sergeant
A master sergeant is the military rank for a senior non-commissioned officer in some armed forces.-Israel Defense Forces:Rav samal rishoninsignia IDF...
Lisa Marie Girman, a state trooper, "repeatedly kick[ed a prisoner] in the groin
Groin
In human anatomy, the groin areas are the two creases at the junction of the torso with the legs, on either side of the pubic area. This is also known as the medial compartment of the thigh. A pulled groin muscle usually refers to a painful injury sustained by straining the hip adductor muscles...
, abdomen
Abdomen
In vertebrates such as mammals the abdomen constitutes the part of the body between the thorax and pelvis. The region enclosed by the abdomen is termed the abdominal cavity...
and head, and encouraging her subordinate soldier
Soldier
A soldier is a member of the land component of national armed forces; whereas a soldier hired for service in a foreign army would be termed a mercenary...
s to do the same,"
Lieutenant Colonel
Lieutenant Colonel (United States)
In the United States Army, United States Air Force, and United States Marine Corps, a lieutenant colonel is a field grade military officer rank just above the rank of major and just below the rank of colonel. It is equivalent to the naval rank of commander in the other uniformed services.The pay...
Vic Harris reported that Staff Sergeant
Staff Sergeant
Staff sergeant is a rank of non-commissioned officer used in several countries.The origin of the name is that they were part of the staff of a British army regiment and paid at that level rather than as a member of a battalion or company.-Australia:...
Scott A. McKenzie who worked at a Pennsylvania Department of Corrections
Pennsylvania Department of Corrections
The Pennsylvania Department of Corrections is the Pennsylvania state agency that is responsible for the confinement, care and rehabilitation of approximately 51,000 inmates at state correctional facilities funded by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania...
boot-camp-style prison
Prison
A prison is a place in which people are physically confined and, usually, deprived of a range of personal freedoms. Imprisonment or incarceration is a legal penalty that may be imposed by the state for the commission of a crime...
, and Specialist
Specialist (rank)
Specialist is one of the four junior enlisted ranks in the U.S. Army, just above Private First Class and equivalent in pay grade to Corporal. Unlike Corporals, Specialists are not considered junior non-commissioned officers...
Timothy F. Canjar: held prisoners' legs, encouraged others to then kick them in the groin, stepped on their previously injured arms, and made false sworn statements to the Army Criminal Investigation Division.
They received "general under honorable conditions" discharges
Military discharge
A military discharge is given when a member of the armed forces is released from their obligation to serve.-United States:Discharge or separation should not be confused with retirement; career U.S...
, were ordered to forfeit two months' salary, and returned to the United States.
Sergeant
Sergeant
Sergeant is a rank used in some form by most militaries, police forces, and other uniformed organizations around the world. Its origins are the Latin serviens, "one who serves", through the French term Sergent....
Shawna Edmondson, also involved in the case, received an "other-than-honorable" discharge, after she requested it instead of being court-martialed.
Hossam Shaltout said the abuse at Camp Bucca was similar to that at Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse, and that his torture included scorpion
Scorpion
Scorpions are predatory arthropod animals of the order Scorpiones within the class Arachnida. They have eight legs and are easily recognized by the pair of grasping claws and the narrow, segmented tail, often carried in a characteristic forward curve over the back, ending with a venomous stinger...
s placed on his body.
Said Shabram died in custody, but no information of the investigation were made public.
July to December 2003
American forces detained the family of an unidentified lieutenant general to induce him to turn himself in.The abuses at Abu Ghraib prison were reportedly committed by MPs. There are allegations that private contractors contributed to them as well and that intelligence agencies such as the CIA ordered them to do so in order to break prisoners for interrogations. It is said to be a usual practice in other US prisons as well, such as in Afghanistan
Afghanistan
Afghanistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located in the centre of Asia, forming South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East. With a population of about 29 million, it has an area of , making it the 42nd most populous and 41st largest nation in the world...
and Guantanamo Bay
Camp X-Ray
Camp X-Ray was a temporary detention facility at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp of Joint Task Force Guantanamo on the U.S. Naval Base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.The first twenty detainees arrived at Guantanamo on January 11, 2002....
.
The International Committee of the Red Cross
International Committee of the Red Cross
The International Committee of the Red Cross is a private humanitarian institution based in Geneva, Switzerland. States parties to the four Geneva Conventions of 1949 and their Additional Protocols of 1977 and 2005, have given the ICRC a mandate to protect the victims of international and...
submitted a detailed report to the U.S. Army
United States Army
The United States Army is the main branch of the United States Armed Forces responsible for land-based military operations. It is the largest and oldest established branch of the U.S. military, and is one of seven U.S. uniformed services...
in October 2003 about abuses in prisons, and the president of the Red Cross stated he had informed high-ranking members of the Bush
George W. Bush
George Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 43rd President of the United States, from 2001 to 2009. Before that, he was the 46th Governor of Texas, having served from 1995 to 2000....
administration about the abuses during a meeting in the White House
White House
The White House is the official residence and principal workplace of the president of the United States. Located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., the house was designed by Irish-born James Hoban, and built between 1792 and 1800 of white-painted Aquia sandstone in the Neoclassical...
in January 2004. A soldier came forward that month with photos of abuse that he found disturbing, some showed the stacking of prisoners into a human pyramid, with one prisoner's skin visibly bearing a slur written in English. Another showed a prisoner being forced to stand on a box with wires attached to his head and hands, who had reportedly been told that if he fell off the box, he would be electrocuted. Photos released to the public later included a person being attacked by a guard dog, which the soldier involved described as being useful for intimidation of prisoners. It was also reported that an Iraqi hired as a translator raped a juvenile male prisoner while a female soldier took pictures. No charges have been brought against the contractor because he does not fall under military jurisdiction; it is questionable whether any charges will or even can be brought against him.
Donald Rumsfeld
Donald Rumsfeld
Donald Henry Rumsfeld is an American politician and businessman. Rumsfeld served as the 13th Secretary of Defense from 1975 to 1977 under President Gerald Ford, and as the 21st Secretary of Defense from 2001 to 2006 under President George W. Bush. He is both the youngest and the oldest person to...
had said that army and government had only been informed in January and not in detail. On January 16, 2004, a press release was issued by the United States Central Command
United States Central Command
The United States Central Command is a theater-level Unified Combatant Command unit of the U.S. armed forces, established in 1983 under the operational control of the U.S. Secretary of Defense...
(CENTCOM) stating that an investigation had been initiated in response to allegations of detainee abuse at an unspecified detention facility (now known to be Abu Ghraib prison).
In March 2004, 6 soldiers in Abu Ghraib were charged with dereliction of duty, cruelty and maltreatment, and sexual abuse. 17 others were suspended from duty, including the seven U.S. officers who ran the prison. Also recommended for discipline was Brig. Gen
Brigadier General
Brigadier general is a senior rank in the armed forces. It is the lowest ranking general officer in some countries, usually sitting between the ranks of colonel and major general. When appointed to a field command, a brigadier general is typically in command of a brigade consisting of around 4,000...
Janis Karpinski
Janis Karpinski
Janis Leigh Karpinski is a central figure in the Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse scandal.Karpinski retired as a colonel in the US Army Reserve. She was demoted from Brigadier General in the aftermath of the Abu Ghraib scandal for dereliction of duty, making a material misrepresentation to...
, the commander of the 800th brigade. The Red Cross, which had access to these prisons, has stated that the instances of torture were not aberrations but were systemic. Some officers have attempted to defend themselves by saying that they were only doing their duty.
In response to ongoing complaints, the US military initiated a program to reform the internment and treatment systems. The reforms are expected to increase safeguards for prisoners' rights, to ensure each prisoner receives a copy of their internment order, and has their charges explained to them within 72 hours. They additionally plan to publicly post information about detainees so that family members can know what happened to their loved ones. Reforms were made in March 2004.
Theft of prisoner's possessions by soldiers, dirty, cramped quarters and bad food, prisoners forced into uncomfortable positions for prolonged periods of time, extreme exposure to the elements, and excessive jailings of people based on the paid testimony of individual informants were reported. 55-year-old cafe owner Mahmoud Khodair, who was arrested and held for six months before being released in early march without ever knowing what he was charged with, stated, "It was just like hell", and "Nothing has changed since Saddam. Before, the Mukhabarat [secret police] would take us away, and at least they wouldn't blow down the door. Now, some informant fingers you and gets $100 even if you're innocent."
During April 2004 the media started to report on the abuse. The journalist Seymour Hersh
Seymour Hersh
Seymour Myron Hersh is an American Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist and author based in Washington, D.C. He is a regular contributor to The New Yorker magazine on military and security matters...
(who was awarded the Pulitzer Prize
Pulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer Prize is a U.S. award for achievements in newspaper and online journalism, literature and musical composition. It was established by American publisher Joseph Pulitzer and is administered by Columbia University in New York City...
for his disclosure of the Vietnam War
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
tragedy at the hamlet of My Lai) published a series of articles in The New Yorker
The New Yorker
The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...
with photo coverage of U.S. soldiers abusing prisoners in the Abu Ghraib prison
Abu Ghraib prison
The Baghdad Central Prison, formerly known as Abu Ghraib prison is in Abu Ghraib, an Iraqi city 32 km west of Baghdad. It was built by British contractors in the 1950s....
on 2004-04-30.
In an interview with Dan Rather, the deputy director of operations for the US-led coalition, Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt
Mark Kimmitt
Mark Traecey Patrick Kimmitt was the 16th Assistant Secretary of State for Political-Military Affairs, serving under George W. Bush from August 2008 to January 2009. Prior to joining the State Department, he was a Brigadier General in the United States Army, and served as the Deputy Assistant...
, stated "We're appalled. These are our fellow soldiers. These are the people we work with every day. They represent us. They wear the same uniform as us, and they let their fellow soldiers down. If we can't hold ourselves up as an example of how to treat people with dignity and respect, we can't ask that other nations do that to our soldiers."
On May 1, 2004, photos of prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq being abused and humiliated by United States soldiers provoke an international outrage.
Furthering the charges, excerpts from the Abu Ghraib
Abu Ghraib
The city of Abu Ghraib in the Baghdad Governorate of Iraq is located just west of Baghdad's city center, or northwest of Baghdad International Airport. It has a population of 189,000. The old road to Jordan passes through Abu Ghraib...
Taguba report
Taguba Report
The Taguba Report is the common name of an official Army Regulation 15-6 military inquiry conducted in 2004 into the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse.-Initiation:...
were published on May 3, 2004. The report documented: the sodomizing of a prisoner with a chemical light, pouring phosphoric liquid on detainees, rape of a female prisoner, forced masturbation, "ghost detainees" moved around to avoid the Red Cross, and many other abuses.
The release of the photographs and reports had led to renewed calls for investigations into the abuses reported in other US military prisons, such as Camp X-Ray
Camp X-Ray
Camp X-Ray was a temporary detention facility at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp of Joint Task Force Guantanamo on the U.S. Naval Base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.The first twenty detainees arrived at Guantanamo on January 11, 2002....
and Camp Delta
Camp Delta
Camp Delta is a permanent detainment camp at Guantanamo Bay that replaced the temporary facilities of Camp X-Ray. Its first facilities were built between February 27 and mid-April 2002 by Navy Seabees, Marine Engineers, and workers from Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown and Root...
.
On May 14, 2004, reporters for the Guardian documented a coercive technique which soldiers called "bitch in a box". The prisoner was shoved into the trunk of a car on a hot day, and driven around until the prisoner was near ready to pass out. Another technique documented was "waterboarding", which involves holding a prisoner underwater until the prisoner believed he was about to drown. They also interviewed many soldiers not involved in the current scandal, who claimed that they were taught to use sleep deprivation
Sleep deprivation
Sleep deprivation is the condition of not having enough sleep; it can be either chronic or acute. A chronic sleep-restricted state can cause fatigue, daytime sleepiness, clumsiness and weight loss or weight gain. It adversely affects the brain and cognitive function. Few studies have compared the...
, to stage mock executions, and to use other procedures. One platoon leader who objected to these practices was reportedly told that his stand could end his military career.
USA Defence Secretary
United States Secretary of Defense
The Secretary of Defense is the head and chief executive officer of the Department of Defense of the United States of America. This position corresponds to what is generally known as a Defense Minister in other countries...
Donald Rumsfeld
Donald Rumsfeld
Donald Henry Rumsfeld is an American politician and businessman. Rumsfeld served as the 13th Secretary of Defense from 1975 to 1977 under President Gerald Ford, and as the 21st Secretary of Defense from 2001 to 2006 under President George W. Bush. He is both the youngest and the oldest person to...
told an armed services committee of the Senate
United States Senate
The United States Senate is the upper house of the bicameral legislature of the United States, and together with the United States House of Representatives comprises the United States Congress. The composition and powers of the Senate are established in Article One of the U.S. Constitution. Each...
on 2004-05-07 that "There are a lot more photographs and videos that exist [...] I looked at them last night and they're hard to believe [...] The pictures I've seen depict conduct, behaviour that is so brutal and so cruel and so inhumane that anyone engaged in it or involved in it would have to be brought to justice." He also said that the abused detainees may be offered compensation.
In a scene described as "surreal" by AFP, it was found in mid May, 2004 that US troops were handing out cash to freed prisoners along with a note stating "You have not been mistreated.". A reporter visiting the prison Camp War Horse described the tour:
- "Have you been mistreated?" the governor asks the detainees, dressed in orange boilersuits.
- "No. We have never been tortured," chorused those behind bars as some 50 soldiers stood nearby.
August 2003
It was claimed that eleven Iraqis had been severely beaten by members of the SASSpecial Air Service
Special Air Service or SAS is a corps of the British Army constituted on 31 May 1950. They are part of the United Kingdom Special Forces and have served as a model for the special forces of many other countries all over the world...
in Majar al Kabir; they were released and paid compensation for their injuries.
Sadiq Zoman, 57, is delivered in a vegetative state, to a hospital in Tikrit. His body bearing telltale signs of torture: burn marks on his skin, bludgeon marks on the back of his head, a badly broken thumb, electrical burns on the soles of his feet. Additionally, family members say they found whipmarks across his back and more electrical burns on his genitalia. He had entered US custody healthy barely 1 month earlier.
Hassan Abbad Said died in custody, but no information of the investigation were made public.
September 2003
Corporal Donald Payne of the Queen's Lancashire RegimentQueen's Lancashire Regiment
The Queen's Lancashire Regiment was an infantry regiment of the British Army, part of the King's Division...
now the 1st Battalion, Duke of Lancaster's Regiment (King's, Lancashire and Border), became Britain's first convicted war criminal after pleading guilty to abusing Iraqi detainees, which resulted in the death of one detainee Baha Mousa
Baha Mousa
Baha Mousa was an Iraqi man who was kicked and beaten to death while in British Army custody in Basra, Iraq in September 2003. The inquiry into his death heard that Mousa was hooded for almost 24 hours during his 36 hours of custody by the 1st Battalion of the Queen's Lancashire Regiment and that...
.
November 2003
An al JazeeraAl Jazeera
Al Jazeera is an independent broadcaster owned by the state of Qatar through the Qatar Media Corporation and headquartered in Doha, Qatar...
cameraman, Salah Hassan, reported various abuses in the infamous Abu Ghraib prison complex, such as being forced to strip naked, standing up for 11 hours and being kicked when he collapsed, being forced to wear a vomit-covered jumpsuit, and many other abuses. He later also witnessed a 12- or 13-year-old girl who was stripped naked and beaten. Her brother was held in another cell and heard her screams.
January 2004
January 3: Marwan Hassoun and his cousin Zaydun Al-Samarrai are taken from their broken-down truck at about curfew time and forced to jump from the Tharthar dam into the Tigris River; the latter drowns. First Lt. Jack M. Saville and Sgt. 1st Class Tracy E. PerkinsTracy E. Perkins
Tracy E. Perkins is a Sergeant First Class in the U.S. Army.On 3 January 2004, he forced, at gunpoint, civilian plumbers Zaidoun Hassoun and Marwan Fadel to leap from a road bridge in Samarra, Iraq, into the waters of the River Tigris below. The cousins Hassoun and Fadel had been caught by a U.S....
were charged on 2004 June 7 with manslaughter, assault, conspiracy, making false statements, and obstruction of justice. Sgt. Reggie Martinez was charged three weeks later with manslaughter and for making false statements, and Spec. Terry Bowman with assault and making false statements. Martinez' and Bowman's charges were dropped; Perkins got six months in jail. Saville was jailed (45 days) and fined $12,000 for assault but he remained on active duty until his military obligation was fulfilled.
Daily Mirror false allegations
Alleged photographs of prisoner abuses by UK troops were published by the Daily MirrorThe Daily Mirror
The Daily Mirror is a British national daily tabloid newspaper which was founded in 1903. Twice in its history, from 1985 to 1987, and from 1997 to 2002, the title on its masthead was changed to read simply The Mirror, which is how the paper is often referred to in popular parlance. It had an...
within 48 hours of the breaking of the story of abuses by US troops in the Abu Ghraib prison
Abu Ghraib prison
The Baghdad Central Prison, formerly known as Abu Ghraib prison is in Abu Ghraib, an Iraqi city 32 km west of Baghdad. It was built by British contractors in the 1950s....
in Iraq.
General Sir Mike Jackson
Mike Jackson
General Sir Michael David "Mike" Jackson, is a retired British Army officer and one of its most high-profile generals since the Second World War. Originally commissioned into the Intelligence Corps in 1963, he transferred to the Parachute Regiment, with whom he served two of his three tours of...
, Chief of the General Staff
British Army
The British Army is the land warfare branch of Her Majesty's Armed Forces in the United Kingdom. It came into being with the unification of the Kingdom of England and Scotland into the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1707. The new British Army incorporated Regiments that had already existed in England...
, said "if proven, the perpetrators are not fit to wear the Queen's uniform and they have besmirched the Army's good name and conduct".
The authenticity of the photographs was called into question a day later. In particular, a number of specifics in the images, such as the type of rifles the soldiers in the pictures are carrying and the type of truck pictured did not match the equipment used by UK troops in Iraq. The Mirror responded to these criticisms of the photographs on May 3, 2004.
On May 14, 2004, the Daily Mirror reported that the pictures it had published, allegedly showing UK troops abusing an Iraqi prisoner, were fake and that "the Daily Mirror has been the subject of a calculated and malicious hoax." The Daily Mirror editor, Piers Morgan
Piers Morgan
Piers Stefan Pughe-Morgan , known professionally as Piers Morgan, is a British journalist and television presenter. He is editorial director of First News, a national newspaper for children....
, was sacked due to the controversy.
Rape Accusations
On May 11, 2004, The Boston Globe covered a press conference by BostonBoston
Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...
City Councilor Chuck Turner and local civil rights activist Sadiki Kambon during which they distributed photographs they alleged showed American soldiers raping Iraqi woman. In its early editions on May 12, photographs from the event clearly showed some of the pictures presented, the Globe later apologized for the error. Other news agencies quickly responded to the story by linking the photographs to American and Hungarian pornography sites. One week prior to the press conference, WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily is an American web site that publishes news and associated content from a U.S. conservative perspective. It was founded in May 1997 by Joseph Farah with the stated intent of "exposing wrongdoing, corruption and abuse of power" and is headquartered in Washington, D.C.-History:In...
had published a story detailing the origin of these pictures and how they were being used as propaganda.
Amnesty International report
Amnesty InternationalAmnesty International
Amnesty International is an international non-governmental organisation whose stated mission is "to conduct research and generate action to prevent and end grave abuses of human rights, and to demand justice for those whose rights have been violated."Following a publication of Peter Benenson's...
claimed that British soldiers had killed innocent civilians who were no threat, had kicked a prisoner to death and that the British military did not investigate the abuses appropriately.
February 2004
Death in U.S. custody of chemistry professor Mohammed Munim al-IzmerlyMohammed Munim al-Izmerly
Prof. Dr. Mohammed Munim al-Izmerly was an Iraqi chemistry professor who allegedly experimented with poisons on prisoners while Saddam Hussein was president of Iraq and died while in US custody in early February 2004, ten months after his arrest....
. An autopsy concluded death was caused by a sudden hit to the back of his head and that the cause of death was blunt trauma.
June 2004
The PentagonThe Pentagon
The Pentagon is the headquarters of the United States Department of Defense, located in Arlington County, Virginia. As a symbol of the U.S. military, "the Pentagon" is often used metonymically to refer to the Department of Defense rather than the building itself.Designed by the American architect...
confirms a report in the New York Times that CIA chief George Tenet
George Tenet
George John Tenet was the Director of Central Intelligence for the United States Central Intelligence Agency, and is Distinguished Professor in the Practice of Diplomacy at Georgetown University....
was allowed by U.S.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
Secretary of Defense
United States Secretary of Defense
The Secretary of Defense is the head and chief executive officer of the Department of Defense of the United States of America. This position corresponds to what is generally known as a Defense Minister in other countries...
Donald Rumsfeld
Donald Rumsfeld
Donald Henry Rumsfeld is an American politician and businessman. Rumsfeld served as the 13th Secretary of Defense from 1975 to 1977 under President Gerald Ford, and as the 21st Secretary of Defense from 2001 to 2006 under President George W. Bush. He is both the youngest and the oldest person to...
to have an Iraq
Iraq
Iraq ; officially the Republic of Iraq is a country in Western Asia spanning most of the northwestern end of the Zagros mountain range, the eastern part of the Syrian Desert and the northern part of the Arabian Desert....
i prisoner secretly detained at Camp Cropper
Camp Cropper
Camp Cropper is a holding facility for security detainees operated by the United States Army near Baghdad International Airport in Iraq. The facility was initially operated as a high-value detention site , but has since been expanded increasing its capacity from 163 to 2,000 detainees...
in November, preventing the International Committee of the Red Cross from monitoring their treatment, a possible violation of the Geneva Conventions
Geneva Conventions
The Geneva Conventions comprise four treaties, and three additional protocols, that establish the standards of international law for the humanitarian treatment of the victims of war...
.
June 29: Oregon national guardsmen intervene in the beating of bound prisoners on the grounds of the Iraqi Interior Ministry; are told to back off and let the newly "sovereign" Iraqis run their own affairs.
July 2004
The International Red Cross reports that more than 100 children were kept in six different prisons of the coalition. Witnesses say US forces also abused children and youths. Soldier Samuel Provance from Abu Ghraib reported the harassment of a 15- to 16-year-old girl in her cell as well as a 16-year-old boy who was driven through the cold after he had been showered and who was then covered with mud. Allegations have been made that children have been subjected to torture and rape. This has been used to make detained parents talk in cases where other interrogation methods have failed. Seymour Hersh told a San Francisco audience: "what happened is that those women who were arrested with young boys, children, in cases that have been [video] recorded, the boys were sodomized, with the cameras rolling... the worst above all of them is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking." An unpublished Unicef report is said to include statements about children that were arrested in Basra and Kerbela and routinely detained in Umm Kasr. The children are said to be without contact to their families and cannot expect a trial.December 2004
Reports of mock executions by the US Marines in Iraq have surfaced in December 2004, as the ACLU published internal documents of the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) obtained through the Freedom of Information Act. The documents were written seven weeks after the publication of the photographs which triggered the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal.Several torture cases were also reported, notably torture by electricity, beatings, and sprayings of prisoners with fire extinguishers.
On 21 December, the ACLU released further documents documenting tortures. Notably, in a case of shooting of suspects without warning, Army commanders are reported to have interfered with the investigation. Procedures of autopsy of detainees who died in unclear circumstances have been canceled by battalion and group commands. Other cases include
- An apparent attempt by a soldier in Baghdad to force a detainee to hold a gun to create the appearance of a justifiable homicide.
- Two mock executions of Iraqi juveniles by Army personnel (documents obtained by the ACLU two weeks ago showed that U.S. Marines had also conducted a mock execution of juvenile detainees).
- Allegations of a competition among Army dog handlers at Abu Ghraib prison to see who could make Iraqi detainees urinate themselves the fastest.
- The use of death threats during interrogations. Command failures in providing appropriate training to military interrogators in Baghdad detention facilities.
January 2005
On 24 January 2005, the ACLU accused the Pentagon of deliberately closing investigations over Human Rights violations and torture cases before they were over.Human Rights Watch accused Iraqi security forces of using torture and improper treatments on prisoners. Arbitrary arrests and long periods of isolation are now common. Human Right Watch interviewed 90 prisoners, among which 72 said they had been tortured during interrogation. Sarah Leah Whitson
Sarah Leah Whitson
Sarah Leah Whitson is an American human rights activist and director of the Middle East and North Africa division of Human Rights Watch.-Early life and education :Whitson was reared by a mother who was born in the Armenian quarter of Jerusalem's Old City...
, HRW director, said that the Iraqi provisional government was not holding to its promise to stand by Human Rights:
"A new Iraqi government requires more than a change of leadership - it requires a change of attitude about basic human dignity" .
"During the first three days there was continuous torture. I was beaten with an aluminum rod and with cables. ? Then I was told to sign a statement with my hands tied behind my back, so I didn't even see the paper and I don't know what I signed."
Among bad treatments were such elements as beatings with cables, electric shocks, including on genitals, being tied and blindfolded for days, cells so crowded that it is only possible to stand, arbitrary detention, refusal of trials, access to lawyers or contacts with families. These treatments were inflicted to insurgents and criminals alike.
May 2005
A Pentagon order is mentioned in a military report filed on May 16, 2005 ordering U.S. personnel to turn a blind eye to Iraqi torture by refraining from investigating instances of apparent detainee abuse by Iraqi personnel, unless the investigation is first approved by U.S. headquarters: "Provided the initial report confirms US forces were not involved in the detainee abuse, no further investigation will be conducted unless directed by HHQ." Such approval was rarely granted.September 2005
In a report published by Human Rights Watch in September 2005, U.S. Troops are accused to routinely torture prisoners in Iraq. Two sergeants and a captain describe e.g. the breaking of a detainee’s leg, and applying chemical substances to detainees’ skin and eyes. Capt. Ian FishbackIan Fishback
Ian Fishback is a United States Army officer, who became known after he sent a letter to Senator John McCain of Arizona on September 16, 2005, in which Fishback stated his concerns about the continued abuse of prisoners held under the auspices of the Global War on Terror.McCain, along with...
of the 82nd Airborne who made persistent efforts over 17 months to raise concerns about detainee abuse with his chain of command was consistently told to ignore abuses and to “consider your career.” When he made an appointment with Senate staff members of Senators John McCain
John McCain
John Sidney McCain III is the senior United States Senator from Arizona. He was the Republican nominee for president in the 2008 United States election....
and John Warner
John Warner
John William Warner, KBE is an American Republican politician who served as Secretary of the Navy from 1972 to 1974 and as a five-term United States Senator from Virginia from January 2, 1979, to January 3, 2009...
, he says his commanding officer denied him a pass to leave his base.
November 2005
-173 detainees found in an Iraqi government bunker in BaghdadBaghdad
Baghdad is the capital of Iraq, as well as the coterminous Baghdad Governorate. The population of Baghdad in 2011 is approximately 7,216,040...
were found starved, beaten
Corporal punishment
Corporal punishment is a form of physical punishment that involves the deliberate infliction of pain as retribution for an offence, or for the purpose of disciplining or reforming a wrongdoer, or to deter attitudes or behaviour deemed unacceptable...
and torture
Torture
Torture is the act of inflicting severe pain as a means of punishment, revenge, forcing information or a confession, or simply as an act of cruelty. Throughout history, torture has often been used as a method of political re-education, interrogation, punishment, and coercion...
d.
-Colin Powell's former Chief of Staff, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson
Lawrence Wilkerson
Lawrence B. "Larry" Wilkerson is a retired United States Army Colonel and former chief of staff to United States Secretary of State Colin Powell...
, stated in an interview with Amy Goodman
Amy Goodman
Amy Goodman is an American progressive broadcast journalist, syndicated columnist, investigative reporter and author. Goodman is the host of Democracy Now!, an independent global news program broadcast daily on radio, television and the internet.-Early life:Goodman was born in Bay Shore, New York...
on November 22 that:
- "the difficulties [our troops face] come from the two decisions that I had the most insight into that were made in this more or less alternative decision-making process. And those two decisions were the inept and incompetent planning for post-invasion Iraq, and [...] the decision... from that alternative decision-making process to depart from the Geneva Conventions and from international law, in general.
- "[The President's memorandum said] the spirit of Geneva would be adhered to... consistent with military necessity. [...] It did not say 'consistent with national security demands.' It did not say 'consistent with the demands of the war on terror.' It said 'consistent with military needs.' Now, military needs are very simple and clear to a man like me who spent 31 years in the military. It means that if one of my buddy's life is threatened or my life is threatened, I can take drastic action. I can even shoot a detainee. And I can expect not to be punished under Geneva, or at least if I am court-martialed, I have a defense. It doesn't mean that I can take a detainee in a cold, dark cell in Bagram, Afghanistan, for example, in December 2002, shackled to the wall, and pour cold water on him at intervals when the outside temperature is 50 degrees anyway, and eventually kill him, which is what happened."
The Haditha killings
Haditha killings
The Haditha killings refers to the incident where 24 Iraqi men, women and children were killed by a group of United States Marines on November 19, 2005 in Haditha, a city in the western Iraqi province of Al Anbar. At least 15 of those killed were civilians...
occurred on November 19 in the town of Haditha, Iraq. A convoy of United States Marines was attacked with an improvised explosive device
Improvised explosive device
An improvised explosive device , also known as a roadside bomb, is a homemade bomb constructed and deployed in ways other than in conventional military action...
which killed Lance Corporal Miguel Terrazas. Up to twenty-four Iraqis were subsequently killed; it is alleged that they were non-combatant local residents who were massacred by Marines in the aftermath of the insurgent attack.
December 2005
John Pace, human rights chief for the United Nations Assistance Mission in Iraq (UNAMI), told ReutersReuters
Reuters is a news agency headquartered in New York City. Until 2008 the Reuters news agency formed part of a British independent company, Reuters Group plc, which was also a provider of financial market data...
that there were an estimated 14,000 people being held in prison in Iraq contrary to UN Resolution 1546, according to which the US government claims legal permission to occupy Iraq. In a December 5, 2005, interview, Pace said,
- "All [prisoners in Iraq] except those held by the Ministry of Justice are, technically speaking, held against the law because the Ministry of Justice is the only authority that is empowered by law to detain, to hold anybody in prison.
- "Essentially none of these people have any real recourse to protection and therefore we speak ... of a total breakdown in the protection of the individual in this country.
- "It's very rare to get judges ordering you to be released and effectively the police respecting that order.
- "We have cases also where the judge who has ordered a group of people to be released, about 50-60 people, and the police, the Interior Ministry simply refuses.
- "We have another case in another part of the country where the judge was actually the subject of reprisal for having found people not getting, as ordered, their release.
- "The judge is now in jail.
- "The judiciary has a lot to answer for in this country. It is really not carrying out its duties," he said, adding that bribes were sometimes paid for jobs in the judiciary and police.
- "This is not denied," Pace said. "This is symptomatic of the corruption problems in this country and stands in the way of any kind of rule of law."
June 2006
According to the Iraqi Defense Ministry, Private First Class Thomas Tucker and Private First Class Kristian Menchaca were reportedly "killed in a barbaric way," "slaughtered," and tortured to death, and their bodies were so mutilated that DNA tests are being performed to help identify their remains. The alleged group has said it was a revenge for the rape and murder of a 14-year-old Iraqi girl and her family in Mahmoudiya by the soldiers of the same brigade.Video of the killing of four Russian diplomats kidnapped in Iraq appear on the Internet. A group called the Mujahideen Shura Council released the hostage video.
October 2009
In 2009, an additional 21 color photographs surfaced, showing prisoners in Afghanistan and Iraq being abused by their U.S. captors.The American Civil Liberties Union
American Civil Liberties Union
The American Civil Liberties Union is a U.S. non-profit organization whose stated mission is "to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States." It works through litigation, legislation, and...
(ACLU) said, "[T]he government had long argued that the abuse at Abu Ghraib was isolated and was an aberration. The new photos would show that the abuse was more widespread." President Barack Obama
Barack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. Obama previously served as a United States Senator from Illinois, from January 2005 until he resigned following his victory in the 2008 presidential election.Born in...
initially indicated he would not fight the release of the photographs, but "reversed course in May and authorized an appeal to the high court." "The Obama administration believe[d] giving the imminent grant of authority over the release of such pictures to the defense secretary
United States Secretary of Defense
The Secretary of Defense is the head and chief executive officer of the Department of Defense of the United States of America. This position corresponds to what is generally known as a Defense Minister in other countries...
would short-circuit a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union
American Civil Liberties Union
The American Civil Liberties Union is a U.S. non-profit organization whose stated mission is "to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States." It works through litigation, legislation, and...
under the Freedom of Information Act." On Oct 10, 2009 the US "Congress [was] set to allow the Pentagon
The Pentagon
The Pentagon is the headquarters of the United States Department of Defense, located in Arlington County, Virginia. As a symbol of the U.S. military, "the Pentagon" is often used metonymically to refer to the Department of Defense rather than the building itself.Designed by the American architect...
to keep new pictures ... from the public"
2010-present
On February 3, 2010, David A. Larson, an elected official in California who has a relationship with government contract personnel, made disclosures to the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD), Office of the Inspector General (OIG) alleging that under the Bush Administration, prisoners detained at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, and undisclosed "black sites" were being used as involuntary research subjects for human biomedical experimentation, behavior modification research, and drug-testosterone delivery in a manner similar to past CIA Project MKULTRAProject MKULTRA
Project MKULTRA, or MK-ULTRA, was the code name for a covert, illegal CIA human experimentation program, run by the CIA's Office of Scientific Intelligence. This official U.S. government program began in the early 1950s, continued at least through the late 1960s, and used U.S...
activities investigated in 1977 by Senators Kennedy and Inuoye. The allegation supports information contained in a International Red Cross report relative to the expanded role of CIA medical personnel in torture and interrogation.
In 2010, the last of the prisons were turned over to the Iraqi government to run. An Associated Press
Associated Press
The Associated Press is an American news agency. The AP is a cooperative owned by its contributing newspapers, radio and television stations in the United States, which both contribute stories to the AP and use material written by its staff journalists...
article said
In September 2010 Amnesty International
Amnesty International
Amnesty International is an international non-governmental organisation whose stated mission is "to conduct research and generate action to prevent and end grave abuses of human rights, and to demand justice for those whose rights have been violated."Following a publication of Peter Benenson's...
warned in a report titled New Order, Same Abuses; Unlawful Detentions and Torture in Iraq that up to 30,000 prisoners, including many veterans of the US detention system, remain detained without rights in Iraq and are frequently tortured or abused. Furthermore, it describes a detention system that has not evolved since Saddam Hussein
Saddam Hussein
Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti was the fifth President of Iraq, serving in this capacity from 16 July 1979 until 9 April 2003...
's regime, in which human rights
Human rights
Human rights are "commonly understood as inalienable fundamental rights to which a person is inherently entitled simply because she or he is a human being." Human rights are thus conceived as universal and egalitarian . These rights may exist as natural rights or as legal rights, in both national...
abuses were endemic with arbitrary arrests and secret detention common and a lack of accountability throughout the security forces. Amnesty's Middle East and North Africa director, Malcolm Smart went on to say that "Iraq's security forces have been responsible for systematically violating detainees' rights and they have been permitted. US authorities, whose own record on detainees' rights has been so poor, have now handed over thousands of people detained by US forces to face this catalogue of illegality, violence and abuse, abdicating any responsibility for their human rights."
On October 22, 2010 nearly 400,000 secret US army field reports and war logs, detailing torture, summary executions and war crimes, were passed on to the British paper, the Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
and several other international
International
----International mostly means something that involves more than one country. The term international as a word means involvement of, interaction between or encompassing more than one nation, or generally beyond national boundaries...
media organisations through the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks
Wikileaks
WikiLeaks is an international self-described not-for-profit organisation that publishes submissions of private, secret, and classified media from anonymous news sources, news leaks, and whistleblowers. Its website, launched in 2006 under The Sunshine Press organisation, claimed a database of more...
. Among others, the logs detail how US authorities failed to investigate hundreds of reports of abuse, torture
Torture
Torture is the act of inflicting severe pain as a means of punishment, revenge, forcing information or a confession, or simply as an act of cruelty. Throughout history, torture has often been used as a method of political re-education, interrogation, punishment, and coercion...
, rape
Rape
Rape is a type of sexual assault usually involving sexual intercourse, which is initiated by one or more persons against another person without that person's consent. The act may be carried out by physical force, coercion, abuse of authority or with a person who is incapable of valid consent. The...
and even murder
Murder
Murder is the unlawful killing, with malice aforethought, of another human being, and generally this state of mind distinguishes murder from other forms of unlawful homicide...
by Iraqi
Iraqi people
The Iraqi people or Mesopotamian people are natives or inhabitants of the country of Iraq, known since antiquity as Mesopotamia , with a large diaspora throughout the Arab World, Europe, the Americas, and...
police and soldiers, whose conduct appears to be systematic and normally unpunished and that US troops abused prisoners for years even after the Abu Ghraib scandal. Both the UK and the US have condemned the unauthorised release of classified material.
Investigations
Several sets of investigations, both congressional via the Senate Armed Services Committee, military via courts-martial, and criminal for non-military contractors, were launched in response to the scandal.Seymour Hersh
Seymour Hersh
Seymour Myron Hersh is an American Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist and author based in Washington, D.C. He is a regular contributor to The New Yorker magazine on military and security matters...
, who exposed the Abu Ghraib scandal, and reports in Newsweek, has taken the case even further. In 2003, Donald Rumsfeld
Donald Rumsfeld
Donald Henry Rumsfeld is an American politician and businessman. Rumsfeld served as the 13th Secretary of Defense from 1975 to 1977 under President Gerald Ford, and as the 21st Secretary of Defense from 2001 to 2006 under President George W. Bush. He is both the youngest and the oldest person to...
instituted a policy that "encouraged physical coercion and sexual humiliation of Iraqi prisoners in an effort to generate more intelligence about the growing insurgency in Iraq.". This policy stemmed from an earlier policy taken toward al-Qaeda prisoners. A memo to the Bush White House from counsel Alberto Gonzales
Alberto Gonzales
Alberto R. Gonzales was the 80th Attorney General of the United States. Gonzales was appointed to the post in February 2005 by President George W. Bush. Gonzales was the first Hispanic Attorney General in U.S. history and the highest-ranking Hispanic government official ever...
claimed that the new sort of war renders the Geneva Conventions' limitations on interrogating enemy prisoners "obsolete". The program was approved by the CIA, NSA, and the National Security Council
United States National Security Council
The White House National Security Council in the United States is the principal forum used by the President of the United States for considering national security and foreign policy matters with his senior national security advisors and Cabinet officials and is part of the Executive Office of the...
. President George W. Bush
George W. Bush
George Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 43rd President of the United States, from 2001 to 2009. Before that, he was the 46th Governor of Texas, having served from 1995 to 2000....
was informed of it. The undersecretary of Defense for intelligence Steven Cambone administered the operation. His deputy, William Boykin, instructed the head of operations at Camp X-ray
Camp X-Ray
Camp X-Ray was a temporary detention facility at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp of Joint Task Force Guantanamo on the U.S. Naval Base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.The first twenty detainees arrived at Guantanamo on January 11, 2002....
Maj. Gen.
Major General
Major general or major-general is a military rank used in many countries. It is derived from the older rank of sergeant major general. A major general is a high-ranking officer, normally subordinate to the rank of lieutenant general and senior to the ranks of brigadier and brigadier general...
Geoffrey Miller to do the same at Abu Ghraib
Abu Ghraib
The city of Abu Ghraib in the Baghdad Governorate of Iraq is located just west of Baghdad's city center, or northwest of Baghdad International Airport. It has a population of 189,000. The old road to Jordan passes through Abu Ghraib...
. Miller told Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski
Janis Karpinski
Janis Leigh Karpinski is a central figure in the Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse scandal.Karpinski retired as a colonel in the US Army Reserve. She was demoted from Brigadier General in the aftermath of the Abu Ghraib scandal for dereliction of duty, making a material misrepresentation to...
that the prison would now be dedicated to gathering intelligence. Douglas Feith
Douglas Feith
Douglas J. Feith served as the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy for United States President George W. Bush from July 2001 until August 2005. His official responsibilities included the formulation of defense planning guidance and forces policy, United States Department of Defense relations...
and William Haynes
William Haynes
William Haynes may refer to:* William J. Haynes, II , American lawyer, General Counsel of the U.S. Department of Defense* William S. Haynes, American silversmith and flute maker* William E. Haynes , United States Representative for Ohio...
were also involved in the operation.
On May 18, 2004, a military intelligence analyst named Samuel Provance
Samuel Provance
Samuel Provance was a U.S. Army military intelligence sergeant who disobeyed an order from his commanders in the 302nd Military Intelligence Battalion, by explaining what he experienced at the Abu Ghraib Prison, where he was assigned from September 2003 to February 2004, to the media...
came out to the press, stating "There's definitely a cover-up". Provance, who ran a computer network used by military intelligence in the prison and who had been ordered not to speak to the press, told ABC News "Anything [the MPs] were to do legally or otherwise, they were to take those commands from the interrogators," and that the sexual humiliation began as a technique ordered by the investigators. He described several of the goings-on in the prison that he witnessed, such as the punching people in the neck hard enough to knock them unconscious after assuring them they weren't going to be hit, in order to catch them off guard. He also stated that Maj. Gen. George Fay
George Fay
George Fay, while an officer in the United States Army, was the lead author of an investigation into the scandal at Abu Ghraib, more commonly known as the Fay Report....
, the Army's deputy chief of staff for intelligence, has shown little interest in investigating the interrogators and has gone only after the MPs, and that there is a culture of silence right now among those involved, who fear that if they say anything, the investigations will turn to them.
On May 19, 2004, a court martial hearing was held for Cpl. Charles A. Graner Jr.
Charles Graner
Charles A. Graner, Jr., is a former U.S. Army reservist who was convicted of prisoner abuse in connection with the 2003–2004 Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal...
, who has been accused of being the ringleader of the group employing torture at Abu Ghraib. In an unexpected move, all three key witnesses - Lt. Col. Steven L. Jordan
Steven L. Jordan
Lieutenant Colonel Steven L. Jordan is a Civil Affairs officer with the United States Army Reserve. He volunteered to return to active duty to support the war in Iraq, and with a background in military intelligence, was made the director of the Joint Interrogation Debriefing Center at Abu Ghraib...
, Capt. Donald J. Reese, and contractor Adel L. Nakhla - refused to testify. This is an almost unheard of action. Under court martial proceedings, one cannot refuse to testify unless they have a belief that they will be exposed to criminal charges for doing so. Consequently, it is likely that the investigative proceedings will be forced to move higher up the chain of command.
See also
- Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuseAbu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuseBeginning in 2004, human rights violations in the form of physical, psychological, and sexual abuse, including torture, rape, sodomy, and homicide of prisoners held in the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq came to public attention...
- AbuseAbuseAbuse is the improper usage or treatment for a bad purpose, often to unfairly or improperly gain benefit. Abuse can come in many forms, such as: physical or verbal maltreatment, injury, sexual assault, violation, rape, unjust practices; wrongful practice or custom; offense; crime, or otherwise...
- black siteBlack siteIn military terminology, a black site is a location at which an unacknowledged black project is conducted. Recently, the term has gained notoriety in describing secret prisons operated by the United States Central Intelligence Agency , generally outside of U.S. territory and legal jurisdiction. It...
s - Bagram torture and prisoner abuseBagram torture and prisoner abuseIn 2005, The New York Times obtained a 2,000-page United States Army report concerning the homicides of two unarmed civilian Afghan prisoners by U.S. armed forces in 2002 at the Bagram Theater Internment Facility in Bagram, Afghanistan. The prisoners, Habibullah and Dilawar, were chained to the...
- Command responsibilityCommand responsibilityCommand responsibility, sometimes referred to as the Yamashita standard or the Medina standard, and also known as superior responsibility, is the doctrine of hierarchical accountability in cases of war crimes....
- Crime against humanityCrime against humanityCrimes against humanity, as defined by the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court Explanatory Memorandum, "are particularly odious offenses in that they constitute a serious attack on human dignity or grave humiliation or a degradation of one or more human beings...
- Geneva ConventionsGeneva ConventionsThe Geneva Conventions comprise four treaties, and three additional protocols, that establish the standards of international law for the humanitarian treatment of the victims of war...
- International humanitarian lawInternational humanitarian lawInternational humanitarian law , often referred to as the laws of war, the laws and customs of war or the law of armed conflict, is the legal corpus that comprises "the Geneva Conventions and the Hague Conventions, as well as subsequent treaties, case law, and customary international law." It...
- International LawInternational lawPublic international law concerns the structure and conduct of sovereign states; analogous entities, such as the Holy See; and intergovernmental organizations. To a lesser degree, international law also may affect multinational corporations and individuals, an impact increasingly evolving beyond...
- Jus ad bellumJus ad bellumJus ad bellum is a set of criteria that are to be consulted before engaging in war, in order to determine whether entering into war is permissible; that is, whether it is a just war....
- Jus in bello
- List of war crimes
- Military abuse
- Nuremberg PrinciplesNuremberg PrinciplesThe Nuremberg principles were a set of guidelines for determining what constitutes a war crime. The document was created by the International Law Commission of the United Nations to codify the legal principles underlying the Nuremberg Trials of Nazi party members following World War II.- Principle...
- TortureTortureTorture is the act of inflicting severe pain as a means of punishment, revenge, forcing information or a confession, or simply as an act of cruelty. Throughout history, torture has often been used as a method of political re-education, interrogation, punishment, and coercion...
- United Nations Convention Against TortureUnited Nations Convention Against TortureThe United Nations Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment is an international human rights instrument, under the review of the United Nations, that aims to prevent torture around the world....
- War crimes
- War Crimes Act of 1996War Crimes Act of 1996The War Crimes Act of 1996 was passed with overwhelming majorities by the United States Congress and signed into law by President Bill Clinton....
- List of military scandals
- 2006 German troops controversy2006 German troops controversyIn October 2006, German troops in Afghanistan were in the centre of an international scandal of them posing with human skulls. Six servicemen were suspended over the first case, and a total of 23 were being investigated in connection with the incident....