Pentagon details abuse of Iraq detainees

By LOLITA C. BALDOR,
Associated Press Writer1 hour, 26 minutes ago

U.S. special operations forces fed some Iraqi detainees only bread and water for up to 17 days, used unapproved interrogation practices such as sleep deprivation and loud music and stripped at least one prisoner, according to a Pentagon report on incidents dating to 2003 and 2004.

The report concludes that the detainees' treatment was wrong but not illegal and reflected inadequate resources and lack of oversight and proper guidance rather than deliberate abuse. No military personnel were punished as a result of the investigation.

The findings were included in more than 1,000 pages of documents the Pentagon released to the American Civil Liberties Union on Friday under a Freedom of Information request. They included two major reports — one by Army Brig. Gen. Richard Formica on specials operations forces in Iraq and one by Brig. Gen. Charles Jacoby on Afghanistan detainees.

While some of the incidents have been reported previously and reviewed by members of Congress, this was the first time the documents were made public. Many portions of the report were blacked out, including specific names and locations such as the identities of the military units involved.

The report comes as the military is grappling with new allegations of war crimes in an increasingly unpopular conflict in Iraq. It could hamper the Bush administration's election-year effort to turn public opinion around with upbeat reports about the progress of the new government in Baghdad.

"Both the Formica and the Jacoby report demonstrate that the government is really not taking the investigation of detainee abuse seriously," said Amrit Singh, an ACLU attorney.

Singh called the reports "a whitewash" and questioned why they only focused on a limited number of incidents. In particular, she said there have been numerous documents showing that special operations forces abused detainees, and yet Formica only reviewed a few cases.

Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. Mark Ballesteros said, "We've undertaken significant steps to investigate, hold people accountable and change our operations as appropriate. This is all part of our effort to be transparent and show that we investigate all allegations thoroughly, and we take them seriously."

Less than a week ago, three detainees committed suicide at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility in Cuba, highlighting anew accusations of abuse. A little more than two years ago, the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal in Iraq came to light, with its graphic photographs of detainees being sexually humiliated and threatened with dogs.

The Bush administration has been criticized internationally, including by U.S. allies, for abusive treatment of terror war detainees. Late last year, Congress forced Bush to accept a ban on the cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment of prisoners by U.S. troops.

Administration officials have said the U.S. does not use torture but rather legal interrogation techniques to gain information that could head off terror attacks.

Ordered more than two years ago, the Formica review recommended changes including better training, new standards for detention centers and updated policies for detainee operations. His final report is dated November 2004 but was just released to the ACLU in its unclassified, censored form on Friday.

According to a senior defense official, all eight of Formica's recommendations for changes and improvements in detention policies were implemented shortly after he completed the report. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly about it.

Formica reviewed three allegations of abuse by special operations forces who held detainees in temporary facilities, often hastily set up near where they were captured.

Formica found that overall conditions "did not comport with the spirit of the principles set forth in the Geneva Conventions," which require humane treatment of prisoners.

Formica said, for example, that the forces used five interrogation techniques that were allowed at one point but had been rescinded by then: sleep or food deprivation, yelling and loud music, forcing detainees to remain in stressful physical positions and changing environmental conditions — which could include making their locations too hot or too cold.

Formica also found that the nakedness "was unnecessary and inconsistent with the principles of dignity and respect" in the Geneva Conventions. And he said that while one of the prisoners fed just bread and water appeared to be in good condition, 17 days of that diet "is too long."

In his recommendations he said detainees should receive adequate bedding, food, water and holding areas, get systematic medical screenings and a clear record of their detention at every level.

He dismissed other specific allegations of more serious abuse in several earlier cases. He said that the allegations of rape, sodomy and beatings were not substantiated by medical examinations and that the accusers' stories changed over time and were not credible.

Jacoby was dispatched in May 2004 to examine the treatment of detainees at facilities in Afghanistan.

His report found "no systematic or widespread mistreatment of detainees," but concluded that the opportunities for mistreatment and the ever-changing battlefield there demanded changes in procedures.

He said that there was "a consistent lack of knowledge" regarding the capture, processing, detention and interrogation of detainees and that policies varied at facilities across the country. Jacoby also concluded that the lack of clear standards created opportunities for abuse and impeded efforts to gain timely intelligence and that interrogation standards were "inconsistent and unevenly applied."

To date, there have been about 600 investigations into detainee-related incidents of all kinds, including natural deaths and detainee assaults on other detainees, according to Army spokesman Paul Boyce. As a result, he said, 267 soldiers have received some type of punishment, including 85 courts-martial and 95 nonjudicial actions.

Source: AP via YahoO! News
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060616/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/detainee_abuse

Haditha: Massacre and cover-up?

By Martin Asser
BBC News

Haditha is an agricultural community of about 90,000 inhabitants on the banks of the Euphrates north-west of Baghdad.

It lies in the huge western province of Anbar, which has been the heartland of the insurgency since US troops led the invasion of Iraq to overthrow Saddam Hussein in 2003.

It is a dangerous place for the US marines who control this part of Iraq and for the inhabitants, caught between insurgents and American troops.

See differing accounts of Haditha deaths

On the morning of 19 November 2005, the Subhani neighbourhood was the scene of an event that has become like the pulse of the insurgency - a roadside bomb targeting a US military patrol.

It killed 20-year-old Lance Corp Miguel (TJ) Terrazas, driving one of four humvee vehicles in the patrol, and injured two other marines.

A simple US military statement hinted at the bloody chain of events which the attack started - though subsequent scrutiny showed it to be far from the truth.

It said: "A US marine and 15 civilians were killed yesterday from the blast of a roadside bomb in Haditha.

"Immediately following the bombing, gunmen attacked the convoy with small arms fire. Iraqi army soldiers and marines returned fire, killing eight insurgents and wounding another."

Video footage

The tragedy of Haditha may have been left at that - just another statistic of "war-torn" Iraq, a place too dangerous to be reported properly by journalists, where openness is not in the interests of political and military circles, and the sheer scale of death numbs the senses.

However, a day after the incident, local journalist Taher Thabet got his video camera out and filmed scenes that - whatever they were - were not the aftermath of a roadside bomb.

The bodies of women and children, still in their nightclothes; interior walls and ceilings peppered with bullet holes; bloodstains on the floor.

Mr Thabet's tape prompted an investigation by the Iraqi human rights group Hammurabi, which passed details onto the US weekly magazine Time in January.

Before publishing its account on 19 March, the magazine passed the tape to US military commanders in Baghdad, who initiated a preliminary investigation.

Following their findings, the official version was changed to say that, after the roadside bomb, the 15 civilians had been accidentally shot by marines during a firefight with insurgents.

Nevertheless, on 9 March the top commanders in Baghdad began a criminal investigation, led by the Naval Criminal Investigation Service (NCIS). Its report is expected within days.

On 7 April three officers in charge of troops in Haditha were also stripped of their command and reassigned.

Pretended to die

Eyewitness accounts suggest that comrades of Lance Corp Terrazas, far from coming under enemy fire, went on the rampage in Haditha after his death.

Twelve-year-old Safa Younis appears in a Hammurabi video saying she was in one of three houses where troops came in and indiscriminately killed family members.

"They knocked at our front door and my father went to open it. They shot him dead from behind the door and then they shot him again," she says in the video.

"Then one American soldier came in and shot at us all. I pretended to be dead and he didn't notice me."

Hammurabi says eight people died in the house, including Safa's five siblings, aged between 14 and two.

In another house seven people including a child and his 70-year-old grandfather were killed. Four brothers aged 41 to 24 died in a third house. Eyewitnesses said they were forced into a wardrobe and shot.

Outside in the street, US troops are said to have gunned down four students and a taxi driver they had stopped at a roadblock set up after the bombing.

Damage

The Pentagon has said little about the Haditha deaths publicly, and in Iraq the incident has caused little controversy - US troops there are already routinely viewed as trigger happy and indifferent to Iraqi casualties.

But politicians in Washington who have been briefed on the military investigation say it backs the story that marines killed civilians in cold blood.

The chairman of the Senate armed services committee, John Warner, says it will hold hearings into the incident and how it was handled.

Media commentators have spoken of it as "Iraq's My Lai" - a reference to the 1968 massacre of 500 villagers in Vietnam.

Democrat congressman John Murtha, a former marine and war veteran, has said the Haditha incident could turn out to be an even bigger scandal than the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal.

The Marine Corps has responded to Mr Murtha by saying it would be inappropriate to comment on an ongoing investigation, but would do so "as soon as the facts are known and decisions on future actions are made".

1) Marine Lance Corp Miguel Terrazas dies in attack on US convoy. 2) US military initially says bomb also killed 15 Iraqi civilians. 3) Eight insurgents killed after attacking convoy. US later says the 15 civilians were not killed by bomb, but shot accidentally in battle.

1) Marine Lance Corp Miguel Terrazas dies in bomb attack on convoy of four Humvees. Troops then "go on rampage". 2) At roadblock, four students and taxi driver killed. 3) Eight people killed in one of three houses. 4) Seven killed in a second house. 5) Four brothers put in wardrobe and shot dead in a third house.

Source: BBC News
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/5033648.stm

Marine sorry for song about killing Iraqi family

Wed Jun 14, 4:27 PM ET

A Marine seen in an Internet video singing about killing members of an Iraqi family says the song was a joke.

Cpl. Joshua Belile, 23, apologized and said the song was not tied in any way to allegations that Marines killed 24 unarmed civilians in Haditha last year.

"It's a song that I made up and it was nothing more than something supposed to be funny, based off a catchy line of a movie," he said in Wednesday's Daily News of Jacksonville.

In the four-minute video called "Hadji Girl," a singer who appears to be a Marine tells a cheering audience about gunning down members of an Iraqi woman's family after they confront him with automatic weapons.

Maj. Shawn Haney, a Marine spokeswoman, said Wednesday the Marine Corps was looking into the matter. "The video, which was posted anonymously, is clearly inappropriate and contrary to the high standards expected of all Marines," she said in a statement.

Belile did not return a call Wednesday from The Associated Press.

He said his buddies pushed him on stage with his guitar while he was in Iraq in September and someone posted it on the Internet. It has since been removed.

Nihad Awad, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said the video should be investigated by the Pentagon and Congress.

"We welcome Cpl. Belile's apology," he said.

___

On the Net:

Defense Department: http://www.defenselink.mil

CAIR: http://www.cair.com

Related:
BBC News: Marine sorry for Iraq deaths song

Source: AP via Yahoo! News
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060614/ap_on_re_us/iraq_marine_video...

U.S.-trained expert says shell was Israeli

By LAURIE COPANS, Associated Press WriterWed Jun 14, 7:21 PM ET

A U.S.-trained military expert disputed on Wednesday an Israeli claim that it had nothing to do with an explosion that killed eight Palestinian beachgoers in the Gaza Strip last Friday, an incident that has turned a critical spotlight on Israel's military practices.

Israel released results of its own inquiry, which determined that the blast was not caused by a shell fired from Israeli artillery.

But Marc Garlasco, a military expert from New York-based Human Rights Watch, inspected the damage, the shrapnel and the wounds and came to a different conclusion.

"I'm convinced this was from an Israeli shell," Garlasco said Wednesday in a telephone interview. He said the main question still open is where it came from and when — was it fired by an Israeli artillery piece, as Palestinians charge, or was it buried in the sand, either on purpose by militants, as Israel alleges, or left over from an earlier attack?

Garlasco was the first independent expert to examine the scene, though Israel has doubts about his conclusions and about Human Rights Watch. He was in Gaza doing research for the human rights group when the explosion killed eight people on Friday afternoon, seven of them relatives.

Garlasco is a former intelligence specialist battle damage assessment officer for the Pentagon who has studied conflicts in Bosnia and Iraq. He rankled the Israeli government with a highly critical HRW report on destruction of houses in the Rafah refugee camp in Gaza in 2004. Israeli officials consider the human rights group biased in favor of the Palestinians.

Garlasco said he concluded the explosion was caused by a 155 mm shell of the type Israel uses. He viewed shrapnel collected from the scene by a Palestinian ordinance disposal unit, and in X-rays of Palestinians wounded in the blast.

Maj. Gen. Meir Klifi, who headed the Israeli investigation, said tests on the shrapnel removed from the body of a girl in an Israeli hospital proved it was not from a shell.

"I'm sure that all over that beach there is shrapnel," he told The Associated Press on Wednesday. "So no wonder that there is 155 mm shrapnel to be found."

Israeli army spokesman Capt. Jacob Dallal said Wednesday that the beach area is used by militants, so "this is also a battleground. This area is used for terror groups to launch (rockets) on Israel," noting that a rocket was fired from the area on Wednesday.

Garlasco said more work needs to be done before a solid conclusion can be drawn.

Israeli analyst Gerald Steinberg, who heads a watchdog group called NGO Monitor, charged that Garlasco is not a credible expert, and Human Rights Watch officials have "a long and carefully documented history of exploiting human rights claims to promote a clear anti-Israel political and ideological bias."

Source: AP via Yahoo! News
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060614/ap_on_re_mi_ea/israel_blast_probe...

Nine killed in Israeli air strike

Nine Palestinians, including two children, have been killed and up to 20 others hurt in an Israeli air strike in Gaza, witnesses and doctors say.

The Israeli army said it had targeted militants on their way to fire rockets at Israel, saying the vehicle was loaded with Katyusha rocket launchers.

The Islamic Jihad militant group said that some of its members had died in the blast.

The exchange of missile attacks between Gaza and Israel has escalated recently.

Scenes of anger

The BBC's Alan Johnston in Gaza says although Israeli strikes on vehicles travelling through the territory have become familiar, Tuesday's attack resulted in one of the heaviest death tolls.

A BBC reporter counted eight bodies being taken to a morgue, including that of a child. Palestinian sources said a second child was also killed.

Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas accused Israel of engaging in "state terrorism".

Israeli Defence Minister Amir Peretz said Israel had so far been showing restraint, but would no longer do so.

Israel says about 100 rockets have been fired from across the Gaza border in the past few days.

After Tuesday's strike a yellow van was left mangled on the main road through the north of Gaza, while pools of blood lay nearby.

Reports said the first strike was followed soon afterwards by another missile, which hit civilians who had gone to the scene of the first blast.

There were scenes of anger as bloodied civilians were taken to hospital.

At the hospital's morgue, angry women shouted: "Death to Israel, death to the occupation!"

An Israeli army statement said the attack was launched at "a vehicle loaded with rockets and carrying a terror cell en route to launch at Israel".

A spokeswoman said that the van was "loaded with Katyushas".

Katyushas have a longer range than the homemade rockets that are usually launched from Gaza.

Witnesses cited by the Reuters news agency said they saw rockets in the back of the yellow van.

Beach blast

The upsurge in violence follows the deaths of eight Palestinians on a beach in Gaza on Friday.

After those deaths, the militant group Hamas, which heads the Palestinian government, said it was breaking off its voluntary truce and launched rockets at Israel.

The beach explosion was initially blamed on Israeli shelling near the area where a family was enjoying a picnic.

However, an Israeli military inquiry is close to deciding Israel was not responsible, media reports say.

Source: BBC NEWS
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/middle_east/5074798.stm

Islam doesn't preach terrorism

By Wade Hemsworth
The Hamilton Spectator(Jun 12, 2006)

Leaders in Hamilton's Muslim community say the kind of thinking that is alleged to have driven a terrorism plot in Toronto is both shocking and contrary to genuine Islamic ideology.

Although a McMaster University student was among the 17 Canadian Muslims arrested June 2 and 3, the concept of plotting violence against Canadian people and institutions is surprising and repugnant, say two key figures in the community.

Both men, who are well-connected to the community on several levels, say such thinking has not taken root in Hamilton's mosques, nor among more than 1,000 members of the McMaster Muslim Students' Association.

At the same time, they say, the recent developments reinforce the need to remain vigilant and firm, to make sure violent ideas do not find a home in smaller circles.

"I think we need to do a better job, even in Hamilton, to ensure that none of that takes root," said Hussein Hamdani, a lawyer representing the Muslim Association of Hamilton.

"It's a wake-up call to see that no one is immune to this -- to see how we can perhaps minimize such things in the future," said McMaster Muslim Students' Association representative Kareem Mirza.

While there is some significant opposition among Muslims to Canada's participation in Afghanistan and its friendly relations with the U.S. since its action in Iraq, that opposition is civil, when it is expressed at all, Mirza said.

"Nobody is particularly happy about the role that anybody, especially the U.S. or even Canada as a supporter, is playing in Afghanistan or Iraq, but we do recognize that Canada is a peacekeeping nation, and as Canadians we're all proud of that. We are Muslims, but we are Canadian Muslims. This is our home," he explained.

"This, honestly, comes as something that's shocking and surprising -- these allegations of hate literature, these allegations of terrorism pods, these allegations of beheading the prime minister."

Since 9/11, most Muslims are reluctant even to discuss international politics in public, Mirza said. They fear they will be misinterpreted or falsely accused of being unpatriotic.

"Especially post-9/11, if you look into the Muslim community itself, most people are scared to get involved politically," he said.

Hamdani said there needs to be two elements present for the kind of thinking that could generate a plot against Canadian people or institutions.

The first, he said, is psychological. It requires a victim mentality and a deep sense of disenfranchisement.

The second is theological. It's a literal, puritanical interpretation of Islam, an outlook that has developed only in the past 150 years, he said, and is most prevalent in the Arabian Peninsula.

"It's so foreign to Islamic history. This puritanical, literalist ideology is something that is new and foreign to Muslim societies," he said. "It's not something that's found in traditional Muslim societies."

While some Hamilton Muslims may take such an approach to Islam, they are not violent, nor do they support violence, Hamdani said.

"I do think there should be greater emphasis put on the historic, holistic teaching of Islam, which is much more spiritual, much more tolerant, much more merciful than what many of these people understand it to be," he said.

Hamdani said that danger arises if the puritanical thinking and the disenfranchisement are allowed to blend together and ferment.

"We need to look at what the root causes were for them to think this way, to ensure that this doesn't happen to other youths in the future, but let's not paint 750,000 Muslims in Canada, or 20,000 Muslims in Hamilton with the same brush. Let's not create more walls of intolerance and separation between ourselves."

Source: The Hamilton Spectator
http://www.hamiltonspectator.com/...rticle&cid=1150064107847&call_pageid