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Detainees Suffer Terror at US Hands; Red Cross Says Torture Part of Deliberate Tactic
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Detainees Suffer Terror at US Hands
Red Cross Reports Abuse Widespread
Says Torture Part of Deliberate Tactic
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by Oakland Ross
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Hell, in Iraq, erupts at night. First, they break down your door and clamber inside — large, Yankee soldiers in combat gear with automatic rifles.They bark orders, wrest men, women and children from their beds, assemble everyone in a single room. They start smashing your possessions in front of you — cabinets, chairs, tables, anything. They shout insults, brandish their weapons, kick and punch their captives, striking out with their rifle barrels at anyone who resists. They handcuff those they want — typically, anyone who happens to be male, no matter how old or infirm.
They hustle their prisoners, generally clad only in pajamas or underwear, out into the dark Iraqi night. Essential items, such as eyeglasses or medicine, are invariably left behind.
They don't say where they are taking you, they don't say why, and they probably never will.You are terrified, practically naked, already in acute physical distress, and almost certainly innocent of wrongdoing, but that doesn't seem to matter a whit.This — as depicted in a report by the International Committee of the Red Cross — is merely the first circle of hell in an Iraq under occupation by U.S.-led military forces, and your torment has barely begun.It gets far, far worse.Recently, the entire world has recoiled in horror and outrage at photographs illustrating the sometimes savage treatment inflicted upon Iraqi political detainees by U.S. military prison guards at the Abu Ghraib detention facility in Baghdad.As disturbing as those images are — and there other, even more alarming images that have yet to reach the public — they provide only a small and sickening hint of what has been taking place in Iraq since a U.S.-led military coalition invaded the country more than a year ago.As detailed in a powerful, 24-page report by the Red Cross — completed in February and leaked to the public in the last few days — the terrorizing of Iraqi detainees, their gross physical abuse and psychological humiliation, are far from being rare or exceptional acts carried out by rogue prison guards.Instead, says the Red Cross, they are part of a deliberate, systematic strategy applied in the initial stages of a prisoner's detention, aimed at breaking him down mentally and physically, so he will be more likely to co-operate during interrogation.The Red Cross says the abuses are widespread, they appear to have the approval of those in charge of the coalition forces, and in some cases they are "tantamount to torture." They have caused death, permanent injury and unspeakable suffering.The Red Cross report provides many lurid examples of the kinds of abuse regularly meted out during a nine-month period last year by military guards at a variety of detention facilities in Iraq and parallels findings by U.S. Maj.-Gen. Antonio Taguba, who in a separate report has documented a series of grotesque and probably criminal offences carried out against detainees at the Abu Ghraib detention facility in Baghdad.Several photographs of the horrors described by Taguba have already found their way into public view, but others have not. In time, they likely will. Yesterday, the United Nations children's agency issued a statement in Geneva, saying it was "profoundly disturbed" by reports children may have been among those mistreated. According to one report, still unreleased videotapes of abuses against detainees include images of Iraqi guards raping young boys at the Abu Ghraib prison.Based on Taguba's findings and on those of the Red Cross, here are some of the disturbing snapshots that we have yet to see — pictures of hell in Iraq.
One naked detainee is forced to stand on a box with a sandbag on his head and with wires attached to his fingers, toes and penis to simulate electrical-shock torture.
A male military guard rapes a female detainee.
A guard smashes a chemical light and pours the phosphoric liquid on several detainees.
A detainee is beaten with a broom handle and a chair.
A detainee has his head slammed against a wall and his guard promptly stitches up the wound himself.
A hooded detainee is made to lie down on what is likely a running truck engine, burning him so badly he requires three months in hospital, extensive skin grafts over much of his body and the amputation of a finger.
A detainee is force-fed a baseball bat, which is then secured in place with a scarf.
Male detainees are forced to parade naked in public, with women's underwear wrapped over their heads.
Detainees are made to sit for hours in direct sunlight in 50-degree temperatures or forced to remain in awkward positions for hours at a time.
Detainees are kept naked in solitary confinement without light for days at a time.
A 28-year-old detainee, married with two children, is beaten to death by his captors, and his death is officially attributed to cardio-respiratory arrest-asphyxia, cause unknown.
The litany of horrors goes on and on, and the abuses continued unabated last year even though the Red Cross regularly expressed its concerns to coalition forces, making it difficult to reach any conclusion except the Red Cross' own — that this harsh and inhuman treatment has been encouraged or at least tolerated at senior levels of the occupying armies.Hard as it may be to believe, the detainees captured by coalition forces are the lucky ones.Those picked up by the Iraqi police — a force that operates under U.S. authority and control — often proceed at once to the innermost circle of hell.The Red Cross report documents horrific practices carried out by the Iraqi police against detainees in their charge, often with the purpose of extorting money from them, sometimes prior to turning them over to coalition forces for further interrogation. Abuses cited by the Red Cross include whipping prisoners with cables, kicking them in the testicles, hanging them from iron bars by their handcuffs, burning them with cigarettes, pretending to shoot them with unloaded pistols, threatening to rape their wives, and pouring water on their legs while giving them electrical shocks with live, stripped wires.Finally, it should be noted that the vast majority of the political detainees in Iraq are likely innocent of any wrongdoing.According to the Red Cross report, coalition military intelligence officers themselves estimate that somewhere between 70 and 90 per cent of those whom they detain have been picked up by mistake and are guilty of nothing at all, except the crime of living in an occupied country and stumbling into a foreign-administered hell.
Copyright Toronto Star Newspapers Limited
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