Iraq prison abuse scandals
Despite numerous complaints by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, it took a year before the first US soldier was court-martialed for their actions concerning abuse of Iraqis.
Honorably discharged US veteran, Sergeant Frank "Greg" Ford reports that he witnessed war crimes in Samarra, Iraq.
[8] Gary Bartlam, a British soldier of the 7th Armoured Brigade, 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.
[9] 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.
[10] In separate incidents, the Royal Military Police declared that Radhi Natna died of a heart attack 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.
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 soldiers 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.
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.
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.
Another technique documented was "waterboarding", which involves water being poured over a cloth covering the face and breathing passages of an immobilized captive, causing the individual to experience the sensation of drowning.
[28] 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."
[29] 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: It was claimed that eleven Iraqis had been severely beaten by members of the SAS in Majar al-Kabir; they were released and paid compensation for their injuries.
[33] 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.
[43][44] Several sources stated that Iraqi females, including teenage girls, were sexually assaulted while being detained at Abu Ghraib and other US military detention facilities across Iraq.
[47] The Pentagon 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 Iraqi 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.
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.
"[54] 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.
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.
Ian Fishback 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.
"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"[71] 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 MKULTRA activities investigated in 1977 by Senators Kennedy and Inuoye.
The allegation supports information contained in an International Red Cross report relative to the expanded role of CIA medical personnel in torture and interrogation.
An Associated Press article said Despite Abu Ghriab- or perhaps because of reforms in its wake- prisoners have more recently said they receive far better treatment in American custody than in Iraqi jails.
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.
[77] In July 2019, the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor and the Iraqi Centre for the Documentation of War Crimes released a joint statement in which they revealed testimonies from the Taji Prison in the north of Bagdad.
[78] 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.
[79][80] 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.".
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".
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.
