SwiftVets.com

[fortdixlover]

An Iraqi's views on current U.S. media frenzy on Abu Ghraib, as reported by a Lebanese newspaper, the Daily Star.

Read carefully. Very interesting.


To Saddam's prisoners, US abuse seems 'a joke'
Some feel past crimes have been forgotten

By Gert Van Langendonk
Special to The Daily Star (Lebanon)
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=10&categ_id=2&article_id=4206#


BAGHDAD: Ibrahim al-Idrissi, 37, goes to work every day with a handgun in a holster on his hip. In most countries, the line of work Idrissi is in wouldn't require such firepower. But this is Iraq. Idrissi is the president of the Association for Free Prisoners, an Iraqi non-governmental organization that has been documenting the execution of political prisoners under the regime of Saddam Hussein.

Many of Saddam's torturers and executioners are still at large. There have been two attempts on Idrissi's life, and three on the organization's headquarters in Baghdad. "Fortunately, their aim hasn't been very good so far," Idrissi says.

One year ago, the organization was still called the Committee to Free Prisoners. In the hectic days after the fall of Baghdad, when people were digging holes all over the capital looking for secret prisons, there was still hope that some of the tens of thousands of political prisoners who disappeared under Saddam's regime were still alive somewhere. That hope has vanished, says Abdul Fatah al-Idrissi, 35, Ibrahim's younger brother. "Now, our work is not about releasing prisoners anymore."

Instead, it has become about documenting the horrors of the old regime. So far, the organization has been able to confirm the execution of 147,000 prisoners by Saddam. Last year, the garden of the group's headquarters, in a villa on the bank of the Tigris River in Kahdimiya, was filled with wailing and sobbing as hundreds of families came to check the names of their missing relatives against the lists being posted on a daily basis by the Idrissis and other volunteers. The lists were based on files recovered from Saddam's security apparatus. Behind the house, hundreds of now empty filing cabinets have begun to rust.

To ensure that the public's memory of the dead does not go the way of those abandoned filing cabinets, the brothers have continued their efforts over the past year. Like all the volunteers at the Association for Free Prisoners, both of them have seen the inside of Saddam's jails. Most of their family members were arrested for their membership in the illegal Shiite Dawa Party. They can count one brother and 10 cousins among those executed. Abdul Fatah was in prison for two years; Ibrahim spent six years and three months in prison - three of which were spent in the notorious prison at Abu Ghraib.

Ibrahim Idrissi has mixed feelings about the recent uproar caused by the abuse of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib under the US occupation. "As a humanitarian organization, we oppose this," he says. "But these are soldiers who have come to Iraq to fight, not to be prison guards. It was to be expected. Of course, if there are innocent people in there ... it is possible, I guess, that some of them are innocent."

If Idrissi seems a bit callous about the fate of the Iraqis in US-run jails, he has probably earned the right to differ. He recalls a day in 1982, at the General Security prison in Baghdad:

"They called all the prisoners out to the courtyard for what they called a 'celebration.' We all knew what they meant by 'celebration.' All the prisoners were chained to a pipe that ran the length of the courtyard wall. One prisoner, Amer al-Tikriti, was called out. They said if he didn't tell them everything they wanted to know, they would show him torture like he had never seen. He merely told them he would show them patience like they had never seen."

"This is when they brought out his wife, who was five months pregnant. One of the guards said that if he refused to talk he would get 12 guards to rape his wife until she lost the baby. Amer said nothing. So they did. We were forced to watch. Whenever one of us cast down his eyes, they would beat us."

"Amer's wife didn't lose the baby. So the guard took a knife, cut her belly open and took the baby out with his hands. The woman and child died minutes later. Then the guard used the same knife to cut Amer's throat." There is a moment of silence. Then Idrissi says: "What we have seen about the recent abuse at Abu Ghraib is a joke to us."

The Idrissis, and many families like them, feel that people in Iraq have too quickly relegated the horrors of the old regime to the annals of history. "But it is not the past to us," says Idrissi. "The mother of the person who was killed, his brothers and sisters, they are alive. We are still living the nightmare every day."

On most days, Ibrahim Idrissi can be seen chasing after members of Iraq's Governing Council, begging for a little attention for Saddam's victims. So far, he has had little luck. "No self-respecting Iraqi government can afford to ignore this issue," he says. "These people have paid with their blood so that the people on the Governing Council could be in charge."

The brothers hope to get compensation for the families, who have often lost all their belongings in addition to their loved ones. One day, they hope, the executioners will be put on trial. But most of all, they want recognition for what they, and thousands of others like them, have been through. And that people would stop saying "things were better under Saddam."

"Only criminals could say such a thing. The victims deserve better than this," Idrissi concludes.

[Navy_Navy_Navy]

I don't think you'll find too many vets who think that what our soldiers did at Abu Ghraib was right.

But, this kind of thing certainly puts it all into a different perspective. There are other stories coming out now about Abu Ghraib during Saddam's tenure and they're much like these.

Our soldiers are being investigated and will be tried and justice served.

How can justice ever be served in cases like the ones you've mentioned?
_________________
~ Echo Juliet ~
Altering course to starboard - On Fire, Keep Clear
Navy woman, Navy wife, Navy mother

[Craig]

We are better than them because we murder less than them.
We are better than them because we torture them for more worthy cause than they torture.
WTF does that mean to some individual getting beaten to death because he will not tell or does not know the answer to his interrogators questions?

Another thing I have wondered about is "Rules of engagement". I gather that they are "Secret" but I have We are better than them because we murder less than them.
We are better than them because we torture them for more worthy cause than they torture.
WTF does that mean to some individual getting beaten to death because he will not tell or does not know the answer to his interrogators questions?

After Abu Graib the US needed really really badly to not make any mistakes to kill something that in any way might could be claimed to be a wedding party.
After that it would have served better to have admitted there might have been mistake rather than to present a little more and a little more justifications. Whether it be valid or not there is no use but counterproductive ******** to claim that more evidence has turned up after what was presented that morning.seen a few video's that would appear that the rules is to kill any goddamned thing that moves if it is the least suspect and whether or not it might be of any immediate danger.
Wounded that show any sign of life are subject to be blown to scattered pieces of meat that glow in the sight of the killers who show a bit more excitement than just some calm business like demeanor - but rather excitement at the killing they can do from afar.

One could look to just examples of US misadventures on their own that were made every effort to cover up and describe by false witness that things happened other than they did.
And any American who has had his house searched because he was under suspicion can tell how a whole lot of **** that he owned was maliciously destroyed in the search. - ****! I can testify to that just about a thousand or so dollars worth of rough opals that the cops spread about the yard such that I was finding some my mother missed some five years later.
WTF is the rush anyway? Why is all the shortcut taken that tears everything up and dumps a persons property broken and junked in the middle of the room? Is some goddamned cop going to cause the department overtime if he might consider the rights of the citizen and take a bit of care to look through his stuff without destroying any?

Hate America? I certainly do not. I value highly the values of much of them fonding fathers who created this "America" - States United around something common ....

[Navy_Navy_Navy]

[sparky]

Shame, shame, shame. To point out that Saddam was worse is simply no excuse.

It's time the US took responsibility for its own actions.

[Grampa]

We ARE taking responsibility for those actions; the soldiers involved are being tried, the whole chain of command has been relieved and is under investigation.

We are better because we are self correcting. We PUNISH torturers.

Idiots.
_________________
Iraqi Freedom 2003-2004. We won't take any of that 1960s crap when We come home!

[sparky]

[Craig]

[Craig]

[Navy_Navy_Navy]

[Speedy]

[wshhml]

What really ticks me off is that the media continues to voice shock and overkill with this story, but the fact remains this issue was being investigated and dealt with prior to the photos being shown by the media. The military was already taking care of matters. There are always going to a few bad people, but this outrage is ridiculous.

[sparky]

Not true. The abuses continued right up to the widespread media portrayals even though the Red Cross had alerted top DOD officials over a year earlier.

It was a whistleblower whose actions finally brought results instead of more sweeping the matter under the rug.

Rumsfeld should resign and all top Bush administration officials with any knowledge of these abuses should be tried in The Hague.

And I hope I don't have to say this again, but these abuses are not lessened simply because Saddam's abuses were "worse." We need to demonstrate to the world that we're better than Saddam and sadly, the world isn't convinced of this. A good start would be for people like Rush Limbaugh to apologize for his remarks that the abuse was similar to fraternity hazing (there were numerous murders as we're finding out).

[fortdixlover]

[ROTC DAD]

U.S. military arrests war's 'bargaining chips'
Rights groups say practice holding people to pressure wanted relatives to surrender violates laws




BY MOHAMAD BAZZI
MIDDLE EAST CORRESPONDENT

May 25, 2004, 4:57 PM EDT

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- U.S. troops wanted Jeanan Moayad's father. When they couldn't find him, they took her husband in his place.

Dhafir Ibrahim has been in U.S. custody for nearly four months. Moayad insists that he is being held as a bargaining chip, and military officials have told her that he will be released when her father surrenders. Her father is a scientist and former Baath party member who fled to Jordan soon after the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime.

"My husband is a hostage," said Moayad, 35, an architect who carries a small portrait of Ibrahim in her purse. "He didn't commit any crime."

In a little-noticed development amid Iraq's prison abuse scandal, the U.S. military is holding dozens of Iraqis as bargaining chips to put pressure on their wanted relatives to surrender, according to human rights groups. These detainees are not accused of any crimes, and experts say their detention violates the Geneva Conventions and other international laws. The practice also risks associating the United States with the tactics of countries that it has long criticized for arbitrary arrests.

"It's clearly an abuse of the powers of arrest, to arrest one person and say that you're going to hold him until he gives information about somebody else, especially a close relative," said John Quigley, an international law professor at Ohio State University. "Arrests are supposed to be based on suspicion that the person has committed some offense."

U.S. officials deny that there is a systematic practice of detaining relatives to pressure Iraqi fugitives into surrendering. "The coalition does not take hostages," said a senior military official who asked not to be named. "Relatives who might have information about wanted persons are sometimes detained for questioning, and then they are released. There is no policy of holding people as bargaining chips."

But Iraqi human rights groups say they have documented dozens of cases similar to Moayad's, in which family members who are not accused of any crimes have been detained for weeks or even months and told that they would be released only when a wanted relative surrenders to U.S. forces.

"We have many cases of Americans going to a house looking for someone, and when they can't find him, they take another family member in his place," said Bassem al-Rubaie, director of the Council of Legal Defense Care, a group of Iraqi lawyers that has been campaigning for prisoner rights. "This has been going on since the early days of the American occupation."

In a recent report, the International Committee of the Red Cross quoted military intelligence officers as saying that between "70 and 90 percent" of the nearly 8,000 Iraqis detained by occupation forces had been arrested "by mistake." In some cases, the report found, U.S. troops continued to hold people for several months after they had been cleared of any wrongdoing.

Human rights groups first criticized the United States for detaining the relatives of wanted Iraqis in November, when U.S. forces arrested the wife and daughter of Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, one of Hussein's longtime deputies. After Hussein was captured last year, al-Douri became the most wanted man in Iraq, and Washington put a $10 million bounty on his head.

Al-Douri's wife and daughter are still in U.S. custody, although rights monitors say they have not been charged with any crime. Rights groups say the United States is committing a war crime by detaining al-Douri's relatives without charge. "Taking hostages is a grave breach of the Geneva Conventions -- in other words, a war crime," Human Rights Watch wrote in a January letter to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

The senior U.S. military official declined to discuss the detention of al-Douri's relatives, saying it is a "special case with very unusual circumstances." In the past, U.S. officials had likened the detentions to those of a material witness who is held for questioning.

But rights monitors say there is no basis under international law for holding family members as material witnesses. "That explanation is dubious at best," said Alistair Hodgett, a spokesman for Amnesty International USA.

Detaining the relatives of a fugitive is a form of "moral coercion" forbidden under the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, according to Quigley. The convention, which guarantees the rights of civilians under military occupation, also prohibits punishing someone for an offense that he has not personally committed.

In the 1970s and '80s, Washington frequently criticized the former Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc countries for making arbitrary arrests and for using relatives to exert pressure on fugitives and political prisoners. In its latest report on human rights conditions around the world, the State Department singled out several countries -- including Uzbekistan, Pakistan and Syria -- for using such tactics to pressure people to surrender or to force confessions.

By adopting similar tactics in Iraq, experts say Washington risks losing a moral high ground. "It makes it difficult for the U.S. to criticize other countries," Quigley said, "when it undertakes detentions of this sort that so clearly exceed what is permitted by law."

International law leaves little recourse for civilians under occupation to challenge wrongful detentions, something Moayad has become painfully aware of in recent months.

Her plight began on Jan. 30 at 2:30 a.m., when two U.S. Humvees pulled up to the door of her family's house as an Apache helicopter circled overhead. The soldiers asked for her father, Abdullah, 66, an American-educated geologist. Moayad insists that she does not know what U.S. forces wanted from her father, whom she described as a low-level Baath party official.

Moayad told the soldiers that her father had gone to neighboring Jordan to undergo surgery for prostate cancer and she showed them his medical records. They arrested the only other man in the house: Moayad's husband. As her mother and children started to cry, Moayad said the troops told the family that they just wanted to ask Ibrahim some questions and they promised to bring him back the next day.

"My husband told them several times, 'I'm not a troublemaker, I just want to live in peace with my family,'" said Moayad, who was born in Austin, Texas, while her father was working there. She lived in the United States until she was 5 years old.

Moayad has been married to Ibrahim, 45, for eight years. They have three children, aged 2 to 7. Like many Iraqis, they live with their extended family.

On Feb. 17, Moayad said, a group of soldiers knocked on her door and delivered a handwritten letter from Ibrahim. It said he was being transferred from a U.S. base in Baghdad to Abu Ghraib prison "until the arrival of my father-in-law."

"I am going to be there in his place until he surrenders himself," Ibrahim wrote. "Please tell him that I will be released when he arrives here, since I am not the wanted person... Please urge my father-in-law to surrender himself of his own free will. That will make things much easier for him. They will not mistreat someone who surrenders of his own free will. They only want to ask him some questions."

Ibrahim, who lost his job as an architect because of his detention, apologized for not being home to celebrate a Muslim holiday. "I send my warm kisses to our pretty little ones, and I hope that they are being well-behaved and doing well in school," he wrote. "Please tell them that I am traveling for some time, and don't tell them anything else."

Since receiving the letter, Moayad has made the 40-mile roundtrip journey from Baghdad to Abu Ghraib 18 times. On most visits, she stood outside the gates with other family members waiting in vain for information about their relatives. One soldier who felt sorry for her looked up Ibrahim's name on the prison's computer system and told her that he was marked as a detainee with "intel value."

Moayad, whose patchwork English is the legacy of her Texas childhood, doesn't know what "intelligence value" means and how it might affect her husband's status. But the Red Cross report documented a pattern of abuses -- including humiliation, hooding and threats of execution -- against Iraqi prisoners deemed to have an intelligence value.

"The American soldiers kept on telling me, 'Bring your father, and you will get your husband back,'" said Moayad, her soft voice trailing off. "How can they say that he's not a hostage?"

On May 15, her 18th visit to Abu Ghraib, Moayad finally got to see her husband. Ibrahim told her he was being well treated, but he said that military officials had forced him to write the letter pleading for his father-in-law to surrender.

The tactic, Moayad said, reminded her of Hussein's regime. "The Americans promised us that they would bring democracy and freedom. They talked about the prisoners in Saddam's time, and we expected them to do something better," she said. "But now they're doing the same thing, or even worse."
Copyright © 2004, Newsday, Inc.

Another story out today speaks of women who were raped at Abu Ghraib prison by US soldiers.

So how long before we have to be accountable?