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If this is what the troops are up to in Iraq maybe they should pull out; pun
intended.
The ACLU has released documents relating to the child prisoners in Abu
Gharib, which it obtained under the Freedom of Information Act:
AP - Children held by the U.S. Army at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison included one
boy who appeared to be only about 8 years old, the former commander of the
prison told investigators, according to a transcript.
"He looked like he was eight years old. He told me he was almost 12," Brig.
Gen. Janis Karpinski told officials investigating prisoner abuse at Abu
Ghraib. "He told me his brother was there with him, but he really wanted to
see his mother, could he please call his mother. He was crying." .
.. The transcript released Thursday is the first government document
indicating that a child no older than 11 was held prisoner at Abu Ghraib.
Military officials have said that no juvenile prisoners were subject to the
abuses captured in photographs from Abu Ghraib. However, some of the men
shown being stripped naked and humiliated had been accused of raping a
14-year-old prisoner.
The documents released Thursday offer rare details about the children the
U.S. military has held in Iraq. Karpinski said the Army began holding women
and children in a high-security cellblock at Abu Ghraib in the summer of
2003 because the facility was better than lockups in Baghdad where they had
been held.
The documents also include statements from six witnesses who said three
interrogators and a civilian interpreter at Abu Ghraib got drunk one night
and took a 17-year-old female prisoner from her cell. The four men forced
the girl to expose her breasts and kissed her, the reports said. The
witnesses - whose names were blacked out of the documents given to the
ACLU - said those responsible were not punished.
Another soldier said in January 2004, troops poured water and smeared mud on
the detained 17-year-old son of an Iraqi general and "broke" the general by
forcing him to watch his son shiver in the cold.
The rape and abuse of children in Abu Gharib first broke in the Western
media on August 1st, but was not taken up by the US media with the exception
of Mike Malloy who devoted a whole show to it after we sent him this story:
The Sunday Herald - It was early last October that Kasim Mehaddi Hilas says
he witnessed the rape of a boy prisoner aged about 15 in the notorious Abu
Ghraib prison in Iraq. "The kid was hurting very bad and they covered all
the doors with sheets," he said in a statement given to investigators
probing prisoner abuse in Abu Ghraib. "Then, when I heard the screaming I
climbed the door . and I saw [the soldier's name is deleted] who was wearing
a military uniform." Hilas, who was himself threatened with being sexually
assaulted in Abu Graib, then describes in horrific detail how the soldier
raped "the little kid".
In another witness statement, passed to the Sunday Herald, former prisoner
Thaar Salman Dawod said: "[I saw] two boys naked and they were cuffed
together face to face and [a US soldier] was beating them and a group of
guards were watching and taking pictures and there was three female soldiers
laughing at the prisoners. The prisoners, two of them, were young."
It's not certain exactly how many children are being held by coalition
forces in Iraq, but a Sunday Herald investigation suggests there are up to
107. Their names are not known, nor is where they are being kept, how long
they will be held or what has happened to them during their detention.
Proof of the widespread arrest and detention of children in Iraq by US and
UK forces is contained in an internal Unicef report written in June. The
report has - surprisingly - not been made public.
Journalists in Germany have also been investigating the detention and abuse
of children in Iraq. One reporter, Thomas Reutter of the TV programme Report
Mainz, interviewed a US army sergeant called Samuel Provance, who is banned
from speaking about his six months stationed in Abu Ghraib but told Reutter
of how one 16-year-old Iraqi boy was arrested.
"He was terribly afraid," Provance said. "He had the skinniest arms I've
ever seen. He was trembling all over. His wrists were so thin we couldn't
even put handcuffs on him. Right when I saw him for the first time, and took
him for interrogation, I felt sorry for him.
"The interrogation specialists poured water over him and put him into a car.
Then they drove with him through the night, and at that time it was very,
very cold. Then they smeared him with mud and showed him to his father, who
was also in custody. They had tried out other interrogation methods on him,
but he wasn't to be brought to talk. The interrogation specialists told me,
after the father had seen his son in this state, his heart broke. He wept
and promised to tell them everything they wanted to know."
An Iraqi TV reporter Suhaib Badr-Addin al-Baz saw the Abu Ghraib children's
wing when he was arrested by Americans while making a documentary. He spent
74 days in Abu Ghraib.
"I saw a camp for children there," he said. "Boys, under the age of puberty.
There were certainly hundreds of children in this camp." Al-Baz said he
heard a 12-year-old girl crying. Her brother was also held in the jail. One
night guards came into her cell. "She was beaten," said al-Baz. "I heard her
call out, 'They have undressed me. They have poured water over me.'"
He says he heard her cries and whimpering daily - this, in turn, caused
other prisoners to cry as they listened to her. Al-Baz also told of an ill
15-year-old boy who was soaked repeatedly with hoses until he collapsed.
Guards then brought in the child's father with a hood over his head. The boy
collapsed again.
Although most of the children are held in US custody, the Sunday Herald has
established that some are held by the British Army. British soldiers tend to
arrest children in towns like Basra, which are under UK control, then hand
the youngsters over to the Americans who interrogate them and detain them.
Between January and May this year the Red Cross registered a total of 107
juveniles in detention during 19 visits to six coalition prisons. The aid
organisation's Rana Sidani said they had no complete information about the
ages of those detained, or how they had been treated. The deteriorating
security situation has prevented the Red Cross visiting all detention
centres.
Amnesty International is outraged by the detention of children. It is aware
of "numerous human rights violations against Iraqi juveniles, including
detentions, torture and ill-treatment, and killings". Amnesty has
interviewed former detainees who say they've seen boys as young as 10 in Abu
Ghraib.
http://www.12thharmonic.com/wordpress/?p=780
If this is what the troops are up to in Iraq maybe they should pull out; pun
intended.
The ACLU has released documents relating to the child prisoners in Abu
Gharib, which it obtained under the Freedom of Information Act:
AP - Children held by the U.S. Army at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison included one
boy who appeared to be only about 8 years old, the former commander of the
prison told investigators, according to a transcript.
"He looked like he was eight years old. He told me he was almost 12," Brig.
Gen. Janis Karpinski told officials investigating prisoner abuse at Abu
Ghraib. "He told me his brother was there with him, but he really wanted to
see his mother, could he please call his mother. He was crying." .
.. The transcript released Thursday is the first government document
indicating that a child no older than 11 was held prisoner at Abu Ghraib.
Military officials have said that no juvenile prisoners were subject to the
abuses captured in photographs from Abu Ghraib. However, some of the men
shown being stripped naked and humiliated had been accused of raping a
14-year-old prisoner.
The documents released Thursday offer rare details about the children the
U.S. military has held in Iraq. Karpinski said the Army began holding women
and children in a high-security cellblock at Abu Ghraib in the summer of
2003 because the facility was better than lockups in Baghdad where they had
been held.
The documents also include statements from six witnesses who said three
interrogators and a civilian interpreter at Abu Ghraib got drunk one night
and took a 17-year-old female prisoner from her cell. The four men forced
the girl to expose her breasts and kissed her, the reports said. The
witnesses - whose names were blacked out of the documents given to the
ACLU - said those responsible were not punished.
Another soldier said in January 2004, troops poured water and smeared mud on
the detained 17-year-old son of an Iraqi general and "broke" the general by
forcing him to watch his son shiver in the cold.
The rape and abuse of children in Abu Gharib first broke in the Western
media on August 1st, but was not taken up by the US media with the exception
of Mike Malloy who devoted a whole show to it after we sent him this story:
The Sunday Herald - It was early last October that Kasim Mehaddi Hilas says
he witnessed the rape of a boy prisoner aged about 15 in the notorious Abu
Ghraib prison in Iraq. "The kid was hurting very bad and they covered all
the doors with sheets," he said in a statement given to investigators
probing prisoner abuse in Abu Ghraib. "Then, when I heard the screaming I
climbed the door . and I saw [the soldier's name is deleted] who was wearing
a military uniform." Hilas, who was himself threatened with being sexually
assaulted in Abu Graib, then describes in horrific detail how the soldier
raped "the little kid".
In another witness statement, passed to the Sunday Herald, former prisoner
Thaar Salman Dawod said: "[I saw] two boys naked and they were cuffed
together face to face and [a US soldier] was beating them and a group of
guards were watching and taking pictures and there was three female soldiers
laughing at the prisoners. The prisoners, two of them, were young."
It's not certain exactly how many children are being held by coalition
forces in Iraq, but a Sunday Herald investigation suggests there are up to
107. Their names are not known, nor is where they are being kept, how long
they will be held or what has happened to them during their detention.
Proof of the widespread arrest and detention of children in Iraq by US and
UK forces is contained in an internal Unicef report written in June. The
report has - surprisingly - not been made public.
Journalists in Germany have also been investigating the detention and abuse
of children in Iraq. One reporter, Thomas Reutter of the TV programme Report
Mainz, interviewed a US army sergeant called Samuel Provance, who is banned
from speaking about his six months stationed in Abu Ghraib but told Reutter
of how one 16-year-old Iraqi boy was arrested.
"He was terribly afraid," Provance said. "He had the skinniest arms I've
ever seen. He was trembling all over. His wrists were so thin we couldn't
even put handcuffs on him. Right when I saw him for the first time, and took
him for interrogation, I felt sorry for him.
"The interrogation specialists poured water over him and put him into a car.
Then they drove with him through the night, and at that time it was very,
very cold. Then they smeared him with mud and showed him to his father, who
was also in custody. They had tried out other interrogation methods on him,
but he wasn't to be brought to talk. The interrogation specialists told me,
after the father had seen his son in this state, his heart broke. He wept
and promised to tell them everything they wanted to know."
An Iraqi TV reporter Suhaib Badr-Addin al-Baz saw the Abu Ghraib children's
wing when he was arrested by Americans while making a documentary. He spent
74 days in Abu Ghraib.
"I saw a camp for children there," he said. "Boys, under the age of puberty.
There were certainly hundreds of children in this camp." Al-Baz said he
heard a 12-year-old girl crying. Her brother was also held in the jail. One
night guards came into her cell. "She was beaten," said al-Baz. "I heard her
call out, 'They have undressed me. They have poured water over me.'"
He says he heard her cries and whimpering daily - this, in turn, caused
other prisoners to cry as they listened to her. Al-Baz also told of an ill
15-year-old boy who was soaked repeatedly with hoses until he collapsed.
Guards then brought in the child's father with a hood over his head. The boy
collapsed again.
Although most of the children are held in US custody, the Sunday Herald has
established that some are held by the British Army. British soldiers tend to
arrest children in towns like Basra, which are under UK control, then hand
the youngsters over to the Americans who interrogate them and detain them.
Between January and May this year the Red Cross registered a total of 107
juveniles in detention during 19 visits to six coalition prisons. The aid
organisation's Rana Sidani said they had no complete information about the
ages of those detained, or how they had been treated. The deteriorating
security situation has prevented the Red Cross visiting all detention
centres.
Amnesty International is outraged by the detention of children. It is aware
of "numerous human rights violations against Iraqi juveniles, including
detentions, torture and ill-treatment, and killings". Amnesty has
interviewed former detainees who say they've seen boys as young as 10 in Abu
Ghraib.
http://www.12thharmonic.com/wordpress/?p=780
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