NEW YORK, July 23: Torture and other abuses against detainees in US custody in Iraq were authorized and routine, even after the 2004 Abu Ghraib scandal, according to new accounts from soldiers, a new Human Rights Watch report said on Sunday.
The new report, containing first-hand accounts by US military personnel interviewed by Human Rights Watch, details detainee abuses at an off-limits facility at Baghdad airport and at other detention centres throughout Iraq.
In the 53-page report, “No Blood, No Foul: Soldiers’ Accounts of Detainee Abuse in Iraq,” soldiers describe how detainees were routinely subjected to severe beatings, painful stress positions, severe sleep deprivation, and exposure to extreme cold and hot temperatures. The accounts come from interviews conducted by the Human Rights Watch, supplemented by memoranda and sworn statements contained in declassified documents.
“Soldiers were told that the Geneva Conventions did not apply, and that interrogators could use abusive techniques to get detainees to talk,” said John Sifton, the author of the report and the senior researcher on terrorism and counter-terrorism at Human Rights Watch.
“These accounts rebut US government claims that torture and abuse in Iraq was unauthorized and exceptional –- on the contrary, it was condoned and commonly used.”
The accounts reveal that detainee abuse was an established and apparently authorized part of the detention and interrogation processes in Iraq for much of 2003-2005. They also suggest that soldiers who sought to report abuse were rebuffed or ignored.
The Human Rights Watch report comes at a time when Bush administration officials and congressional leaders are hotly debating the applicability of the Geneva Conventions to detainee treatment. The report provides vivid demonstration of the abuses that result when these basic international standards are ignored.
Some of the most serious abuses detailed in the report concern a special task force, which was called at various times Task Force 20, Task Force 121, Task Force 6-26, and Task Force 145, and was stationed at an off-limits detention centre at the Baghdad airport called Camp Nama.
The report also describes serious abuses at a facility near the Mosul airport and at a base near Al-Qaim on the Syrian border.
The Human Rights Watch says, according to soldiers’ accounts, detainees at Camp Nama -– in violation of international law –- were not registered with the International Committee of the Red Cross. They were regularly stripped naked and subjected to beatings, forced exercises, severe sleep deprivation and various forms of degrading and humiliating treatment.
An interrogator who served at Camp Nama told the Human Rights Watch that the leadership of his interrogation unit encouraged abuse.
