From the Google cache of Dear Kitty Modblog.
So, ‘old’ news; in this case, over a year old.
But unfortunately, still ‘new’ news as well.
US prisoner abuse in Iraq and Afghanistan
Date: 9/25/05 at 12:22PM
From the New York Times:
Three former members of the [US] Army’s 82nd Airborne Division say soldiers in their battalion in Iraq routinely beat and abused prisoners in 2003 and 2004 to help gather intelligence on the insurgency and to amuse themselves.From Time magazine:
Pattern of AbuseHe said that the military ignored his charges.A decorated Army officer reveals new allegations of detainee mistreatment in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Also from the Google cache.
Iraq: abuse by British soldiers
Linking: 5 Comments: 11
Date: 10/17/05 at 12:51PM
From a Chicken Yoghurt blog on the Iraq war:
Observer: Ministers at war over Iraq abuse claimsSee also here.Details of an extraordinary row between two members of Tony Blair’s cabinet are revealed today in a series of confidential letters seen by The Observer.
In the correspondence the Attorney-General, Lord Goldsmith, repeatedly raises concerns with the then Defence Secretary, Geoff Hoon, over the ability of the army to investigate claims of abuse against British soldiers in Iraq.
And here.
‘Human Rights Watch has published a report giving fresh details of alleged torture and abuse of detainees by US forces in Iraq. The report quotes three US soldiers who described routine, severe beatings of prisoners, including a detainee’s leg being broken with a baseball bat. Other allegations included applying burning chemicals to detainees’ eyes and skin, making them glow in the dark.’
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4278734.stm
“In the continued “scorched earth” policy of the US military in the Sunni Arab areas, a US-Kurdish force appears to have levelled entire neighborhoods in Tal Afar, a northern Turkmen city, making most of its 200,000 inhabitants refugees living in squalid tent camps or with friends and relatives elsewhere. The operation yielded relatively few arrested terrorists. There is a news blackout on Tal Afar imposed by the US and the Iraqi authorities. This move is draconian and anyway unnecessary, since the American cable news channels have already imposed a global news blackout in favor of playing “Weather Channel” 24/7. Members of a Red Crescent delegation reached Tal Afar, but had their cell phones confiscated, were told to distribute aid in a remote and little known part of the city, and ended up mainly giving help to the displaced persons in their tent settlements: ‘ Hasan Bal, a member of the Red Crescent team that went to Tal Afar, stressed that theirs was a very difficult mission. ‘’The people and especially the children in Tal Afar are living in miserable conditions. Their conditions are indescribable. It is practically impossible not to cry for them,'’ noted Bal. ‘
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Comment by Administrator — December 28, 2006 @ 2:57 pm