Warnings of abuse in Iraq's prisons that were ignored
Photographs of American and British troops humiliating prisoners could
change the public mood across the world. But the coalition has brushed
aside similar complaints for six months
Peter Beaumont and Kahal Ahmed in London, Edward Helmore in New York
and Jason Burke in Baghdad
Sunday May 2, 2004
The Observer
The vast British base at the international airport on the outskirts of
Basra is a curiously quiet place. In the arrivals hall - with its
little coffee bar - the desert boots of British soldiers squeak across
the floor. Go up to the first floor and the officers will tell, with a
slightly patronising air, how the British Army is doing things
differently here in the south. They will tell you about their unique
experience, about lessons learnt in Northern Ireland, compared with
the ill-trained US forces in the north.
By yesterday those reassurances sounded increasingly hollow as
pictures of British soldiers - allegedly members of the Queen's
Lancashire Regiment - were published yesterday apparently showing them
beating an Iraqi detainee and urinating on him during an eight-hour
long assault last year. It was the second set of photographs to emerge
in two days, after US soldiers in the north were shown abusing
detainees.
Suddenly the two major Allies have been tarred with the same awful
brush - charged with beating and abusing Iraqis in their care. After
weeks of bad news from Iraq the pictures have threatened to explode
the fragile and contentious legitimacy of UK operations in Iraq.
In the images published in the Mirror newspaper yesterday, a hooded
Iraqi, allegedly a thief, is sitting in the back of what looks like a
canvas-sided vehicle, stripped to his underpants and a T-shirt with an
Iraqi flag on it. In one photograph a soldier urinates on his head. In
another a kick is aimed at his head, while in a third an assault rifle
is jabbed at his genitals.
It is a story whose details were filled in by two unnamed soldiers - A
and B - who told the Mirror how the young man had been picked up from
the nearby docks for stealing. 'As we took him back,' said soldier A,
'he was getting a beating. He was hit with batons on the knees,
fingers, toes, elbows and head ...
'Because it was so hot we put him in the back of a four-tonner truck
which has a canopy over it. That's where the photos were taken. Lads
were taking turns to give him a right going over, smashing him in the
face with weapons and stamping on him. We had him for about eight
hours ...
'He was missing teeth. All his mouth was bleeding and his nose was all
over the place. He couldn't talk, his jaw was out ... he was on his
way to being killed.'
The soldiers claim that at least one officer was aware of the
treatment being handed out and ordered the men involved to dump the
victim. It was not, says the Mirror's editor Piers Morgan, an easy
story to run even though he immediately knew he had a scoop when the
photographs came across his desk more than a week ago.
According to Morgan, a team of his journalists had been investigating
the Queen's Lancashire Regiment after allegations that rogue elements
were seeking reprisals for the death of a popular captain at the hands
of an Iraqi mob.
But Morgan himself was worried about the effect of running such
disturbing images in a paper known for its opposition to the war. He
knew that no one else had the pictures. They had been given to the
paper by one of the soldiers involved in the attack, which happened
several months ago.
His mind was made up when pictures of American atrocities against
Iraqi captives were televised around the world on Thursday. Suddenly
the tenor of the debate changed.
'We did not publish these photographs lightly,' Morgan told The
Observer. 'We were very aware of the reaction but the simple truth of
the matter is that this type of behaviour has no place in the British
Army. It should never have happened and it will have a very adverse
effect on opinion in Iraq where we are supposed to be winning people's
hearts and minds.'
Yesterday the picture of the urinating soldier and his victim was
published under the headline 'VILE.'
Coming hard on the heels of Tony Blair's condemnation of similar
photographs of United States soldiers abusing detainees at Baghdad's
Abu Ghraib prison, it sent a shock wave rushing through the Ministry
of Defence, the Foreign Office and Downing Street.
In Number 10, as the first copies of yesterday's Mirror landed late on
Friday night, the first response to the photographs was 'are they
real?' Officials are still asking that question but they quickly
realised that it would be impossible to build a 'handling strategy'
around such a premise.
'There were two routes for us,' said one Downing Street adviser. 'We
could have stalled and said we were looking at the issue but that
could have given the wrong impression that we weren't taking it
seriously. So we decided to immediately make it clear how appalled we
were about the allegations.'
For senior coalition officials in Iraq, as well as for Downing Street
and the White House, the Mirror's revelations were a double whammy
coming hard on the heels of photographs of abuse by US soldiers at Abu
Ghraib prison broadcast by CBS's 60 Minutes programme on Thursday and
carried around the world. But one thing was quickly clear - the very
different nature of the images and even of the abuse involved.
In the American photographs there is no attempt to hide the identities
of the soldiers who were involved but there is something about the
smiling casualness of the abuse that makes them equally sinister.
In perhaps one of the most shocking of the photographs that have
emerged, a woman private called Lynndie England is shown with a
cigarette dangling from her mouth giving a thumbs-up sign while
pointing at the genitals of a naked and hooded young Iraqi who has
been ordered to masturbate. In another, a grinning England poses
behind a pile of naked Iraqis piled in a clumsy pyramid.
Also pictured is Staff Sergeant Ivan 'Chip' Frederick, a tall,
muscular man, a corrections officer in a Virginia prison.
Frederick, a reservist, occupies a unique position in the scandal as -
in his ever more vocal justification of his behaviour - he has
provided the most coherent insight into how soldiers turned to abusers
in a country they went to liberate.
Frederick blames the US army for its lack of direction from above and
says that he will plead not guilty to any charges made against him.
'We had no support, no training whatsoever,' he told CBS's 60 Minutes.
'I kept asking my chain of command for certain things ... like rules
and regulations. And it just wasn't happening.'
Frederick makes clear that the abuse was not only for pleasure but was
regarded as part of interrogations led by US intelligence and private
contractors in the prison.
'We had military intelligence, we had all kinds of other government
agencies, FBI, CIA ... All those that I didn't even know or recognise.
Military intelligence has encouraged and told us, "great job". We help
getting them to talk with the way we handle them ... We've had a very
high rate with our style of getting them to break. They usually ended
up breaking within hours.'
While the source of the British photographs remains anonymous and
difficult to authenticate, the pictures from Abu Ghraib came from an
outraged military policeman - Specialist Joseph M. Darby - who was
given a CD containing pictures of the naked and abused Iraqis by one
of those who is facing prosecution. Darby penned an anonymous
complaint and attached the CD. He later came forward to give evidence
against his colleagues.
Darby was not alone in having become aware of abuse at the hands of
British and US forces. As early as last summer, researchers for
Amnesty International had began picking up worrying allegations of
torture and killings within the then still chaotic system for the
detention of Iraqis. These claims, Amnesty says, have persisted
despite its own report warning the occupying powers of their
obligations under the Geneva Conventions.
It was not only Amnesty that was hearing reports of abuse. Over the
past six months, as has now become clear, a number of warnings were
being sounded about abuse by allied soldiers. And they were warnings
the coalition forces appear to have ignored until this year.
By November last year dark rumours of violence and sexual abuse were
in circulation among Iraqis, human rights groups and the media - many
of them impossible to verify. But some should have been easy to check
out, not least those pointing to Abu Ghraib and the persistent claims
of abuses within its walls.
Among those who complained but were ignored was Sheikh Sharif
al-Qubaysi, a 72-year-old tribal leader imprisoned in Abu Ghraib.
According to Qubaysi, as he was sitting in his cell one evening a US
woman soldier came in and ordered him to strip before parading him in
front of other inmates.
Qubaysi is not the only victim to describe this form of humiliation.
Another credible report of persistent sexual humiliation at Abu Ghraib
was supplied by a journalist with Al Jazeera who was wrongly arrested
by US forces and taken to the prison.
In an interview with the US political magazine the Nation , Salah
Hassan, 33, described his experiences in detention last November,
alleging he was stripped naked and hooded with a plastic bag by
soldiers who addressed him as 'Al Jazeera', 'boy' or '*****'.
He says that he was forced to stand hooded, bound and naked for 11
hours in the cold, and that when he fell down soldiers kicked him
until he got up again.
But if these allegations now seem chillingly credible in the light of
the photographs, more serious allegations have emerged from Abu Ghraib
that remain impossible to establish - not least allegations of rape
involving both male and female detainees.
US military investigators are examining one case of male rape but last
year allegations emerged in an anonymous letter widely disseminated
among Iraqis that US soldiers had also raped women - claims that were
being circulated by Iraqi rebels to foster animosity against coalition
forces.
But if the warnings were ignored for months, by early this year others
in the US military had become aware of abuses inside the prison. At
the beginning of this year the US commander in Iraq, Lieutenant
General Ricardo S. Sanchez, ordered a confidential investigation by
Major General Antonio M. Taguba.
Taguba's report - leaked to the New Yorker magazine - stated that
between October and December last year there were multiple incidents
of 'sadistic, blatant and wanton criminal abuses' in the prison
carried out by soldiers of the 372nd Military Police Company, and also
by members of the intelligence community.
After months of operating with impunity in a twisted little world, the
net was closing in on England and Frederick and was about to catch
rogue elements of the Queen's Lancashire Regiment.
I was left bloody and bruised. Now we've become the torturers
.
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