The Australian
January 17, 2005
By Sarah Baxter

The picture of Charles Graner, the convicted ringleader in the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, giving the thumbs-up in front of a dead Iraqi is not as famous as those of detainees stacked in a human pyramid of naked flesh, held on a dog leash or hooded for mock execution.

Yet the image of the corpse wrapped in polythene, his right eye bandaged, his nose broken and his mouth open as if gasping for his last breath, signifies that darker practices than sadistic games have taken place in US-run jails in Iraq.

It is part of growing evidence that some detainees have been tortured and beaten to death by US forces.

Graner, 36, was sentenced to 10 years in jail yesterday after being convicted at a court martial of assault, battery, maltreatment, committing indecent acts and dereliction of duty. To the last, he insisted that he was just following orders to soften up prisoners prior to their interrogation.

This week, his girlfriend and smiling accomplice, Lynndie England, faces her own court martial. England, 21, recently gave birth to Graner's child.

Neither of them was responsible for any deaths of detainees. But away from the media spotlight, an unidentified Navy Seal lieutenant was accused in pre-trial hearings in San Diego, California, last week of assaulting and maltreating the Iraqi in the photograph, Monathel al-Jamaily, who died in November 2003.

One witness testified that he had seen a CIA officer and several Seals kick, punch and gouge the eyes of al-Jamaily. Another brushed away tears as he described the accused naval lieutenant as a "good man" and a "hero".

What is not disputed is that al-Jamaily, 43, a father of three, died under interrogation by the CIA in the shower room at Abu Ghraib a few hours after he was apprehended. Doctors said the cause of death was "blunt force injuries complicated by compromised respiration".

In Iraq, the deaths in custody have dealt a terrible blow to the US's moral authority. Al-Jamaily's sister, Montaha, is still shocked.

"We looked for him for seven months in different prisons. Then we saw his picture on TV. That's how we found out," she said in Baghdad last week. "They wouldn't give us his body so we hired a lawyer. It was four months before we received the body."

The Pentagon has admitted to five detainee deaths as a result of abuse in Iraq and Afghanistan, with a further 23 under investigation.

These figures may be revised upwards when a report on interrogation methods from Guantanamo Bay to Afghanistan and Iraq by Vice-Admiral Albert Church is released next month.

Mark Danner, author of Torture and Truth: America, Abu Ghraib and the War on Terror, which is published next month, said the Bush administration was anxious to publicise the case against Graner at the expense of others.

"Here was a criminal who committed crimes and is being brought to justice. It fits their theory of a few bad apples. The photographs, in their grotesqueness, look so outlandish that it's hard to believe the torture might be procedural," he says.

Danner believes the deaths of prisoners tell another story. In August 2002, Jay Bybee, of the US Justice Department, offered a startling legal opinion to Alberto Gonzales, who is now undergoing confirmation as US attorney-general.

"For an act to constitute torture," Bybee claimed, it must "be equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death".

The opinion was disowned last year, but only after it became public. With such a narrow dividing line separating the permissible from the prohibited, US forces may have been confused about when to stop a violent assault.

More cases of murder and beatings are quietly coming to court. Pre-court martial hearings began in secret in Colorado last month against three soldiers accused of murdering Major-General Abed Hamed Mowhoush, head of Saddam Hussein's air force.

A Denver newspaper has gone to court in an attempt to have the proceedings opened to the public.

Mowhoush surrendered to the Americans in October 2003 shortly after his four sons were arrested to put pressure on him. To their horror, the sons were told on their release to take their father's body with them.

Until that point they had not even known he was in custody.

At first, the US authorities blamed the general's death on a heart attack from natural causes. They admitted later it was from "asphyxia due to smothering and chest compression".

Hussam Mowhoush, 28, has heard that US soldiers have been charged with his father's murder. "I know that honest courts should put the two sides - the accused and the victim - face to face. How can you have faith in these trials if the families of the victims of torture are in places far away from them?" he said. Mowhoush, who lives in Baghdad, is doubtful that justice as he sees it will be served. "Are they going to ... make the accused pay with his life in the same way that my father did?"

The answer is no: the soldiers face a maximum penalty of life imprisonment.

Nobody has yet been charged with al-Jamaily's murder and in some instances charges of homicide have been dropped in favour of lesser offences.

Earlier this year, Major Clarke Paulus, a commander at a holding centre near Nasiriya, was expelled from the Marines after being found guilty of the maltreatment of Nagem Sadoon Hatab, a suspected Ba'athist, who was hooded, handcuffed and beaten up in detention.

Despite signs of distress - he had breathing difficulties and diarrhoea - Hatab was left to lie naked on the ground for hours in the sun and died in the night. The original charge of negligent homicide against Paulus was dropped.

The abused detainees were not necessarily innocent Iraqi citizens. Al-Jamaily was suspected of bombing a Red Cross facility, and Mowhoush was accused of aiding the insurgency. It is impossible to verify the allegations because they are no longer alive to dispute them.

The military trials are regarded by some Americans as a sign that the nation is facing up to its responsibility to treat prisoners humanely.

Heather MacDonald, of The Manhattan Institute, a right-wing think-tank, recently attempted a comprehensive rebuttal of the argument that the "sadism" of some soldiers had anything to do with approved methods of interrogation at the highest levels of government.

MacDonald observed that many deaths in custody happened shortly after capture. "Does this happen in war? Yes. Does it have anything to do with interrogation? No. My guess is the amount of unnecessary violence is by no means out of the ordinary at times of war and probably less than the historic average."

Yet Iraqis complain that killings have gone unreported or have been dismissed with excuses about natural causes. In December 2003, Akram Hanush al-Rawi, 49, was working overtime at a petrol station not far from the Syrian border when he was arrested by US forces. A little under two weeks later, his family was told to collect his body from a nearby hospital.

His brother Ahmed said he had seen bruises all over al-Rawi's face and body at the mortuary. Photographs of the corpse appear to support his claims.

Al-Rawi's knees were broken and his right arm was so badly ripped from his body that it was attached only by a small piece of muscle.

The official explanation for al-Rawi's death was a heart attack, but an Iraqi coroner found no sign of heart trouble. A cousin who had been arrested with him and left for dead at the same hospital said al-Rawi had been hung by the arm for days.

According to Ahmed, life had not been easy under Saddam. "Every time we went to the mosque, somebody would be following us," he said.

But he added: "Things weren't as bad as they are now. The Americans have forgotten that we are human beings. They should have left the country a long time ago."

© The Australian

Original link

 
_____
Nieuwe Oorlog 2005 | Ander Nieuws week 3