The torture of prisoners in US custody in Iraq was authorised and routine even after the Abu Ghraib scandal came to light, a US-based rights group says.
Soldiers' accounts show that detainees routinely faced severe beatings, sleep deprivation and other abuses for much of 2003-2005, Human Rights Watch says.
Soldiers who tried to complain about the abuse were rebuffed or ignored.
The Pentagon, of course, denies this but these reports are coming from US soldiers.
An interrogator posted at Mosul in 2004 told HRW that he and his fellow interrogators had been told by the officer in charge of their unit to use abuse techniques on some detainees.
He described how they used dogs to intimidate the detainees, had them walking on their knees in the gravel and standing for extended periods with arms outstretched holding water bottles.
An interrogator at Camp Nama said the use of abuse techniques was commonplace - authorisation forms could be easily prepared for commanding officers to sign.
"I never saw a sheet that wasn't signed," the soldier said.
more...
The Human Rights Watch report can be found here.
This is no longer a case of 'a few bad apples'. This is an institutional problem, as so many have been asserting for such a long time.
Human Rights Watch called on the U.S. Congress to appoint an independent, bipartisan commission to investigate the true scope of detainee abuse in Iraq, the complicity of higher-level officials, and the systemic flaws that make it difficult for soldiers to report abuses they witness. Human Rights Watch also called on the president to appoint an independent prosecutor to investigate and prosecute the perpetrators of abuse, including the military and civilian leaders who authorized or condoned abuse.
“It is now clear that leaders were responsible for abuses that occurred in Iraq,” Sifton said. “It’s time for them to be held accountable.”
Will congress do its duty this time?
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