Our blogs about
America's Wars
War on Iraq
War on Drugs
War on Afghanistan
War on Columbia
War on Philippines
War on Venezuela

MORE
Matrix Masters
Blogs
World Events
Katrina's Aftermath
US News
Bush Crime Family News
Science & Health
Earth News
Free Speech
News from Africa
News from Palestine
Bill of Rights Under Attack

Support Bloggers' Rights!

Lorenzo's
Random Musings
. . . about Chaos,
Reason, and Hope

Al Jazeera (English)
    Baghdad Burning Blog (by Riverbend, an Iraqi civilian girl)
            Dahr Jamail's Blog from Baghdad
                Imad Khadduri's blog "Free Iraq" (scroll down for English version)

Iraqi Civilian Deaths ... caused by Bush's unprovoked war

 

Iraqi details harsh treatment as Amnesty criticizes U.S. interrogation methods
(Jim Krane, Associated Press, 6/30/2003)
An Iraqi businessman detained during a raid on his home says U.S. interrogators deprived him of sleep, forced him to kneel naked and kept him bound hand and foot with a bag over his head for eight days. . . . Seeking to quell a burgeoning uprising, U.S. soldiers have detained hundreds of Iraqis some of whom have endured days of strenuous interrogations, rights groups say. AP journalists have observed prisoners wearing only underwear and blindfolds, handcuffed and lying in the dirt 24 hours after their capture. . . . Al-Abally, 39, said that while he was bound and blindfolded, he was kicked, forced to stare at a strobe light and blasted with ''very loud rubbish music.'' . . . ''I thought I was going to lose my mind,'' said al-Abally, a burly man whose wrists are still scarred from plastic cuffs more than a month after his release. ''They said, 'I want you on your knees.' After three or four days it's very painful. My knees were bleeding and swollen.'' . . . ''This is democracy?'' asked al-Abally, whose family operates a shipping business in Lebanon. ''No Iraqi would have thought the Americans were capable of this.'' . . . ''When you talk of up to eight days' sleep deprivation, especially with hands and feet bound, that's already entering the realm of ill treatment,'' said Johanna Bjorken, a Human Rights Watch researcher in Iraq. ''When you combine it with loud music, strobe lights and hooding, it's very possible you've inflicted cruel treatment, which is a violation of the Geneva Conventions.'' . . . Amnesty International's report said the U.S. military appeared to subject Iraqi detainees to treatment that violates international law. The group said it was investigating the U.S. military's three-week detention of an 11-year-old boy and an incident in which U.S. shooting during a riot by detainees killed one and wounded seven. . . . Amnesty International researchers in Baghdad said the techniques cited by al-Abally were similar to those described by Palestinian detainees interrogated by the Israeli military and Irish Catholic prisoners detained by British forces. . . . Britain halted such procedures after a European court in 1982 found they violated human rights law and Israel did so in 1999 when its supreme court banned the practice except in extreme situations, Hodgkin said. . . . Amnesty's report accuses U.S. forces in Afghanistan of performing similar ''stress and duress'' interrogations on detainees, a pair of whom died in U.S. custody. The deaths are being investigated as homicides.

posted by Lorenzo 12:25 PM