US troops 'made Iraq abuse video'

Society Pakistan & World Affairs
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The US army is investigating hundreds of alleged abuses in Iraq

A group of US soldiers made a video of themselves kicking a badly wounded Iraqi prisoner and trying to make the arm of a corpse wave, it has emerged.
The footage was among a compilation of recordings made by some soldiers in the Florida National Guard who were in the Iraqi city of Ramadi until last year.

Entitled Ramadi Madness, the tape was revealed in army documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union.

The army did not bring charges, deeming it “inappropriate” but not criminal.

Scenes from the 27-minute video appeared on the Palm Beach Post website on Monday.

It shows a US soldier kick in the face a prisoner who was bound, with gunshot wounds and lying on the ground.

There’s no justification for kicking an enemy prisoner of war when he’s wounded on the ground in front of you and about to die

Jameel Jaffer
ACLU lawyer

In another part of the video, a soldier grabs the arm of an Iraqi truck driver who has been shot dead and tries to make the corpse wave to the camera.

Each section of the video has its own title.

One scene shows burned and dismembered bodies following a massive blast. Another shows US troops driving through a village shouting “Get out of the way, we’re trying to drive here!”

Abuse inquiry

The video was made while the soldiers served as part of the 124th Regiment in the restive city of Ramadi, some 70 miles (110km) west of Baghdad, before returning home a year ago.

Its existence was revealed in more than 1,000 pages of documents obtained in a lawsuit by ACLU as part of its investigations into alleged Iraq prisoner abuse.

The video itself was not released, and a military investigation found the video footage showed “inappropriate rather than criminal behaviour”.

“Clearly, the soldiers probably exercised poor judgement… and I’m sure that they were admonished by their command for their actions,” army spokesman Lt Col Jeremy Martin was quoted by Reuters news agency as saying.

But ACLU lawyer Jameel Jaffer says he finds it hard to understand why nobody has been held accountable.

“There’s no justification for kicking an enemy prisoner of war when he’s wounded on the ground in front of you and about to die,” he says.

“Clearly, there’s some stuff in this video that’s inappropriate but not criminal. But then there’s quite a lot of other stuff in here that does seem to be criminal.”

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Re: US troops 'made Iraq abuse video'

US held youngsters at Abu Ghraib

The US military says no children suffered abuse at Abu Ghraib
Children as young as 11 years old were held at Abu Ghraib, the Iraqi prison at the centre of the US prisoner abuse scandal, official documents reveal.
Brig Gen Janis Karpinski, formerly in charge of the jail, gave details of young people and women held there.

Her assertion was among documents obtained via legal action by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

The Pentagon has admitted juveniles were among the detainees, but said no child was subject to any abuse.

Brig Gen Karpinski made her remarks in an interview with a general investigating the abuses at the prison.

'Innocent civilians'

The transcript of her May 2004 interview was among hundreds of pages of papers obtained by the ACLU through the Freedom of Information Act.

I don't care if we're holding 15,000 innocent civilians. We're winning the war

Comment attributed to Maj Gen Wodjakowski

In one case, witness statements among the released documents allege that four drunken Americans took a 17-year-old female prisoner from her cell and forced her to expose her breasts and kissed her.

In another documented incident, troops are alleged to have smeared mud on the detained 17-year-old son of an Iraqi general and forced his father to watch him shiver in the cold.

Brig Gen Karpinski, who was in charge at Abu Ghraib from July to November 2003, said she often visited the prison's youngest inmates.

She said in her interview that she thought one boy "looked like he was eight years old".

"He told me he was almost 12," she said. "He told me his brother was there with him, but he really wanted to see his mother, could he please call his mother. He was crying."

She said the military began holding children and women at Abu Ghraib from mid-2003. She did not say what the youngsters had been locked up for.

Abu Ghraib prison dates from the Saddam Hussein era
In her interview with Maj Gen George Fay, she also said intelligence officers had worked out an agreement to hold detainees without keeping records.

The Pentagon has acknowledged holding so-called "ghost detainees" on the basis that they were enemy combatants and therefore not entitled to prisoner of war protections.

Brig Gen Karpinski said US commanders were reluctant to release detainees, an attitude she called "releasophobia".

In her interview, she said Maj Gen Walter Wodjakowski, then the second most senior army general in Iraq, told her in the summer of 2003 not to release more prisoners, even if they were innocent.

"I don't care if we're holding 15,000 innocent civilians," she said Maj Gen Wodjakowski told her. "We're winning the war."

The ACLU has sued US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on behalf of four Iraqis and four Afghans who say they were tortured in US facilities.

Mr Rumsfeld has stated that neither he nor his aides ever condoned or authorised abuses.

Seven soldiers have been convicted by US courts martial in connection with the scandal at Abu Ghraib. Two others are still on trial.

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Re: US troops 'made Iraq abuse video'

Sounds more like Neverland and less like Abu Ghraib :Salute:

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Re: US troops 'made Iraq abuse video'

Man this sick US troops are really deranged, what liberation to they realy belive in? The only liberation they know is to abuse and torture people and they get sick pleasure out of it.