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Documents: Soldier Told Detainee to Dig His Own Grave

The ACLU has obtained more than 2,000 new torture documents this week. From their newest press release:

New documents released by the Department of Defense reveal more cases of abuse including mock executions and use of a religious symbol to taunt detainees, the American Civil Liberties Union said today.

....The latest documents include medical records and several hundred pages relating to Army investigations into abuse of Iraqi and Afghan detainees and civilians by U.S. forces. One investigation into abuses at Rifles Base in Ramadi, Iraq details an incident in July 2003 in which an Army captain took an Iraqi welder into the desert, told him to dig his own grave, verbally threatened to kill him and had other soldiers stage a shooting of the man.

....One document released indicates that a soldier at an internment facility in Iraq “wrongfully display[ed] the symbolic of the ‘Star of David,’” threatened a detainee, and was “very disrespectful in gestures, which in turn insulted the Arabs that were present at the time.” This latest document supports detainees’ accounts that American soldiers routinely used religious symbols to degrade and humiliate them. In a lawsuit brought by the ACLU and Human Rights First against Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, one Iraqi detainee charged that soldiers taunted him by having a military dog pick up the Koran in its mouth. Another Iraqi detainee claimed that soldiers threw the Koran on the floor and stepped on it. In addition, in a set of documents released by the FBI in response to the ACLU’s FOIA in December, a Guantánamo detainee alleged that a guard told him he beat him because the guard was a Christian and the detainee was a Muslim.

....“The government’s own documents describe literally hundreds of instances in which prisoners have been abused by U.S. military and intelligence personnel,” said ACLU Staff Attorney Jameel Jaffer. “In light of what the documents show, it is simply astounding that senior military and civilian officials still have not been held accountable.”

Additional records released this week include:

  • An Army document dated December 30, 2003 stating that three Army personnel received administrative punishments -- rather than criminal sanctions -- for abuse of Iraqi detainees. A Master Sergeant was found guilty of knocking an Iraqi detainee to the ground, repeatedly kicking him in the groin, abdomen and head, and encouraging her subordinates to do the same. A Staff Sergeant was found guilty of holding a detainee’s legs apart while other soldiers kicked him in the groin, abdomen and head. A third soldier was found guilty of violently twisting a detainee’s previously injured arm and causing him to scream in pain.
  • A July 15, 2004 information paper on an incident involving two Iraqi men detained in Samarra. The men were driven to a bridge, where a platoon leader instructed three soldiers to push the detainees into the river. One of the Iraqi men could not swim and drowned. The other survived and reported the incident to different U.S. soldiers. The body was recovered by the family 12 days later and buried. One soldier indicated to investigators that the chain of command had instructed the soldiers not to cooperate with the investigation and to deny that they pushed the men into the river.
  • A May 3, 2004 information paper describing the deaths of two Afghan detainees at Bagram, Afghanistan. One man died from an embolism that the medical examiner “attributed to blows that he received combined with immobility due to restraint.” The other died from aggravation or a coronary artery condition “brought on by complications that arose from blows that he received from the stress from being restrained in a standing position.” None of the soldiers had been formally charged as of the writing of this report.

Here are the online links:

  • All of the Torture Documents are available here.
  • The documents released this week are here.
  • Details about the Rumsfeld lawsuit are here.
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    Re: Documents: Soldier Told Detainee to Dig His Ow (none / 0) (#1)
    by john horse on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 12:59:13 PM EST
    This cartoon from Tom Tomorrow is as true today as when it came out last January. For those familiar with some of the apologists for torture, this might sound familiar "I don't know if you can really define sodomy with a lightstick as torture!" "It sounds like another harmless fraternity prank to me!"

    Re: Documents: Soldier Told Detainee to Dig His Ow (none / 0) (#2)
    by DawesFred60 on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 12:59:14 PM EST
    May i say what is wrong with that? Hey people that is what i told my POW'S All the time, and did you see band of brothers or saving private Ryan? or the execution of private slovik? so why so up-stnading now? do you know how the execution at Nuremberg Happened? or what the Reds in china did to U.S. Troops? the guy who told the nut case to dig his own was told to say that.

    Re: Documents: Soldier Told Detainee to Dig His Ow (none / 0) (#3)
    by DawesFred60 on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 12:59:14 PM EST
    I can't wait until i am told to dig my own grave, likely by some local cop. get real people, see it for what it is. #@##@##$%$#, FDR all the way. by the way detainees are POW'S.

    No Fred, Alberto told George that they are NOT prisoners but they are all "terrists" until proven otherwise. And that renders it "quaint" not to beat them to a pulp and hang them from a cage until dead. Wow, maybe NEWSWEEK should fire ALL their friggen staff if they could actually f--- up a torture story when there is so much hard evidence of it floating around out there.

    The problem we have here is that these types of wilful disrespect to the symbols of the Islamic religion encourage the view among Muslims that we are engaged in a war against the religion itself, not a war against the violence that is being perpetrated in its name. What may to us seem to be mere childish bullying, designed to get prisoners riled up (perhaps to entertain the soldiers and guards) is in fact meat and drink to those who would seek to agitate young moderate Muslim men into committing extremist acts. Can we really see the desecration of the Koran as a legitimate weapon in the War on Terror? If you insist in shoving your hand into a hornets nest and shaking it around, don't be surprised if you get stung.

    Re: Documents: Soldier Told Detainee to Dig His Ow (none / 0) (#6)
    by DawesFred60 on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 12:59:14 PM EST
    earth to Ian, its the mideast get out of it, the fact is the generals are now telling bush to get out now, its the mideast not like england got it, its the lands of really insane people. look boys you don't get into a fight until you think you can win, the soldier was told to tell some nut to dig his own grave that is like telling someone he is going home in the mideast, its not what you think its what the other guy thinks. this new up coming court case the ACLU Wants is pointless.

    Re: Documents: Soldier Told Detainee to Dig His Ow (none / 0) (#7)
    by Dadler on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 12:59:14 PM EST
    These interrogators, tho not all of them obviously, seem to suffer from a very functional form of mental retardation -- one, I assume, they have been taught by their superiors, who are apparently even more brain dead. Does ANYONE in the military have an iota of imagination or self-critical intelligence?

    My husband was in the Israeli army and they did that all the time! It wasn't a big deal and it's psychologically frightening and very, very effective!

    "If you insist in shoving your hand into a hornets nest and shaking it around, don't be surprised if you get stung." Very true, and this is a very accurate description of the message many Muslims have been getting from the US and who have, in response, decided to curb any extremist tendencies they might otherwise have had.