FW: [snow-news] US forces arrogant handling Iraqi prisoners (Le Monde)

[David McDonald <dbmcdonald@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

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-----Original Message-----
From: jensenmk [mailto:jensenmk@xxxxxxx]
Sent: Wednesday, August 20, 2003 12:02 AM

Subject: [snow-news] US forces arrogant handling Iraqi prisoners (Le
Monde)


[Perhaps it's a characteristically American approach to social
problems that this article describes : throw 'em in jail!  The
U.S. incarcerates more people, both in absolute and per capita terms,
than any other country.  --Mark]

Translated from Le Monde (Paris), August 19, 2003
______________________________________________
FORMER PRISONERS DENOUNCE DETENTION CONDITIONS
By Mouna Naïm

** Liberated Iraqis say they are shocked by the arrogance and
** brutality of American soldiers **

Le Monde (Paris)
August 19, 2003

http://www.lemonde.fr/article/0,5987,3218--330916-,00.html

BAGHDAD -- Well before the Saturday, August 16 mortar attack that
killed six of them and wounded seventy others, Iraqi prisoners
detained by American forces at the Abu-Ghraib prison and the Baghdad
international airport were living in very difficult conditions.

Gaith Moussa Kazem knows all about it : he was detained for
fifty-three days, then released at the end of July.

The young ex-employee of an imported shoe company has barely recovered
from his exhaustion and has lost a lot of weight.  Arrested for
possession of a weapon while was carrying a large sum of money from
Baghdad to Mosul at a time when, as he points out with some justice,
there was hardly any security on the roads, he was first taken to the
airport.

Like the other prisoners there, number 8389 lived under a tent, "cloth
the first two days, then nylon, which had the effect of concentrating
the heat terribly, with a blanket or a piece of cardboard on the bare
ground for a bed, an open hole in the ground for sanitary purposes, a
slice of yellow cheese and a slice of cake each day, distributed every
morning at 8 o'clock, four jerrycans of water for 180 detainees, the
innocent mixed in with the criminals...."  When he left the camp, the
newest arrival had number 13725, which gives some notion of the
"turnover" inside the camp, given the fact that detainees are
regularly freed, "six to ten every day, once the military judge
decides they're innocent," he says.

The sick are cared for, but as for the rest, he says it's "arrogance"
and "disdain" that are in charge.  He says Americans call every Iraqi
"Ali Baba" (thief) and are constantly yelling: "Back off!  On the
ground!  Up yours!"  Gaith Moussa Kazem thought he would be released
after twenty-one days, since, he says, that's the penalty for carrying
a firearm.  But that didn't happen, and, on the 23rd day, considering
the situation "intolerable," he joined some comrades in "demanding
freedom" and refusing to accept their meals.  They even organized a
demonstration and one of them -- somebody "feeble-minded," he
emphasizes -- tried to make an opening in the barbed wire.  The
soldiers fired: there were four deaths and "several wounded."  "The
bodies were later dragged about a hundred and fifty feet away and
cleared away," he says.

When they were transferred to the Abu-Ghraib prison, numbers 8839 and
149 other detainees thought they were about to be released.  When they
arrived in the notorious prison, a site of tortures and ordeals under
the fallen regime, 'there were fits of crying and hysteria."

The detainees were divided into the seven tents that took the place of
cells.  There they discovered former detention acquaintances they
thought had been freed.  Some of these had organized a protest
demonstration and two of them had been killed.  "Compared to
Abu-Ghraib, the Baghdad airport is a five-star hotel," one exclaims.
"There were no more blankets or pieces of cardboard there, only the
ground to sleep on under tents of torn cloth with four watchtowers
staring down."  The same meal, the same quantity of water, the same
toilets : "I felt so humiliated that I wanted to die," he adds.

After another demonstration and another hunger strike, some of them,
including Gaith, were released.  He is convinced that the
International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) had something to do
with it.  According to Nada Doumani, the ICRC spokesperson, the
occupation authorities have allowed visits to the principal centers of
detention, about thirty from the north to the south of the country.
The Americans, she adds, say they are detaining 5,000 prisoners,
divided into two categories : war prisoners and civilian detainees,
among whom it is necessary to distinguish "interned civilians" --
these are persons detained for security reasons without having been
apprehended for any crime or hostile act --, "security detainees," who
committed some act, and the "common-law criminals."

Prisoners of war are protected by the third Geneva convention,
civilians by the fourth.  Since the country is under occupation, the
ICRC is supposed to be able to visit detainees, including the "common
law criminals."  The problem, says Mrs. Doumani nevertheless, "is that
the Americans furnish incomplete lists of detainees to the ICRC.  So
far, things are o.k. for the prisoners of war and the "interned
civilians."  The notification process is not quite so good for the
"security detainees" and the "common-law criminals."

According to a sacrosanct principle, no information can be obtained
from the ICRC on conditions of detention.  Her objective, Mrs. Doumani
insists, is to be able to continue to visit prisoners regularly and
improve things.  In July the human rights organization Amnesty
International published an extremely critical report about American
forces.

--
Translated by Mark K. Jensen
Associate Professor of French
Chair, Department of Languages and Literatures
Pacific Lutheran University
Tacoma, WA 98447-0003
Phone: 253-535-7219
Webpage:  http://www.plu.edu/~jensenmk/
E-mail: jensenmk@xxxxxxx



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