"One plaintiff, identified only as Neisef, claims that after he was taken from his home on the outskirts of Baghdad last November and sent to Abu Ghraib, Americans made him disrobe and attached electrical wires to his genitals. He claims he was shocked three times. Although a vein in his penis ruptured and he had blood in his urine, he says, he was refused medical attention. In another session, Neisef claims, he was held down by two men while a uniformed woman forced him to have sex with her. "I was crying," said Neisef, 28. "I felt like my whole manhood was gone." The class action also claims that detainees were raped in prison. On June 6, Neisef was released, after a U.S. civilian told him, he says, that he had been wrongly accused by informants. A U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad confirms that a prisoner with Neisef's ID number was released on that date, and TIME has obtained a copy of his release order. But the Pentagon would not comment on the specifics of Neisef's account."
truthout

US detainees 'murdered' during interrogations

Washington October 25, 2005 - At least 21 detainees who died while in US custody in Iraq and Afghanistan were the victims of homicide and usually died during or after interrogations, according to an analysis of Defence Department data.

The analysis by the American Civil Liberties Union, released today, looked at 44 deaths described in records obtained by the ACLU. Of those, the group characterised 21 as homicides, and said at least eight resulted from abusive techniques by military or intelligence officers, such as strangulation or "blunt force injuries", as noted in the autopsy reports.

The 44 deaths represent a partial group of the total number of prisoners who have died in US custody overseas; more than 100 have died of natural and violent causes.

In one case, the report said, a detainee died after being smothered during interrogation by military intelligence officers in November 2003. In another case cited by the report, a prisoner died of asphyxiation and blunt force injuries after he was left standing, shackled to the top of a door frame, with a gag in his mouth.

One Afghan civilian, believed by the ACLU to be Abdul Wahid, died from "multiple blunt force injuries" in 2003 at a base in Helmand province, Afghanistan, according to an autopsy report provided by the Defence Department.

Wahid, 28, was taken from his home by Afghan militia and accused of being a terrorist. The autopsy report said he died in American custody, although his father has blamed the militiamen.

The detailed list of prisoners whose deaths the report considered homicides includes two detainees who were beaten and died from "blunt force injuries" at the Bagram Airfield detention centre in Afghanistan, according to the autopsies.

Earlier this month, Private First Class Damien Corsetti, a military intelligence interrogator with the 519th MI Battalion at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, became the 15th soldier to face charges since those 2002 deaths.

Details about the detainee abuse and deaths have been released by the Pentagon as part of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the ACLU. Many of the incidents have been made public before, and in a number of cases the soldiers and officers involved have been prosecuted and punished.

"The US military does not tolerate mistreatment of detainees," army spokesman Colonel Joseph Curtin said. "Past cases have been fully investigated. When there is credible evidence, commanders have the prerogative to prosecute."

To date, there have been more than 400 investigations of detainee abuse, and more than 230 military personnel have received a court-martial, non-judicial punishment or other administrative action.

"There is no question that US interrogations have resulted in deaths," ACLU executive director Anthony Romero said. "High-ranking officials who knew about the torture and sat on their hands and those who created and endorsed these policies must be held accountable."

The data includes detainees who were interrogated by military intelligence, Navy Seals and "Other Governmental Agency" personnel, which generally refers to the CIA. - theage.com.au

Col. Janis Karpinski, the Former Head of Abu Ghraib, Admits She Broke the Geneva Conventions But Says the Blame "Goes All the Way to The Top"

Karpinski, the highest-ranking officer demoted in connection with the torture scandal, speaks out about what happened at the Abu Ghraib prison. She discusses: How the military hid "ghost detainees" from the International Red Cross in violation of international law;

Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller calling for the Gitmoization of Abu Ghraib and for prisoners to be "treated like dogs";

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's secret memos on interrogation policies that hung on the prison's walls;

The military's use of private (and possibly Israeli) interrogators;

Her dealings with the International Red Cross;

Why she feels, as a female general, she has been scapegoated for a scandal that has left the military and political leadership unscathed; and Calls for Donald Rumsfeld, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, Alberto Gonzalez and Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller to be held accountable for what happened.

democracy now

a 10/26/05 article on the World Socialist Website by Joanne Laurier entitled "PBS film documents Rumsfeld's role in authorizing torture":

"Featured prominently is John Yoo, who was a deputy assistant attorney general at the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel from 2001 to 2003. Yoo was the principal author of the Justice Department's memos arguing that President Bush had unlimited powers to prosecute the so-called "war on terror," dismissing the Geneva Conventions as outdated, and justifying a policy of state-sanctioned torture."

"Coldly defending his views, Yoo tells "Frontline": "The one thing I think we don't want is for the government to be hamstrung in the way it interrogates people who have knowledge of pending attacks on the United States because we have so much disagreement about what those phrases mean and that we can't do anything. So I think it's important that the government do figure out what that language means and how to apply it rather than operating [in] this sort of vague fog of uncertainty." Yoo lauds Israeli ‘coercive' techniques as the model for American interrogation methods."

"Yoo also discusses the infamous August 1, 2002 Justice Department memo that sharply narrowed the definition of torture. The memo stated that physical pain must be "equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death" and that inflicting such pain must have been the "specific intent" of the defendant to amount to torture. It also claimed that US ratification of a 1994 anti-torture statute could be deemed unconstitutional because it infringed on the president's power as commander in chief."

From: here

Cheney pushes to limit ban on detainee abuse

October 26, 2005 BY LIZ SIDOTI WASHINGTON -- Congressional negotiators are feeling heat from the White House as they consider whether to back a Senate-approved ban on torturing detainees in U.S. custody or weaken it as the White House prefers.

Led by Vice President Dick Cheney, the Bush administration is floating a proposal that would allow the president to exempt covert agents outside the Defense Department from the prohibition.

Some newspapers are urging lawmakers to support Sen. John McCain's provision that would ban the use of ''cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment'' against anyone in U.S. government custody.

''There's a lot of public pressure to retain the language intact. At the same time, there's pressure from the vice president's office to modify it,'' said Tom Malinowski, the Washington advocacy director for Human Rights Watch, which supports McCain's provision.

Cheney and CIA Director Porter Goss met last week with McCain (R-Ariz.), and suggested excluding from the torture ban overseas clandestine counterterrorism operations by agencies other than the Pentagon ''if the president determines that such operations are vital to the protection of the United States or its citizens from terrorist attack.''

House, Senate bills differ

On Tuesday, White House press secretary Scott McClellan said, ''The president's made our position very clear: We do not condone torture, nor would he ever authorize the use of torture.''

McCain, a former prisoner of war in Vietnam, said he rejected the administration's alternative language because ''that would basically allow the CIA to engage in torture.''

It's unclear just how much influence McCain has in the House-Senate negotiations to iron out differences between House and Senate versions of the $445 billion defense bill. McCain won't be directly involved in those negotiations.

suntimes.com

links to D.C Pedophile/abduction ring

The Bush administration's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell Policy." U.S. intelligence sources who served in Iraq report that after photos from Abu Ghraib prison surfaced of naked male prisoners who were forced by their U.S. guards to form human pyramids and masturbate, the U.S. military went into total denial mode. "It was a 'don't ask, don't tell policy,'" according to one intelligence source who was assigned to both the Abu Ghraib and Camp Bucca prisons. Federal Judge Alvin Hellerstein has ordered the Pentagon to release to the American Civil Liberties Union 74 photos and 3 videotapes taken at Abu Ghraib in 2003. However, the Pentagon is resisting the judge's order.

U.S. intelligence sources: Sexually-explicit photos at Abu Ghraib special ordered by a homosexual and pedophile ring inside the Bush White House

There is good reason for the embarrassment of the Pentagon in the affair. The orders to take the sexually-oriented photos and videos, some of which involve teenage Iraqi boys and girls and sodomization by their guards, came directly from a pedophile and closeted male homosexual ring operating in the White House, according to the intelligence sources. Copies of the tapes and photos were sent directly to the White House for the entertainment of senior members of the Bush White House, including officials in the Vice President's office and the Executive Office of the President.

When the photos at Abu Ghraib became public, the senior military command structure in Iraq "went nuts," according to an individual who witnessed the cover-up of the affair. "They ordered an immediate policy of denial about details of the prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib," said the source. The source added that senior officers were disgusted that lower ranking guards were prosecuted and jailed when the order for the mistreatment came directly from the White House.

Wayne Madsen

see: Bush The fellowship or the ring?

New Army Documents Confirm Black Ops "Special Access Program" Unit Covered Up Detainee Abuse

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Army Knew of Systemic Abuse in Afghanistan Back in January 2002

NEW YORK -- The American Civil Liberties Union today released new documents obtained from the Defense Department detailing abuse at U.S. facilities in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay. Included in the release is the first publicly available government document confirming the existence of a secret "Special Access Program" involving a special ops unit, Task Force 6-26, which has been implicated in numerous detainee abuse incidents in Iraq, and whose operatives used fake names to thwart an Army investigation.

"These documents confirm that the torture of detainees and its subsequent cover-up was part of a larger clandestine operation, in all likelihood, authorized by senior government officials," said ACLU attorney Amrit Singh. "Despite mounting evidence of systemic abuse authorized or endorsed from above, however, not a single high level official has thus far been brought to justice."

In one Army file, an investigator states that he is unable to continue an investigation into claims that a detainee captured by Task Force 6-26 in Tikrit, Iraq, was stripped, humiliated and physically abused until he passed out, because the unit accused of the abuse is part of the Special Access Program (SAP). A memorandum included in the report states that "fake names were used by the 6-26 members" and that the unit claimed to have a computer malfunction which resulted in the loss of 70 percent of their files. The memorandum concludes, "Hell, even if we reopened [the investigation] we wouldn’t get any more information than we already have."

Also included in the documents released today is a heavily redacted memo referring to a December 10, 2002 "SERE INTERROGATION SOP" (Standard Operating Procedure) for Guantánamo. SERE, which stands for "Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape," is a secret military program under which detainees held in U.S. custody abroad are subjected to harsh interrogation techniques. According to the ACLU, this document shows that such techniques may have been formally authorized in a memo to military personnel at Guantánamo. The ACLU said it is unclear how this document relates to abusive interrogation techniques authorized for use in Guantánamo by Secretary Rumsfeld in a separate memo on December 2, 2002.

Several sworn statements of military intelligence personnel and a written "Chronology of Guard/Detainee Issues" also released today confirm that the Army began receiving reports of detainees being brutally beaten and abused in Afghanistan as early as January 2002. The documents show that abuse continued into 2004. A February 16, 2004 memorandum recording an interview of an American interrogator stationed in "Orgun-E Military Intelligence Detention Facility" in Afghanistan reveals that its "Standard Operating Procedure" included keeping detainees awake, standing and blindfolded without food for the first 24 hours. The interrogator also refers to standard practices of "OGA" (a common military reference to the CIA) that include the use of drugs and prolonged sensory deprivation. A February 12, 2004 memorandum records the use of a "Fear Up approach" involving "disrespect for the Koran," insulting the detainee, having a room upstairs with spotlights and turning the music on very loud.

In a March 28, 2004 report released today, the Inspector General of the Combined/Joint Task Force 180 in Bagram found several problems with detainee operations in Afghanistan, including a lack of training and oversight on acceptable interrogation techniques. The report states that "Army doctrine simply does not exist" and that detainees are not afforded "with the privileges associated with Enemy or Prisoner of War status" or the Geneva Conventions.

The documents further reveal gruesome accounts of torture and abuse by U.S. military personnel in Iraq. In one 2004 document, a civil contractor recounts in a sworn statement that he witnessed Marines pouring peroxide and water over the open wounds of an Iraqi prisoner. The contractor also reports that soldiers with the 372nd Military Police Company used slingshots against Iraqi children attempting to steal food from the base.

In another document, following the release of images of abuse at Abu Ghraib, one officer wrote on May 6, 2004, that abusive interrogation techniques, such as the application of cold or ice, loud music, sleep deprivation and confining detainees to a metal box, will "continue to cause us problems, as some interrogation techniques aren’t real defensible given the Abu Ghraib fallout."

The documents released today are a result of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed by the ACLU, the Center for Constitutional Rights, Physicians for Human Rights, Veterans for Common Sense and Veterans for Peace. The New York Civil Liberties Union is co-counsel in the case.

The FOIA lawsuit is being handled by Lawrence Lustberg and Megan Lewis of the New Jersey-based law firm Gibbons, Del Deo, Dolan, Griffinger & Vecchione, P.C. Other attorneys in the case are Singh, Jameel Jaffer and Judy Rabinovitz of the ACLU; Arthur N. Eisenberg and Beth Haroules of the NYCLU; and Barbara Olshansky of the Center for Constitutional Rights.

To date, almost 90,000 pages of government documents have been released in response to the ACLU's Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. The ACLU has been posting these documents online at www.aclu.org/torturefoia.

The documents released today are available at: http://action.aclu.org/torturefoia/released/011206

Five Danish soldiers found guilty of abuse in Iraq - But NOT PUNISHED

ISN SECURITY WATCH (Friday, 13 January: 14.24 CET) – A Danish army captain and four military police officers have been found guilty of violating human rights conventions during interrogations of detainees in Iraq, news agencies reported. Captain Annemette Hommel and four co-defendants violated the rights of the detainees by forcing them to kneel in uncomfortable positions during questioning, a judge ruled on Thursday, adding that because of "extenuating circumstances", the five would not be punished. Denmark has around 500 troops in southern Iraq. - .isn.ethz.ch/

Army Officer Found Guilty in Iraqi's Death

By JON SARCHE, Associated Press Writer 1 hour, 9 minutes ago

FORT CARSON, Colo. - An Army interrogator committed negligent homicide when he put a sleeping bag over an Iraqi general's head and sat on his chest as the man suffocated, a military jury found.

Attorneys for Chief Warrant Officer Lewis Welshofer Jr. said he believed the general had information that would "break the back of the whole insurgency" at a time when soldiers were being killed in an increasingly lethal and bold resistance.

But prosecutor Maj. Tiernan Dolan maintained that Welshofer tortured Iraqi Maj. Gen. Abed Hamed Mowhoush at a detention camp in 2003, treating him "worse than you would treat a dog."

After six hours of deliberations, the panel of six Army officers spared Welshofer on the more serious charge of murder - which carries a potential life sentence - instead convicting him late Saturday of negligent homicide and negligent dereliction of duty. He was acquitted of assault.

Welshofer stood silently and showed no reaction when the verdict was announced. He could be dishonorably discharged and sentenced to a maximum three years and three months in prison at a Monday hearing.

Defense attorney Frank Spinner said he would decide after sentencing whether to appeal. "The verdict recognizes the context in which these events took place," he said. "It was a very difficult time in Iraq. There was confusion, and they were not getting clear guidance from headquarters."

Welshofer and prosecutors left without commenting.

During the trial, prosecutors described a rogue interrogator who became frustrated with Mowhoush's refusal to answer questions and escalated his techniques from simple interviews to beatings to simulating drowning, and finally, to death.

Welshofer used his sleeping bag technique in the presence of lower ranking soldiers, but never in the presence of officers with the authority to stop him, Dolan said. The treatment of the Iraqi general "could fairly be described as torture," Dolan said.

In an e-mail to a commander, Dolan said, Welshofer wrote that restrictions on interrogation techniques were impeding the Army's ability to gather intelligence. Welshofer wrote that authorized techniques came from Cold War-era doctrine that did not apply in Iraq, Dolan said.

"Our enemy understands force, not psychological mind games," Dolan quoted from Welshofer's message. Dolan said an officer responded by telling Welshofer to "take a deep breath and remember who we are."

The defense had argued a heart condition caused Mowhoush's death, and that Welshofer's commanders had approved the interrogation technique.

"What he was doing he was doing in the open, and he was doing it because he believed the information in fact would save lives," Spinner said.

He asked jurors to consider deadly conditions in Iraq at the time of the interrogation. Welshofer had to make some decisions on his own because guidance was lacking and other techniques weren't working, Spinner said.

Officials believed Mowhoush had information that would "break the back of the whole insurgency," said defense attorney Capt. Ryan Rosauer. They also thought Mowhoush helping to bring foreign fighters into Iraq from across the Syrian border, he said.

Several prosecution witnesses, including one whose identity is classified and who testified in a closed session, had been granted immunity in exchange for their cooperation, Spinner noted. Two soldiers who were initially charged with murder in the case also were given immunity. - news.yahoo.com

CACI Awarded $156 Million Contract to Support U.S. Army Intelligence Center

09.03.2006 - ARLINGTON, Va., March 9 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- CACI International Inc announced today the award of a $156 million contract to provide information technology (IT) systems support to the U.S. Army Intelligence Center's University of Military Intelligence (UMI) in Fort Huachuca, Arizona. The contract was awarded for an eight-month base period with four option years, and was won under the General Services Administration ANSWER (Applications'n Support for Widely-diverse EndUser Requirements) contract vehicle. The award brings a new client to CACI and was awarded to Information Support Systems, Inc. (ISS) shortly before the completion of CACI's acquisition of ISS, which was announced on March 1, 2006.

CACI will provide UMI with mission-critical IT, training, and courseware development. This includes updating the content of existing course offerings, supplying updated software and secure servers, and assisting with upgrading legacy courseware. CACI will also help the Intelligence Center manage the enrollment, examination, and award of credit for military intelligence training. In addition, the company will provide IT support to other technology-based initiatives within the Intelligence Center.

CACI President of U.S. Operations Paul Cofoni, said, "CACI is proud to support the U.S. Army Intelligence Center in its emerging capability for distributing military intelligence training where and when it is needed worldwide. Our recently arrived ISS professionals are already supporting UMI on several smaller efforts, and this award represents a great vote of confidence in their ability to expand their services and bring continued high- quality support to this important mission."

According to Dr. J.P. (Jack) London, CACI Chairman, President, and CEO, "This contract award with the U.S. Army Intelligence Center confirms that our recent acquisition of Information Support Systems, Inc. was a significant positive move for CACI. ISS provides outstanding support to its clients, is making an immediate impact on CACI's growth, and will strengthen our drive to align CACI solutions with America's urgent national priorities in defense, intelligence, and homeland security." - finanzen.net

Revelations add to picture of US torture

Eric Schmitt and Carolyn Marshall / SMH | March 19 2006

AS THE Iraqi insurgency intensified in early 2004, an elite US special operations forces unit converted one of Saddam Hussein's former military bases near Baghdad into a top-secret prison. There, US soldiers turned a former government torture chamber into their own interrogation cell, calling it the Black Room.

In the windowless room, soldiers beat prisoners with rifle butts, spat in their faces and used them for target practice in games of jailhouse paintball. Their aim was to extract information to help hunt down Iraq's most wanted terrorist, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, US Defence Department personnel said.

The Black Room was part of a temporary prison at Camp Nama, the secret headquarters of the elite Taskforce 6-26. Located at Baghdad International Airport, the camp was the first stop for many insurgents on their way to nearby Abu Ghraib prison.

Pentagon personnel who worked at Camp Nama said prisoners often disappeared into a detention black hole, barred from access to lawyers or relatives, and confined for weeks without charges. "There were no rules there," one Pentagon official said.

The revelation adds to the picture of harsh interrogation practices at US prisons in Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as well as at secret CIA jails around the world.

The account of Taskforce 6-26 reveals the extent to which prisoners were mistreated months before and after the abuse at Abu Ghraib was made public in April 2004, and it makes nonsense of the original Pentagon assertions that abuse was confined to a small number of rogue reservists.

Taskforce 6-26 has had a high percentage of its troops punished for prisoner abuse.

At one point, a Defence undersecretary, Stephen Cambone, ordered his deputy, Lieutenant-General William Boykin to, "get to the bottom" of any misconduct.

A melting pot of military and civilian units, Taskforce 6-26 was formed in mid-2003. CIA officers, FBI agents and special operations forces from other countries also worked closely with the taskforce.

The unit had one priority: to capture or kill Zarqawi, the Jordanian militant operating in Iraq. "Anytime there was even the smell of Zarqawi nearby, they would go out and use any means possible to get information from a detainee," one official said. The harsh treatment of prisoners extended beyond Camp Nama to outposts in Baghdad, Falluja, Balad, Ramadi and Kirkuk.

At these some prisoners were stripped naked and had cold water thrown on them to cause the sensation of drowning, Pentagon personnel who served with the unit said.

In January 2004, the taskforce captured the son of one of Saddam's bodyguards in Tikrit. The man told army investigators he was forced to strip and that he was punched in the spine until he fainted, put in front of an air-conditioner while cold water was poured on him and kicked in the stomach until he vomited. Army investigators closed their inquiry in June 2005 after they said taskforce members used battlefield pseudonyms that made it impossible to identify the soldiers involved. The unit also claimed that 70 per cent of its computer files had been lost.

Despite the taskforce's access to a wide range of intelligence, its raids often failed, yielding little if any intelligence, Pentagon officials said. By early 2004, the CIA and the FBI had expressed alarm about the military's harsh interrogation techniques.

In the middle of 2004, Camp Nama closed and the unit moved to a new headquarters in Balad, 70 kilometres north of Baghdad. The unit's operations are now shrouded in even tighter secrecy.

The Justice Department inspector-general is investigating complaints of detainee abuse by Taskforce 6-26, a senior law enforcement official said. - - smh.com.au

U.S. deserter tells of atrocities

By ANDREW DAVIDSON TORONTO (CP) -

A "trigger-happy" U.S. army squad leader shot the foot off an unarmed Iraqi man and soldiers kicked a severed head around like a soccer ball, a U.S. war deserter told an Immigration and Refugee Board hearing Thursday. Joshua Key, the first U.S. deserter with combat experience in Iraq to apply for refugee status in Canada, told the board he witnessed numerous atrocities committed by U.S. forces while serving eight months as a combat engineer. Key, 27, said he was never trained on the Geneva Convention and was told in Iraq by superior officers that the international law guiding humanitarian standards was just a "guideline."

"It's shoot first, ask questions later," Key said of his squad's guiding principles. "Everything's justified."

Key is one of five members of the U.S. armed forces asking for asylum in Canada.

But the Oklahoma native is unique in that he is the only applicant that has combat experience in Iraq, said Key's lawyer, Jeffry House. The other are seeking asylum in Canada to avoid being sent there, he said. "He has boots-on-the-ground experience about what the actual conduct of the war in Iraq is," House said outside the hearing.

With visible bags under his eyes, Key told the hearing he suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder and frequently has nightmares over what he witnessed in Iraq. He recalled participating in almost nightly raids on homes of suspected insurgents in Ramadi and Fallujah as a member of the 43rd Combat Engineer Company. He said that while the raids seldom turned up anything of interest, he often saw soldiers ransack the homes and steal jewelry or money, while superior officers looked the other way. He also said several Iraqis were shot dead, and that they were cases of soldiers "shooting out of fear and inventing reasons afterward."

In Ramadi, Key said he saw the beheaded bodies of four Iraqis beside a shot-up truck and witnessed several members of the Florida National Guard kick a severed head "like a soccer ball."

Key also said he witnessed one of his "trigger happy" platoon's squad sergeants shoot part of an unarmed Iraqi man's foot off in Khaldia, a village between Fallujah and Ramadi. The man was sitting on a chair outside a store and had raised his foot as a sign of disrespect, he said.

Key added he was never questioned about the incident and was not aware of any charges being laid.

Keith Brennenstuhl, the IRB member overseeing the hearing, ruled at an earlier hearing that the board would not consider the legality of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

Key also described seeing U.S. soldiers indiscriminately kick and scream at two hooded and naked detainees while escorting them to a grassy area to relieve themselves.

Brennenstuhl asked Key whether he received any interrogation training before dragging detainees out of their homes during raids.

"The only thing we were told was how to keep them quiet," Key said, explaining that soldiers cuffed prisoners' hands behind their backs and put hoods over their heads.

"Could they breathe?" Brennenstuhl asked.

"I guess it wasn't my concern," Key responded, adding that officers said the hoods were designed "to humiliate them."

Key, the father of four young children, told the hearing he joined the army for steady pay and medical coverage for his family. He said he initially went to Iraq as a willing participant because he believed U.S. intelligence claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. But Key became disillusioned with the war during his service and decided to abandon his contract with the army during a two-week leave from Iraq in November 2003. He and his family lived on the run in Philadelphia before crossing the border at Niagara Falls, N.Y., on March 3, 2005. Key now works as a welder in Fort St. John, B.C. He and his wife Brandi have four children between the ages of seven months and six years. If returned to the United States, Key said he believed the army would "make an example" of him as a way to deter other possible deserters.

Lawyers from all parties will submit their written submissions in the coming weeks before the board rules on Key's application. - cnews.canoe.ca

Inspectors Find More Torture at Iraqi Jails

Top General's Pledge To Protect Prisoners 'Not Being Followed'

By Ellen Knickmeyer - Washington Post Foreign Service Monday, April 24, 2006

BAGHDAD -- Last Nov. 13, U.S. soldiers found 173 incarcerated men, some of them emaciated and showing signs of torture, in a secret bunker in an Interior Ministry compound in central Baghdad. The soldiers immediately transferred the men to a separate detention facility to protect them from further abuse, the U.S. military reported.

Since then, there have been at least six joint U.S.-Iraqi inspections of detention centers, most of them run by Iraq's Shiite Muslim-dominated Interior Ministry. Two sources involved with the inspections, one Iraqi official and one U.S. official, said abuse of prisoners was found at all the sites visited through February. U.S. military authorities confirmed that signs of severe abuse were observed at two of the detention centers.

But U.S. troops have not responded by removing all the detainees, as they did in November. Instead, according to U.S. and Iraqi officials, only a handful of the most severely abused detainees at a single site were removed for medical treatment. Prisoners at two other sites were removed to alleviate overcrowding. U.S. and Iraqi authorities left the rest where they were.

This practice of leaving the detainees in place has raised concerns that detainees now face additional threats. It has also prompted fresh questions from the inspectors about whether the United States has honored a pledge by Marine Gen. Peter Pace, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, that U.S. troops would attempt to stop inhumane treatment if they saw it.

Pace said at a news conference Nov. 29 with Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, "It is absolutely the responsibility of every U.S. service member, if they see inhumane treatment being conducted, to intervene to stop it." Turning to Pace, Rumsfeld responded: "I don't think you mean they have an obligation to physically stop it; it's to report it."

"If they are physically present when inhumane treatment is taking place, sir, they have an obligation to try to stop it," Pace answered.

The Iraqi official familiar with the joint inspections said detainees who are not moved to other facilities are left vulnerable. "They tell us, 'If you leave us here, they will kill us,' " said the Iraqi official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because, he said, he and other Iraqis involved with inspections had received death threats.

The U.S. official involved in the inspections, who would not be identified by name, described in an e-mail the abuse found during some of the visits since the Nov. 13 raid: "Numerous bruises on the arms, legs and feet. A lot of the Iraqis had separated shoulders and problems with their hands and fingers too. You could also see strap marks on some of their backs."

"I was not in charge of the team who went to the sites. If so, I would have taken them out," the U.S. official wrote, referring to the detainees. "We set a precedent and we were given guidance" from the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, "but for some reason it is not being followed."

Maj. Gen. John D. Gardner, the commander of U.S. detention operations in Iraq, said in an interview, "I would strongly disagree with the statement that Americans are seeing cases of abuse and not doing anything."

The issue goes to the heart of U.S. relations with the Iraqi government, which is led by Shiite religious parties. The Interior Ministry, whose forces are overwhelmingly Shiite, has been accused by Sunni Arabs and U.S. officials of operating death squads that target Sunni men. Increasingly, Interior Ministry forces are being accused of other crimes as well, including kidnapping for ransom. The Interior Ministry forces have also been accused of deferring to militias belonging to the Shiite religious parties, from whose ranks many of Iraq's police commandos and other ministry forces are drawn.

The Iraqi government says the cases of abuse, illegal detention and killings by the Shiite death squads are few, and it denies involvement in kidnappings. The U.S. military has said it is devoting 2006 to building up and reforming Iraq's police forces.

After the Nov. 13 disclosures, the highest-ranking U.S. officials in Iraq -- Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad and Army Gen. George W. Casey Jr. -- issued rare public rebukes to their Iraqi government allies.

At the insistence of U.S. officials, Iraq agreed to the joint inspections of what the United States said would be all of Iraq's more than 1,000 detention centers.

The two sources involved in the joint inspections said the visits after November included an Interior Ministry detention center in Baghdad, which was inspected twice; a Defense Ministry site near the Green Zone; an Interior Ministry site in the city of Kut; an Interior Ministry site in the Muthanna neighborhood of Baghdad; and a "maximum crimes facility" in Baghdad.

The two sources said that at three of those sites, prisoners were being held by the Wolf Brigade, one of the Interior Ministry commando forces most feared by Sunnis.

After the Nov. 13 raid, Iraqi-U.S. teams inspected ministry sites on Dec. 8, Dec. 20, Dec. 28, Jan. 19, Feb. 16 and March 22, according to Lt. Col. Kevin Curry, spokesman for U.S. detention operations.

Curry added in a statement: "At one of the sites, thirteen detainees showed signs of abuse that required immediate medical care. The signs of abuse included broken bones, indications that they had been beaten with hoses and wires, signs that they had been hung from the ceiling, and cigarette burns. These individuals were transferred to a nearby Iraqi detention facility and provided medical care. Most of the abuse appeared to have occurred prior to arriving at that site.

"There were several cases of physical abuse at one other inspection site. These included evidence of scars, missing toenails, dislocated shoulders, severe bruising, and cigarette burns. At the time of the inspection, most of the apparent injuries were months old; however, there were indications that three cases of abuse occurred within a week of the inspection. No detainee required immediate hospitalization for injuries at that site," Curry said.

"If a soldier at any level sees abuse of an Iraqi somewhere or hears of it . . . we certainly take it seriously and pursue it," Gardner said. "We take it extremely seriously, and part of the goal is to develop a detention process that's free of abuse."

Curry's statement confirmed abuse depicted in accounts and photographs given earlier to The Washington Post by the U.S. and Iraqi officials involved in the inspections, including the dislocated shoulders that the officials said were caused by hanging detainees from ceilings.

"I don't want to downplay the level of abuse," Gardner said of the cases found during inspections. "In some of them, there were a couple where it was pretty severe."

"Two facilities had clear signs of abuse, although we found some signs of prior abuse in select detainees at each of the six inspections," Gardner said in a statement. "Cases where the abuse appeared to have been committed within the last 3-4 days the detainees were evacuated for medical attention. We do not leave the facility until we are assured that the detainees are safe from physical abuse at that site.

"During all six inspections other deficiencies were noted and provided for corrective action," Gardner said in the statement. "We feel these actions are consistent with the comments Gen. Pace made earlier in the year."

U.S. efforts to eliminate torture in Iraq's prisons and detention centers include training Iraqi corrections officers, increasing capacity at detention centers and training Iraqi security forces on the rights and care of detainees, Gardner said.

The Iraqi official involved in the inspections said he saw abused detainees at all the sites visited. At a sandbagged checkpoint in Baghdad's Green Zone, the official pulled from his pocket a press clipping quoting Pace's remarks of Nov. 29, unfolded it and read it aloud.

"I want them to do what General Pace said," the Iraqi official said. Interior Ministry forces and allied Shiite militias have become more adept at hiding detainees and they kidnap victims from inspectors, he said. Iraqis "are looking for some of the Americans to do the right thing," he added. "Don't be intimidated by the Iraqi politicians."

According to the Iraqi official, the Americans initially said they would suspend their policy of removing prisoners from sites where abuse was found until after Iraq's national elections, which were held Dec. 15, because disclosures of Interior Ministry abuses were politically sensitive. The elections came and went, the official said, and the Americans continued leaving detainees at sites that held bruised, burned and limping prisoners.

Iraqi Justice Minister Abdul Hussein Shandal, however, said the Americans "don't have the right" to transfer detainees from detention centers operated by Iraqi ministries. The Nov. 13 raid "was the last incident in which the U.S. asked for such a transfer," he said.

While the interviews with top U.S. and Iraqi officials confirmed the continuing findings of torture victims at Iraqi detention centers, Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, the main U.S. military spokesman in Iraq, broadly denied in remarks to U.S. reporters in Baghdad that any abuse had been found at any of the centers since the initial raid on Nov. 13.

"In these facilities that we did inspect unannounced, we saw no signs of abuse," Lynch told reporters at a briefing March 30. "The facilities were, by our standards, overcrowded, but the people being held at those facilities were being properly taken care of; they were being fed, they had water, they were taken care of. So no abuse, no evidence of torture in those facilities."

Khalilzad, the U.S. ambassador, said in an interview that when Americans find abuse, "we document it, we investigate, we do a report, and we ultimately pass that report to the government."

After abuse was found at one Interior Ministry site, "that very day I went and talked to the government," Khalilzad said. "We take this very seriously."

Khalilzad's calls to rein in Shiite security forces and militias have put him on increasingly prickly terms with some members of Iraq's governing coalition of Shiite religious parties. Khalilzad has repeatedly urged that Interior Ministry forces be brought under the control of a nonsectarian minister.