US War Crimes- Evidence Piling Up

							US War Crimes: Evidence Piling Up
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Posted by Raja Mujtaba on Jan 26, 2011 in US | 21 comments

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By Patrick Martin

Military documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) after a lengthy




lawsuit under the Freedom of Information                                                    Act
provide important new evidence of American war crimes. The documents include autopsy
reports and investigative reports on the deaths of 190 prisoners held by the US military at
Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The more than 2,600 pages of documents were turned over to the ACLU on January 14 and made
public on the organization’s web site five days later.

An ACLU statement said that 25 to 30 cases were “unjustified homicides.” US military
investigators themselves identified many of the deaths as homicides, although there were very
few trials or convictions of the soldiers involved.

The ACLU issued a statement declaring: “So far, the documents released by the government
raise more questions than they answer, but they do confirm one troubling fact: that no senior
officials have been held to account for the widespread abuse of detainees. Without real
accountability for these abuses, we risk inviting more abuse in the future.”

Some of the deaths are well known cases of atrocities committed by American soldiers, such as
the killing of four prisoners who were shot and then thrown into a Baghdad canal in 2007. Others
are previously unknown or not widely reported.
The autopsy reports make for gruesome reading. One document details the beating death in 2003
of Abid Mowhosh, a prisoner at Abu Ghraib, the infamous prison outside Baghdad that was the
site of the largest number of deaths.

The autopsy report concludes: “This 56-year-old Iraqi detainee died of asphyxia and chest
compression. Significant findings of the autopsy included rib fractures and numerous contusions
(bruises), some of which were patterned due to impacts with a blunt object…”

Another autopsy report describes the killing of Farhad Mohamed following a military raid in
2004 in Mosul: “This approximately 27-year-old male civilian, presumed Iraqi national, died in
US custody approximately 72 hours after being apprehended. By report, physical force was
required during his initial apprehension during a raid. During his confinement, he was hooded,
sleep deprived and subjected to hot and cold environmental conditions, including the use of cold
water on his body and hood.”

The young man is described as a “well-developed, well-nourished male,” who was six feet tall
and 190 pounds. He died after three days of torture. The techniques described—hooding, sleep
deprivation, and some form of waterboarding—are prohibited under the Geneva Conventions.
Those who are responsible for his death are guilty of a war crime.

The ACLU highlighted one case in which a sergeant walked into a room where the prisoner was
lying wounded “and assaulted him… then shot him twice, thus killing him.” The sergeant then
told other soldiers present to lie about the murder. Another soldier, a corporal, subsequently shot
the corpse in the head.

According to a summary of the documents carried by CNN, US soldiers were suspects in 43 of
the deaths, with the rest due to natural causes, outside attacks on US prisons, or fighting among
prisoners. In 13 cases, probable cause for a murder prosecution was found and a total of 19
Americans were convicted of some offense.

The ACLU noted that more than one-quarter of all the deaths were attributed to cardiac
problems, although most of the prisoners appeared healthy when first detained. In restrained
language, the organization said, “This could potentially raise serious questions about the
conditions of confinement or interrogation of the detainees.”

Lt. Col. Tanya Bradsher, a Pentagon spokeswoman, told the press, “The fact that so many
autopsies and investigative reports exist indicates the seriousness with which the Department
takes its responsibilities regarding detainee treatment and accountability.” By this remarkable
logic, the 190 deaths in custody are proof, not of the savagery of American imperialism, but of
its humanitarian concern.

Equally remarkable is the response of the American media. As of Sunday afternoon, only six
mentions of the ACLU report were logged in a Google News search, of which three were by the
Iranian English-language Press TV. There was no mention of the material in the New York
Times, the Washington Post or any other television network besides CNN.
The ACLU released the documents one day after a federal appeals court upheld a lower-court
ruling that the Obama administration can continue to suppress transcripts in which former
prisoners of the CIA now held at Guantanamo Bay describe torture and abuse they suffered
while in CIA custody.

These prisoners are being denied their own statements, made to Combatant Status Review
Tribunals, the hearings held at Guantanamo to determine whether prisoners are “enemy
combatants.” The courts have refused to enforce requests for full transcripts of these hearings,
filed under the Freedom of Information Act, the same law used by the ACLU to obtain the
prisoner autopsy records.

The documents made public by the ACLU are a devastating exposure of the bloody role of
American imperialism in Afghanistan, Iraq and throughout the world. They deserve further study
and careful analysis. Along with the hundreds of thousands of documents made public by
WikiLeaks, they form the factual basis for a war crimes indictment of the leaders of the
American government.

Bush, Cheney & Co., along with their successors Obama and Biden, and all the top military and
foreign policy officials who served in both administrations, are guilty of the most serious crimes
against humanity. All these officials deserve to face an international war crimes tribunal.

As a veteran Middle East correspondent and former foreign editor, Patrick Martin has his finger




on the pulse of one of the most                      volatile regions in the world. His extensive
travels and assignments in the Middle East began in 1971 as a 20-year-old, when he
motorcycled across North Africa, and have included four years in the 1990s as The Globe and
Mail’s Middle East bureau chief. Most recently, in 2004, he returned to Iraq to cover its
handover to civilian authorities and its prospects for a peaceful future.

Across the region, Patrick has witnessed the resurgence of Islam as a political force and has
written extensively of its role in emerging democracies.

Courtesy WSWS


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By Patrick Martin: The documents made public by the ACLU are a devastating exposure of the bloody role of American

imperialism in Afghanistan, Iraq and throughout the world. They deserve further study and careful analysis. Along with the

hundreds of thousands of documents made public by WikiLeaks.




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