ACLU
Army’s Own Documents Acknowledge Evidence That Soldiers Used Torture
March 25, 2005
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: media@aclu.org
Government is Manipulating Release of Torture Documents in an Attempt to Minimize Scandal, ACLU Charges
NEW YORK - The American Civil Liberties Union today charged that the government is attempting to bury the torture scandal involving the U.S. military by failing to comply with a court order requiring release of documents to the ACLU. The documents the government does release are being issued in advance to the media in ways calculated to minimize coverage and public access, the ACLU said.
The reason for the delay in delivering the more than 1,200 pages of documents was evident, the ACLU said, in the contents, which include reports of brutal beatings, “exercise until exhaustion” and sworn statements that soldiers were told to “beat the fuck out of” detainees. One file cites evidence that Military Intelligence personnel in Iraq “tortured” detainees held in their custody.
“These documents provide further evidence that the torture of detainees was much more widespread than the government has acknowledged,” said ACLU attorney Jameel Jaffer. “At a minimum, the documents indicate a colossal failure of leadership.”
The documents were supposed to have been turned over to the ACLU on March 21, but were not released to the ACLU until late on a Friday of what for many is a holiday weekend. Select reporters received a CD-ROM with the documents before they were given to the ACLU. The ACLU’s practice has been to analyze the documents it receives and post them on its website, thus ensuring easy access to the media and the public.
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The documents released today include evidence of:
Abuse of a high school student detainee: Commander’s report of inquiry into broken jaw of a high-school boy (such that the boy required his mouth to be wired shut and could eat only through a straw). The victim was told “to say that I’ve fallen down and no one beat me.” The report concluded that the broken jaw was caused either as a result of a blow by a U.S. soldier or a collapse due to “complete muscle failure” from being excessively exercised. It found that “abuse of detainees in some form or other was an acceptable practice and was demonstrated to the inexperienced infantry guards almost as guidance” by 311th Battalion Military Intelligence personnel. Personnel “were striking the detainees,” and evidence suggested that the 311th Military Intelligence personnel and/or translators “engaged in physical torture of the detainees.” It was recommended that no punitive action be taken against the Commander of the Battalion. (See pp. 1173-1280)
Death of detainee with no history of medical problems: Abu Malik Kenami died while in detention in Mosul, Iraq. The investigation speculates that Kenami may have suffered a heart attack. On the day he died, Kenami had been “punished with ups and downs several times…and ha[d] his hands flex cuffed behind his back.” He was also hooded, with “a sandbag placed over [his] head.” “Ups and downs” are “a correctional technique of having a detainee stand up and then sit-down rapidly, always keeping them in constant motion.” The file states that “[t]he cause of Abu Malik Kenami’s death will never be known because an autopsy was never performed on him.” Kenami’s corpse was stored in a “reefer van” for five days before it was turned over to a local mortician. (See pp. 1281 - 1333)
Soldiers being told to “beat the fuck out of detainees”: Documents dated August 16, 2003, relating to an investigation into “alleged ROE and Geneva Convention violations” in Iraq include sworn statements relating to “Bulldog 6” telling soldiers to “take the detainee[s] out back and beat the fuck out of them.” (See pp. 1584-1613)
Perceptions of chain of command endorsement of “pay-back”: An informal investigation into an incident of abuse by soldiers while they were dropping detainees off for further questioning by the “3BCT MIT team” in Iraq. The MIT team saw the soldiers kicking blindfolded and “zipcuffed” detainees several times in the sides while yelling profanities at them. The investigation concludes that at least three TF 2-70 did abuse the detainees and adds that “some of the TF 2-70 may perceive that the chain-of-command is endorsing ‘pay-back’ by allowing the units most affected by suspected detainee actions to play the greatest role in bringing those suspects to justice.” (See pp. 1619-1755)
The page numbers noted above relate to PDF documents posted online at http://www.aclu.org/torturefoia/released/032505/index.html.
October 25, 2005 latimes.com : World News
THE WORLD
Autopsies Support Abuse Allegations
U.S. military documents show 21 war detainees were homicide victims, an ACLU report says.
By John Hendren, Times Staff Writer
WASHINGTON — Autopsy reports on 44 prisoners who died in U.S. custody in Iraq and Afghanistan indicate that 21 were victims of homicide, including eight who appear to have been fatally abused by their captors, the American Civil Liberties Union reported Monday.
The abuse involved cases in which detainees were smothered, beaten or exposed to the elements, sometimes during interrogation. Many of these cases had been brought to light previously but now have been confirmed through U.S. military autopsies. Some of the deaths followed abusive interrogations by elite Navy SEALs, military intelligence officers and the CIA, the ACLU said.
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“These documents present irrefutable evidence that U.S. operatives tortured detainees to death during interrogations,” said Amrit Singh, an attorney with the ACLU. “The public has a right to know who authorized the use of torture techniques and why these deaths have been covered up.”
The U.S. military has come under sustained criticism for its handling of detainees since photos of abuse at the U.S.-run Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad surfaced in April 2004. At least 141 prisoners have died in U.S. custody, according to Human Rights First, an advocacy group formerly known as the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights. That figure includes detainees who died of natural causes.
In one homicide case, a 47-year-old detainee died in U.S. custody from “blunt force injuries and asphyxia” on Jan. 9, 2004, in Al Asad, Iraq, after being shackled to the top of a door frame with a gag in his mouth, according to Army documents. Another document said the case involved “choking.”
US: Abu Ghraib-like torture of Afghans revealed, NYT chronicles death of two prisoners
Abuse of Afghans at Bagram base mirrors Abu-Gharib prisoner abuse, says report
Dawn
Friday, May 20, 2005
New york — The New York Times on Friday chronicled the death of two Afghan men at the hands of US Army interrogators at Afghanistan’s Bagram base, recalling the inhumane torture and treatment of prisoners at Abu-Graib prison in Iraq and Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. The story of Mr Dilawar’s brutal death at the Bagram Collection Point — and that of another detainee, Habibullah, who died there six days earlier in December 2002 — emerge from a nearly 2,000-page confidential file of the Army’s criminal investigation into the case, a copy of which was obtained by the newspaper.
The Times carried the report as its first lead with four full pages devoted to the details of the incidents. Like a narrative counterpart to the digital images from Abu Ghraib, the Bagram file depicts young, poorly trained soldiers in repeated incidents of abuse.
The harsh treatment, which has resulted in criminal charges against seven soldiers, went well beyond the two deaths, the newspaper said. In some instances, the Times says: “The testimony shows, it was directed or carried out by interrogators to extract information. In others, it was punishment meted out by military police guards. Sometimes, the torment seems to have been driven by little more than boredom or cruelty, or both.”
In sworn statements to Army investigators, soldiers describe one female interrogator with a taste for humiliation stepping on the neck of one prostrate detainee and kicking another in the genitals. They tell of a shackled prisoner being forced to roll back and forth on the floor of a cell, kissing the boots of his two interrogators as he went. Yet another prisoner is made to pick plastic bottle caps out of a drum mixed with excrement and water as part of a strategy to soften him up for questioning.
The Times obtained a copy of the file from a person involved in the investigation who was critical of the methods used at Bagram and the military’s response to the deaths. Although incidents of prisoner abuse at Bagram in 2002, including some details of the two men’s deaths, have been previously reported, American officials have characterized them as isolated problems that were thoroughly investigated. And many of the officers and soldiers interviewed in the Dilawar investigation said the large majority of detainees at Bagram were compliant and reasonably well
Yet the Bagram file includes ample testimony that harsh treatment by some interrogators was routine and that guards could strike shackled detainees with virtual impunity.
60 Minutes:
G.I. Attacked During Training
“When I said the word ‘red,’ he forced my head down against the steel floor and was sort of just grinding it into the floor.”
Spc. Sean Baker
(CBS) Pictures from Abu Ghraib prison tell a story that has shocked the world.
There are no pictures of what happened in the prison camp at Guantanamo last year. But Correspondent Bob Simon has a shocking story – and it’s not about what Americans did to foreign detainees. It’s about what Americans did to a fellow American soldier, Sean Baker.
Sean Baker has seizures an average of four times a week. 60 Minutes Wednesday went to see him a few weeks ago in a New York hospital.
Baker, a National Guardsman, was working last year as a military policeman in the Guantanamo Bay prison when other MPs injured him during a training drill. It was a drill during which Baker was only obeying orders.
“I was assaulted by these individuals,” says Baker. “Pure and simple.”
It’s all the more bizarre because Baker was considered a model soldier and he had served as an MP in Saudi Arabia during the First Gulf War.
Then, minutes after the attack on the Pentagon on Sept. 11, Baker made a phone call from the auto repair shop in Lexington, Ky., where he was working. “I had to get back in the military right then,” recalls Baker. “I had to go back then. I had to do something.”
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“‘We’re going to put you in a cell and extract you, have their IRF team come in and extract you. And what I’d like you to do is go ahead and strip your uniform off and put on this orange suit,’” says Baker, who was ordered to wear an orange jumpsuit, just like the ones worn by the detainees at Guantanamo.
“I’d never questioned an order before. But, at first I said, my only remark was, ‘Sir?’ Just in the form of a question. And he said, ‘You’ll be fine,’” recalls Baker. “I said, ‘Well, you know what’s gonna happen when they come in there on me?’ And he said, ‘Trust me, Spc. Baker. You will be fine.’”
Drills to practice extracting uncooperative prisoners took place every day, with a U.S. soldier playing the role of a detainee, but not in an orange jumpsuit, and not at full force.
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“My face was down. And of course, they’re pushing it down against the steel floor, you know, my right temple, pushing it down against the floor,” recalls Baker. “And someone’s holding me by the throat, using a pressure point on me and holding my throat. And I used the word, ‘red.’ At that point I, you know, I became afraid.”
Apparently, no one heard the code word ‘red’ because Baker says he continued to be manhandled, especially by an MP named Scott Sinclair who was holding onto his head.
“And when I said the word ‘Red,’ he forced my head down against the steel floor and was sort of just grinding it into the floor. The individual then, when I picked up my head and said, ‘Red,’ slammed my head down against the floor,” says Baker. “I was so afraid, I groaned out, ‘I’m a U.S. soldier.’ And when I said that, he slammed my head again, one more time against the floor. And I groaned out one more time, I said, ‘I’m a U.S. soldier.’ And I heard them say, ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa,’ you know, like he wanted to, he was telling the other guy to stop.”
Bloodied and disoriented, Baker somehow made it back to his unit, and his first thought was to get hold of the videotape. “I said, ‘Go get the tape,’” recalls Baker. “‘They’ve got a tape. Go get the tape.’ My squad leader went to get the tape.”
Every extraction drill at Guantanamo was routinely videotaped, and the tape of this drill would show what happened. But Baker says his squad leader came back and said, “There is no tape.”
“That was the only time that I heard that a tape had gone missing,” says Riley, Baker’s platoon sergeant.
“Of all the tapes, this was probably the most important one that we should have kept,” adds England.
Baker started having a seizure that morning and was whisked to the Naval Hospital at Guantanamo. “[He looked like] he’d had the crap beat out of him. He had a concussion. I mean, it was textbook,” says Riley. “[His face} was blank. You know, a dead stare, like he was seeing you, but really looking through you.”
