More horrific claims of rights violations in Uncle Sam's military prison camps in Iraq and Afghanistan—including threatening detainees who dared to complain of beatings and torture. One Iraqi detainee who was apparently beaten and injured was forced to drop his claim before being released, the American Civil Liberties Union says in a new report [2].
The ACLU said the new information came in files obtained from the Army that reveal previously undisclosed allegations of abuse by US soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. The release follows a court order directing the Defense Department and other agencies to comply with a year-old request under the Freedom of Information Act.
In one file, an Iraqi claimed interrogators in civilian clothing beat him in the head and stomach, dislocated his arms, "stepped on [his] nose until it [broke]," stuck an unloaded pistol in his mouth and fired the trigger, choked him with a rope and beat his leg with a baseball bat.
Medical reports said the detainee had a broken nose, fractured leg and scars on his stomach.
The detainee said he was forced by an US soldier to sign a statement renouncing the claims or else be kept in detention indefinitely. (UPI [3], Feb. 18)
Now here's the really scary question: how much longer will even the minimum redress of public exposure of such abuses be available, as the Bush regime opens ever-bigger loopholes in the FOIA in the name of "Homeland Security"? (See, e.g., American Univeristy Law Review [4], October 2003)
See our last post [5] on the ongoing torture affair.
