Allegations that US soldiers routinely tortured and maltreated detainees have emerged from a third Iraqi city, renewing fears that abuse similar to that inflicted in Abu Ghraib jail in Baghdad has been systematic and widespread.
US soldiers in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul beat and stripped detainees, threatened sexual abuse and forced them to listen to loud western music, according to statements seen by at least one media outlet.
Lawyers investigating the claims have sent details to the Pentagon and the British Ministry of Defense and have demanded an inquiry.
Though the abuse of prisoners at the Abu Ghraib jail and in Basra has been well-documented, this is the first time claims of abuse have been made from the north of the country.
Two statements have been taken from Iraqis detained in Mosul and more are expected. In one, an Iraqi lawyer says he was hooded and stripped naked in a building known as the "disco." Yasir Rubaii Saeed al-Qutaji describes how loud Western music was played and cold water poured over his body; he said that he was also threatened with being sexually abused.
"For the next 15 hours they tried to break me down by taking me frequently inside and repeating the stripping, cold water and loud music sequence," he said.
"Due to the very loud music, they would talk to me via a loudspeaker that was placed next to my ears," he said.
The beatings did not leave a mark on his body because his attackers wore special gloves, he said.
Al-Qutaji says he was a founder member of the Islamic Organization for Human Rights. He claims that other prisoners were treated even worse: "Some were burnt with fire, others [had] bandaged broken arms."
In a separate statement, Haitham Saeed al-Mallah, a Mosul-born engineering graduate says his house was raided by seven US soldiers in January.
"I was handcuffed and hooded and was then taken to an unknown place which they call `the disco,' where they played very loud music as one of their means of torture," he said.
"They left me standing for hours, handcuffed and hooded, which made me quite disorientated. Then I was kicked very hard on my stomach, which was followed by continuous beating with a stick and with their boots until I fell unconscious," he said.
"I only woke up after they poured over my head very cold water, which caused me great suffering," he said.
Al-Mallah said he was taken to a room where there was a "group torture."
"I heard nothing but screaming and suffering of detained Iraqis. The usage of cold water along with beating seemed to be a standard procedure. We were then asked to perform exhausting exercises of squatting while they were playing extremely loud music," he said.
Whoever fell to the ground out of exhaustion would receive painful beating and cold water. We were prevented from going to the toilets despite our pleas, which made many of us soil ourselves," he said.
Al-Mallah also said detainees were allowed to sleep for about two hours, after which the cycle of torture continued.
"The new thing this time was ordering us to shout, `Long live the United States.' We were also made to shout obscenities," he said.
Al-Mallah says the next day, he saw "a young man of 14 years of age bleeding from his anus and lying on the floor."
"He was Kurdish and his name was Hama. I heard the soldiers talking to each other about this guy, they mentioned that the reason for this bleeding was inserting a metal object in his anus," he said.
Al-Qutaji, who was detained in March, says that he and other Iraqi lawyers have been unable to stop abuses because US forces have been given immunity from prosecution.
Former head of the Coalition Provisional Authority, Paul Bremer, dismissed 120 of Iraq's senior judges, 45 of them in Mosul, on the grounds that they were supporters of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein's regime.
Phil Shiner, of the Birmingham-based law firm, Public Interest Lawyers, is trying to get the cases raised in the British courts. He is working with US lawyers to get them raised there.
"The British public needs to know the full implications of the decision to get into this war," he said.
A US Army spokesman yesterday said he was surprised by the allegations.
The Defense Ministry in London said it had not yet been made aware of the allegations.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
A top Vietnamese property tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion in damages. A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defense arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. “The defendant’s actions ... eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City. After the five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of