The New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) has said abuse, torture and humiliation of Iraqi prisoners by US forces was routine and authorized. This continued even after the Abu Ghraib scandal came to light, it added.



A Pentagon spokesman refuted these charges and said that the treatment of the detainees is and has always been humane and 12 reviews had found that there was no policy condoning or encouraging abuse of prisoners in the custody of the Defense Department. But Mr. Sifton, author of the report, said that soldiers’ account revealed that prisoners routinely faced severe beatings, sleep deprivation and other abuses through 2003-2005. These accounts rebut the Administration’s claims that torture and abuse in Iraq was unauthorized and exceptional. Rather it was common and routinely used.



Photos showing US soldiers abusing and sexually humiliating Iraqi prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad airport in 2004 shocked the world and 11 troops have till date been convicted but no senior officer has been brought to book



The report gives first-hand accounts of abuses at a detention centre near Baghdad airport called Camp Nama as well as a facility near Mosul airport and a base at al-Qaim on the Syrian border.



An interrogator posted at Mosul in 2004 told the HRW that he and his colleagues were told by 6the officer in charge of their unit to use abuse techniques on some detainees. He described how they used dogs to intimidate the prisoners, made them walk in gravel on their knees and were made to stand for extended periods with their arms outstretched holding bottles of water.



Another interrogator based at Camp Nama said the use of abuse techniques was commonplace and authorization forms could be easily prepared for senior officers to sign. The soldier added that he never saw a sheet that was not signed. The HRW gives accounts of instances where those concerned about the abuses were thwarted from reporting it. A military police guard at Qaim who reportedly expressed his concerns to an officer was told that he should drop it and go ahead.



The HRW says that its findings show that criminal investigations need to follow the military chain of command instead of focusing in lower-ranked soldiers. The rights body calls on the US Congress to appoint an independent commission to investigate the extent of the problem and urges President Bush to appoint an independent prosecutor to investigate and prosecute the perpetrators of the abuse.



Mr. Sifton said that it was now clear that leaders were responsible and it was time that they were held accountable.



The Bush Administration has faced intense and sustained international criticism of prisoners in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. Earlier the White House announced that all US military detainees would be treated in line with the minimum standards of the Geneva Conventions. The policy shift came almost two weeks after the US Supreme Court ruled that the conventions applied to detainees.



The Geneva Conventions were passed following World War 11 are meant to guarantee minimum standards of protection to non-combatants and former combatants in war.



As it is a US rights group which has indicted its own countrymen and leadership for abuses and torture one has no alternative but to take note of the US attitude towards people living in other parts of the world except its allies. The Bush Administration’s way of functioning is a stark reminder of Adolf Hitler’s treatment of the Jews, whom successive US Administrations have and are supporting. Is there any difference then between Mr. George Walker Bush and Hitler? With the emergence of a unipolar world the US Administrations have become more and more arrogant and unbearable. They are not in the least bothered about world criticism because they know that their country is a Superpower both in terms of military might as well as economically. In the garb of ushering in democracy they have given a free hand to their armed forces to go to any length to torture, abuse and humiliate all those who are not its allies.



Via: BBC