The Inside Assyria Discussion Forum

=> More Soliders Are Coming Out On Iraqi Abuses

More Soliders Are Coming Out On Iraqi Abuses

Posted by Tony (Guest) - Saturday, May 8 2004, 20:33:05 (CEST)
from 24.24.129.122 - cpe-24-24-129-122.socal.rr.com

Commercial -

Windows XP -

Internet Explorer
Website:
Website title:

Soldiers Back in U.S. Tell of More Iraqi Abuses

By Adam Tanner

ANTIOCH, California (Reuters) - Three U.S. military policemen who
served at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison said on Thursday they had
witnessed unreported cases of prisoner abuse and that the practice
against Iraqis was commonplace.

"It is a common thing to abuse prisoners," said Sgt. Mike Sindar, 25,
a National Guardsman with the 870th Military Police Company based in
the San Francisco Bay area. "I saw beatings all the time.

"A lot of people had so much pent-up anger, so much aggression."

U.S. treatment of Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib has stirred wide
international condemnation after the publication of photos in recent
days showing Americans sexually humiliating prisoners. Six soldiers
in Iraq (news - web sites) have been charged in the case and
President Bush (news - web sites) apologized publicly on Thursday.

Although public attention has focused on the dehumanizing photos,
some members of the 870th MP unit say the faces in those images were
far from the only ones engaged in cruel behavior.

"It was not just these six people," Sindar, who shaves his head and
wears a large tattoo on his forearm, told Reuters. "Yes, the beatings
happen, yes, all the time."

Ramone Leal, 25, said one female soldier in his unit fired off a
slingshot into a crowd of prisoners, injuring one. Another group of
soldiers knocked a 14-year-old boy to the ground as he arrived at the
prison and then twisted his arm.

"The soldiers were laughing at him," said Leal, who like the others
interviewed for this article has since returned to California. "I saw
the other soldiers that would take out their frustrations on the
prisoners."

Until earlier this year prisoners would arrive at Abu Ghraib with
broken bones, suggesting they had been roughed up, he said, but the
practice ended in January or February.

A sergeant in their group was admonished last year after holding down
a prisoner for other men to beat, both Leal and Sindar said. They
said they saw hooded prisoners with racial taunts written on the
hoods such as "camel jockey' or slogans such as "I tried to kill an
American but now I'm in jail."

Photos obtained by Reuters show U.S. soldiers looking into body bags
of three Iraqi prisoners killed by 870th MP guards during a prison
riot in the fall of 2003. One photograph shows a bearded man with
much of his bloodied forehead removed by the force of a bullet.

"We were constantly being attacked, we had terrible support ... also
being extended all the time, a lot of us had problems with our loved
ones suffering from depression," said MP Dave Bischell. "It all
contributes to the psychological component of soldiers when they get
stressed."

When military investigators were looking into abuses several months
ago, they gave U.S. guards a week's notice before inspecting their
possessions, several soldiers said.

"That shows you how lax they are about discipline. 'We are going to
look for contraband in here, so hint, hint, get rid of the stuff,'
that's the way things work in the Guard," Leal said.

---------------------

- BACK TO INDEX - REPLY - QUOTE - EDIT - DELETE -

The full topic:
No replies.

Content-length: 3811
Content-type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded
Accept: image/gif, image/x-xbitmap, image/jpeg, image/pjpeg, application/vnd.ms-powerpoint, application/vnd.ms-excel, applicatio...
Accept-encoding: gzip, deflate
Accept-language: en-us
Cache-control: no-cache
Connection: Keep-Alive
Cookie: *hidded*
Host: www.insideassyria.com
Referer: http://www.insideassyria.com/rkvsf/rkvsf_core.php?.HOkr.
User-agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; .NET CLR 1.0.3705)