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BAGHDAD, Iraq - An Iraqi journalist who stayed in Fallujah to report on the battle for his hometown says he and hundreds of other civilians who eventually turned themselves in to escape the violence suffered tough, sometimes humiliating, treatment from American and Iraqi guards. Abdul-Qader Saadi said he was subjected to multiple searches and interrogations; went unfed the first two days; was blindfolded and handcuffed; and had to sleep for days in a wooden cage buffeted by cold winds at a desert detention camp. Saadi, who has reported part-time for The Associated Press since early in the year, also complained...

<p>Soldiers photographed apparently abusing Iraqi prisoners will invoke the "just following orders" defense when courts-martial convene this summer and fall.</p> <p>Military prosecutors already got a glimpse of that strategy this week at a pre-trial hearing in Baghdad. Defense attorneys for two accused military policemen said they were ordered to abuse Iraqi detainees by military intelligence officers who conducted interrogations at Abu Ghraib prison.</p>

Israeli Agents Believed Involved in Abu Ghraib Diplomatic sources in Washington tell NewsMax's U.N. correspondent Stew Stogel that Israeli nationals are believed to be involved in the Iraq prison controversy. "Israelis have been to Abu Ghraib and other prisons [in Iraq]," says one source familiar with the U.S. operations. It was explained that the Israelis involved have been assigned as "civilian contractors" to work with Coalition forces in interrogating Iraqi POWs. The "contractors" are said to be veterans of Israel's domestic intelligence unit, Shin Bet, as well as the more famous international intelligence agency, the Mossad. "Who has better experience...

Not all Arabs are appalled at the lurid pictures from Abu Ghraib. "The abuse of Iraqi prisoners at the hands of U.S. soldiers draws intense reactions from some who left Iraq to find freedom in Washington state, but prolonged outrage isn't one of them," the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports from Everett: Imad al-Turfy . . . shows no sympathy for the prisoners, saying their treatment paled when compared with the horrors inflicted under Saddam Hussein's regime. "They raped our women. They killed our kids. So there's hatred between us, the people here, and the people in Iraq," he said, referring to...

Freepers, David Horowize picked up a piece I first posted here under the title, "Did the Arab Street Get a Message We Did Not Intend to Send?" Thanks to many Freepers who provided references and links contained within. Iraqi Abuse and the "Arab Street" By Larry Schweikart FrontPageMagazine.com | May 10, 2004 Amidst all the apologies, I want to suggest we all (Hillary Clinton here) take a deep breath and consider something that no one in the administration or Congress has (publicly) considered: The POW photos are having an unintended effect on the Arab "Street" and the "resistance." By now,...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The independent Army Times newspaper, read widely in the U.S. military, on Monday suggested Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other top Pentagon civilian and military leaders should be removed over the Iraq prisoner abuse scandal. "This was not just a failure of leadership at the local command level. This was a failure that ran straight to the top. Accountability here is essential -- even if that means relieving top leaders from duty in a time of war," the private weekly newspaper said in an editorial. Army Times is one of four such publications owned by the Gannett...

Sunday, May 9, 2004 1st Cavalry detention facility takes pride in its reputation By Terry Boyd, Stars and StripesEuropean edition, Saturday, May 8, 2004 Terry Boyd / S&S Sgt. 1st Class Douglas Bawden. Terry Boyd / S&S Spc. Craig Kois. CAMP BLACK JACK, Iraq — Just after Sgt. 1st Class Douglas Bawden took over as warden of 29 Palms — a 1st Cavalry Division detention facility — he found himself processing four Iraqis arrested in connection with a rocket-propelled grenade attack.The April 6 attack in Ashula, outside Baghdad, killed Sgt. Gerardo Moreno, 23, of Terrell, Texas.Moreno wasn’t just any soldier....

Kerry's Belated Condemnation Focuses on Process Kerry Lacks Moral Authority to Condemn Content NEW virtual john kerry can bore + snowboard at the same time series by Mia T, 5.07.04  "CRY BUSH" + Iraqi-Prisoner "Abuse"What are the Dems up to? by Mia T, 5.06.04   (viewing movie requires Flash Player 7, available HERE) johnkerryisdangerousforamerica.blogspot.com ohn Kerry, self-professed war criminal, needed the Iraqi prisoner "abuse" scandal about as much as bill clinton, documented rapist, needed the Saddam rape rooms or the marauding Milosevic rapist-guerrillas. For this reason, Kerry did not respond for a full week to this latest leftist-fulminated Bush-bashing...

Here it is, the SpinMeister Award of the Year. Why it isn't a picture of Saddam's statue being pulled down can be explained only by those who bestow the "honor." "World Press Photo of the year 2003 by French photographer Jean-Marc Bouju of the Associated Press shows a detained Iraqi man comforting his 4-year-old-son at a regroupment center for POW's near Najaf, Iraq. Picture was taken on 31 March, 2003. Jean-Marc Bouju/Associated Press REUTERS/Jean-Marc Bouju. "

French photographer wins World Press Photo 13 February 2004 AMSTERDAM — French photographer Jean-Marc Bouju was named on Friday as the winner of the World Press Photo competition. The international jury of the 47th annual World Press Photo, which is run from Amsterdam in the Netherlands, chose a colour image from Bouju that shows an Iraqi man comforting his 4-year-old-son at a Prisoner of War centre near Najaf, Iraq.The picture was taken on 31 March 2003 and can be viewed at http://www.worldpressphoto.nl/index.jsp. Some 4,176 professional photographers from 124 countries participated in this year’s contest, the premier annual international competition...

<p>A general will decide if they will face court-martial in the death of an Iraqi POW.</p> <p>CAMP PENDLETON – They went to Iraq to do their duty. They returned accused of war crimes.</p> <p>Inside a cramped courtroom on the sprawling military base, a career officer and two part-time Marines are the latest members from a Worcester, Mass., reserve unit to face charges of brutalizing Iraqi captives in June at a makeshift camp near Nasiriyah.</p>

The 19-year-old Army supply clerk rescued in Iraq shot several Iraqi soldiers during the March 23 ambush that resulted in her capture, newspaper reported Thursday. She kept firing even after she had several gunshot wounds, finally running out of ammunition, the newspaper said, citing unidentified U.S. officials. Spirited but hungry, Pfc. Jessica Lynch arrived in Germany for treatment of two broken legs and bullet wounds reportedly suffered in a fierce gun battle she waged against her Iraqi captors. "She was fighting to the death," the Washington Post quoted an official as saying. "She did not want to be taken alive."...

UMM QASR, Iraq (AP) - The U.S. military opened a hearing Wednesday into allegations that four U.S. Army reservists abused Iraqi prisoners of war at a camp in this southern port city. Possible charges include dereliction of duty, assault and maltreatment of prisoners. Three of the soldiers also could be charged with making a false official statement and one faces possible obstruction of justice counts. The hearing, being held at Camp Bucca, is the equivalent of a civilian grand jury investigation that will produce a nonbinding recommendation to be forwarded to senior military officials for a final judgment. The four...

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Four US soldiers serving in Iraq have been charged with abuse of Iraqi prisoners of war and are awaiting a decision on whether they will face a court-martial, a defense official said. The charges mark the first time US personnel have been formally accused of mistreating Iraqi prisoners since the beginning of the US-led invasion of Iraq on March 20. The names of the soldiers have not been released, but they are reported to belong to a military police unit that helped guard prisoners at Camp Bucca, in southern Iraq, last May. "They have been charged with...

AMMAN, Jordan -- Twenty Jordanians arrived home Sunday after spending up to nine months in a U.S.-British detention camp in Iraq. "I'm happy to return home and to reunite with my family," Raed Abdullah Abul-Saqer told The Associated Press at Amman airport after alighting from an aircraft owned by the International Committee of the Red Cross. Abul-Saqer, 22, a trader, was released Saturday from a detention camp outside the southern Iraqi port of Umm Qasr. He said he was arrested in Baghdad on April 10 on suspicion of links with President Saddam Hussein's guerrillas who were fighting the U.S.-led coalition...

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- Iraqi officials expressed fears Saturday that a Pentagon decision to declare Saddam Hussein a prisoner of war will prevent them from putting the ousted dictator on trial. The international Red Cross, however, said POW status does not preclude a war crimes prosecution. U.S. officials in Baghdad sought to assure Iraqis that no deal was made to keep them from trying the ousted dictator for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Iraq will have a "substantial leadership role" when the former Saddam faces justice, said Dan Senor, a spokesman for the U.S.-led occupation authority. "There is no...

<p>Pentagon lawyers have determined that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein has been a prisoner of war since American forces captured him Dec. 13, a Defense Department spokesman said yesterday.</p> <p>Despite that determination, top press aides to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld were grappling with what to say publicly about the issue. A senior defense official who insisted he not be named said Saddam's legal status was still under review.</p>

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Pentagon lawyers have determined that Saddam Hussein has been a prisoner of war since American forces captured him on Dec. 13, a Defense Department spokesman said Friday. Despite that determination, Secretary of State Colin Powell told CBS News: "I don't know that he has been formally declared a prisoner of war." That decision was up to the Pentagon, Powell said. Whether or not Saddam is a prisoner of war could be key to how he is treated in captivity and eventually put on trial. The Geneva Conventions on treatment of prisoners of war forbid any kind of...

US officials say the ousted Iraqi leader, Saddam Hussein, is being treated as an "enemy prisoner of war". A Pentagon spokesman said he was given the status as he was the leader of the "old regime's military forces". The spokesman, Major Michael Shavers, said Saddam, captured by US troops in December, was entitled to all the rights under the Geneva Conventions. But the spokesman did not give further details about Saddam Hussein's conditions of detention. Earlier on Friday, a senior British official said Saddam - who is being held at an undisclosed location and interrogated by the CIA -...

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - Hundreds of Iraqis waited for hours outside a Baghdad prison Thursday in hopes their relatives would be included in a much-publicized release. About 80 men were freed, but U.S. officials said they weren't part of the amnesty, and most Iraqi families left disappointed and angry at America. "Liars! Liars! They won't let them out!" one woman screamed in dismay before fainting. A coalition spokesman insisted the prisoner release was on track, but would be done quietly for reasons of "security and privacy." U.S. administrator L. Paul Bremer announced Wednesday that U.S. occupation forces would free 506...

In what it called a gesture of reconciliation, the US-led administration in Iraq has said it will release more than 500 prisoners detained as "low-level security threats" over the past eight months. At the same time, the authority said it would take a more aggressive approach to hunting down leading figures in Saddam Hussein's regime still on its most-wanted list and other senior targets believed to be directing those fighting against the occupying forces. "It is time for reconciliation, time for Iraqis to make common cause," Paul Bremer, the US administrator in Iraq, told a news conference, flanked by Adnan...

<p>CNN's Karl Penhaul on the outlook for 2004 in Iraq.</p> <p>WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Three American soldiers have been discharged from military service for abusing Iraqi prisoners, the U.S. Army said Monday.</p> <p>The soldiers had been facing a court-martial proceeding, but agreed instead to a nonjudicial one. In addition to the discharges, two soldiers had their ranks lowered, and all three were ordered to forfeit pay for two months.</p>

Maj. William Vickers, 36, is accused of dereliction of duty for allegedly letting his men mistreat prisoners at Camp Whitehorse, a small facility outside Nasiriyah, about 180 miles outside Baghdad. He is the first of eight reservist Marines charged with abusing prisoners to undergo a court hearing. One of those prisoners died. Military prosecutors say Vickers failed to prevent his guards from keeping Iraqi prisoners awake and on their feet 50 minutes of every hour for hours on end. The prisoners, who were handcuffed behind their backs, also had bags covering their heads part of the time. However, Col. William...

Case opens in treatment of Iraqis CAMP PENDLETON – The first of eight cases against Marines charged with abusing – and in one case killing – Iraqi prisoners went to court here yesterday. Maj. William Vickers is charged with failing to obey an order or regulation for allegedly allowing his men to mistreat prisoners while he was in charge of a small detention facility outside Nasiriyah, about 180 miles southeast of Baghdad. The charges against the eight range from dereliction of duty to negligent homicide. "This is a case, a situation about what is right and what is wrong when...

<p>Two Marines have been charged in the death of a POW who was a high-ranking Iraqi Baath party official captured with a weapon that belonged to the Army maintenance company ambushed outside Nasiriyah, Iraq, in March, Marine officials said.</p> <p>Maj. Clark Paulus, of Buckingham, Pa., and Lance Cpl. Christian Hernandez, of Queens, N.Y., were charged Oct. 17 with negligent homicide in the death of Nagem Sadoon Hatab, who was found dead June 6 in his holding cell.</p>

PHILADELPHIA - The families of four U.S. Army reservists accused of abusing Iraqi prisoners of war have enlisted politicians, veterans groups and hundreds of friends to help persuade the military to dismiss the charges at a hearing next week. The four soldiers, all with the 320th Military Police Battalion based in Ashley, Pa., are charged with punching and kicking several Iraqis, breaking one man's nose, while escorting a busload of prisoners to a POW processing center near Umm Qasr in May. Details of the allegations haven't been released by the Army, and the soldiers said they have been ordered not...

Up to 3,000 Iraqis - some of them civilians - believed to be gagged, bound, hooded and beaten at US camps close to Baghdad airport The United States is illegally holding thousands of Iraqi prisoners of war and other captives without access to human rights officials at compounds close to Baghdad airport, The Observer has learnt. There have also been reports of a mutiny last week by prisoners at an airport compound, in protest against conditions. The uprising was 'dealt with' by the Americans, according to a US military source. The International Committee of the Red Cross so far has...

First Published 2003-05-16, Last Updated 2003-05-16 15:04:54POWs taken mostly in southern Iraq Iraqi POWs tortured by US, UK forces: Amnesty Mistreatment of POWs includes beating with fist, feet, weapons and electric shocks. LONDON - At least 20 Iraqi prisoners of war, including civilians, said they had been tortured by British and US troops in central and southern Iraq, a spokesman for International Human Rights group Amnesty International said Friday. "As of Wednesday we had interviewed 20 people," Amnesty researcher Said Boumedouha said, referring to prisoners of war who alleged they had been tortured by the British and US military...

POW's Memory Is Casualty Of War WASHINGTON, May 8, 2003 (CBS) It's unlikely that Pfc. Jessica Lynch will ever remember what happened in Iraq when her Army convoy was ambushed and she was taken as a prisoner of war, her doctor said Thursday. This information sheds new light on a small part of the war that has been shrouded in secrecy — with various versions only now emerging about Lynch's injuries nearly seven weeks ago and the commando raid that rescued her April 1. Doctors have completed surgeries for various fractures and broken bones that the 20-year-old Army clerk suffered...

US Troops Release Another 250 Iraqi POWs In So. Iraq UMM QASR, Iraq (AP)--U.S. forces released another 250 Iraqi war prisoners Tuesday in southern Iraq, as they continued to empty out U.S.-run detention camps which once housed some 7,000 men. In the past two weeks, more than 5,000 prisoners of war as well as civilian detainees have been released from Camp Bucca after a military tribunal determined they posed no threat, said Sgt. Maj. Ambrose Michelino, a U.S. military policeman. About 1,800 to 1,900 prisoners remain in captivity in this southern Iraqi port city, he said. He said most of...

<p>Chanting "Saddam no, Bush yes," some 200 Iraqi prisoners of war were let go Sunday at the coalition's main internment camp in the desert near the southern port of Umm Qasr.</p> <p>The men, many of them barefooted, shook hands with the American soldiers guarding the camp before boarding buses and trucks to be driven to nearby Basra, southern Iraq's largest city.</p>

CAMP BUCCA, Iraq April 27 — Chanting "Saddam no, Bush yes," some 200 Iraqi prisoners of war were let go Sunday at the coalition's main internment camp in the desert near the southern port of Umm Qasr.The men, many of them barefooted, shook hands with the American soldiers guarding the camp before boarding buses and trucks to be driven to nearby Basra, southern Iraq's largest city.Their departure brought to 700 the number of POWs released since Friday, said Maj. Stacy Garrity of the U.S. Army's 800th Military Police Brigade, which runs the camp. Around 5,800 more prisoners, including some from...

CAMP BUCCA, Iraq (Reuters) - U.S. military forces freed 200 Iraqi prisoners of war from their main internment camp in southern Iraq on Sunday as part of plans to release thousands of soldiers captured after Saddam Hussein sent them to fight. Former POWs, many of them shoeless and wearing tattered military garb or U.S.-issued blue coveralls, squatted patiently in a driving sandstorm before camp guards called them to board buses and trucks where they began singing, chanting and ululating with the joy of going home. Slight, curly-haired Thacker al-Rubai told Reuters his wife and five children had no idea he...

US holds 7,300 POWs in Iraq, soon determining fate By Deborah Charles WASHINGTON, April 9 (Reuters) - American-led forces have captured at least 7,300 prisoners of war in Iraq and will soon begin the legal process to determine their future, the U.S. military said on Wednesday. In a briefing at the Pentagon from the U.S. military's main prisoner of war camp in Umm Qasr in southern Iraq, the colonel in charge of the facility said planners had been prepared to capture many more prisoners -- up to 50,000. "We were planning for about 50,000 ... or higher," said U.S. Army...

<p>GENEVA (AP) -- The international Red Cross said Friday it has seen more than 3,000 Iraqi prisoners of war but has yet to receive permission from Iraqi officials to visit the Americans they are holding.</p> <p>The International Committee of the Red Cross said most Iraqi POWs were registered in southern Iraq. U.S. Central Command says coalition forces hold more than 4,000 Iraqi prisoners of war.</p>

More than 6,500 Iraqi prisoners are being held by UK forces in Iraq, the Government has announced. The total last Thursday was 4,100, said Defence Procurement Minister Lord Bach. "Iraqi military personnel who fall into the hands of UK forces are prisoners of war and therefore will be treated in accordance with the Geneva Conventions," he said. Paramilitaries, or so-called "unlawful combatants", would be treated "under the terms of humanitarian law", he told Liberal Democrat peers' leader Baroness Williams of Crosby. They would be looked after "both humanely and safely". And the UK would have a veto on any US...

Here's just a little photo to keep in mind when you hear someone going on (and on) about "American brutality" yada, yada, yada, in Iraq. ========================================= A wounded Iraqi prisoner of war holds his intravenous fluid pack while US Army soldiers carry him to a US Army medical evacuation helicopter for transfer to a nearby US military field hospital for treatment on April 3. Photo: AFP

Marines Say About 2,500 Guards Surrender .c The Associated Press CAMP AS SAYLIYAH, Qatar (AP) - U.S. Marines have reported that about 2,500 Iraqi Republican Guards surrendered between Kut and Baghdad, U.S. Central Command said Friday. The surrender apparently occurred after clashes of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force and the Republican Guard's Baghdad Division, said Navy Capt. Frank Thorp, spokesman at U.S. Central Command. He stressed that Central Command had only received the report from the Marines on the ground and couldn't confirm it outright. ``We have reports of approximately 2,500 soldiers of the Iraqi Republican Guard laying down their...

Will President George W. Bush allow Iraqi troops to come to America, enjoy better welfare and health care benefits than our own soldiers, and endanger national security? It has happened before. After Gulf War I, the first Bush administration and the Clinton administration recklessly opened our borders to former Iraqi prisoners of war -- from conscripts to elite Republican Guardsmen. The resettlement program was launched in response to pressure from the United Nations, the Saudi government (which balked at taking in the captured soldiers), and our own feckless State Department (which has, and always will, act like a hostile foreign...

Britain says over 9,000 Iraqis now POWs LONDON, April 3 (Reuters) - More than 9,000 Iraqis have been taken prisoner of war by U.S.-British troops, British Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon said on Thursday. Hoon told parliament that British forces now held key suburbs of Iraq's second city, Basra, and would foray further into the city when they judged the time to be right. He said UK servicemen were focused on winning the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people as much as military action. "That is why it is so important that in a number of areas where UK forces...

DOHA, March 26 (Reuters) - The United States said on Tuesday that Marines seized more than 200 weapons, stockpiles of ammunition and over 3,000 chemical suits with masks at an Iraqi hospital which was being used as a "military staging area". Central Command in Qatar said in a statement that Marines operating in the southern city of Nassiriya -- scene of the fiercest fighting so far in the six-day-old war -- captured about 170 Iraqi soldiers at the hospital. They were not armed. There was no means of independently confirming the statement. Central Command said forces of the 2nd Battalion...

WASHINGTON (AP) - U.S. and allied forces have now taken in "excess of 3,500 Iraqi prisoners," Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Tuesday. At a Pentagon briefing, Rumsfeld said humanitarian assistance "food, water and medicine" is already being delivered. Still, after five days of ground combat, he sought to minimize expectations of a swift end to the war. (Click link for rest of article)