More documents released this weekend by Al Jazeera from whistleblower WikiLeaks show that from 2004 to 2009, U.S. soldiers in Iraq were under domestic orders, so called “Fragmentary order” or FRAGO, to let torture proceed without check. In doing so, U.S. officials have broken laws agreed to by the United States and world nations.
UN resolution 1546 does not require the U. S. under international law to investigate allegations of Iraqi-on-Iraqi detainee abuse. Apparently, Iraqis reported more than a thousand cases of abuse after June 30, 2004, when Iraq had “resumed its sovereignty.” However, the United Nations Convention against Torture (to which the U.S. is signatory) “forbids signatories from transferring detainees to countries where there are substantial grounds for believing they will be tortured.”
There were more than a thousand allegations of torture in Iraqi jails, Al Jazeera reports from the leaked documents, “many of them substantiated by medical evidence clearly seeming to constitute ‘substantial grounds’ to believe that prisoners transferred to Iraqi custody could be tortured. Yet, in recent years — including nearly 2,000 handed over to Iraqis in July of this year — “the U.S. has transferred thousands of prisoners to Iraqi custody.”
The U.S. military’s secret “significant action reports” (SIGACTs), according to Al Jazeera, “reveal how torture was rampant and how ordinary civilians bore the brunt of the conflict. The files record horrifying tales: of pregnant women being shot dead at checkpoints, of priests kidnapped and murdered, of Iraqi prison guards using electric drills to force their prisoners to confess.” Moreover, U.S. soldiers engaged in “excessive use of force that was routinely not investigated and the guilty were rarely brought to book.”
In the period January 1, 2004 - December 31, 2009, 109,000 people died of whom two thirds or 66,081 were civilians.
These latest 400,000 secret U.S. files released by WikiLeaks and obtained by Al Jazeera expose “a graphic narrative of the war — every aspect of the war in Iraq — reaching far beyond any information about the conflict ever released into the public domain.”
Al Jazeera says that before releasing the documents its staff worked for ten weeks with the Bureau of Investigative Journalism in London and “analyzed tens of thousands of documents, finding facts the United States has kept hidden from public scrutiny.” The finding, says the news organization, “often contradicts the official narrative of the conflict [in Iraq]. Leaked data reveal, for example, that the U.S. has been keeping records of Iraqi deaths and injuries throughout the war — despite public statements to the contrary.”
Sources
“WikiLeaks releases secret Iraq file Al Jazeera accesses 400,000 secret US military documents, which reveal the inside story of the Iraq war” (Gregg Carlstrom), October 22, 2010, http://english.aljazeera.net/secretiraqfiles/2010/10/2010102217631317837.html
“U.S. turned blind eye to torture — Leaked documents on Iraq war contain thousands of allegations of abuse, but a Pentagon order told troops to ignore them” (Gregg Carlstrom), October 22, 2010 23:16 http://english.aljazeera.net/secretiraqfiles/2010/10/20101022161828428516.html
How many (est.) in two-theater
U.S.-led
WAR DEAD?
Casualty sites reporting October 23, 2010
(accurate totals unknown)
• Anti-war dot com Casualties in Iraq since March 19, 2003
[U.S. war dead since the Obama inauguration January 20, 2009: 198]
Wounded 32,899-100,000
U.S. veterans with brain injuries 320,000
Suicides estimated: 18 a day
Latest update on this site: October 18, 2010
• Iraq Body Count (civilian deaths from violence) figures:
98,585 – 107,594
• ICasualties figures:
IRAQ: 4,426 U.S., 4,744 Coalition
AFGHANISTAN: 1,348 U.S., 2,168 Coalition
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