US "democracy" in Iraq: death squads, torture and terror (fwd)
"A report detailing their findings was published on June 27three days
after one of the journalists, Yasser Salihee, was killed by a single
shot to the head as he approached a US checkpoint. Salihee and fellow
reporter Tom Lasseter documented dozens of cases in May and June of the
corpses of men being dumped at morgues after they had been detained by
the Wolf Brigade, the most prominent of the special police commando
units operating under the authority of the Iraqi interior ministry...
"'To add to HRW's allegations of beatings, electric shocks, arbitrary
arrest, forced confession and detention without trial, the Observer can
add its own charges. These include the most brutal kinds of torture,
with methods resurrected from the time of Saddam; of increasingly
widespread extra-judicial executions; and of the existence of a "ghost"
network of detention facilitiesin parallel with those officially
acknowledgedthat exist beyond all accountability to international
human rights monitors, NGOs and even human rights officials of the new
Iraqi government.'...
"It is not a problem of 'rogue' elements. That was underscored in June,
when the head of the Iraqi government's own human rights board, Saad
Sultan, told the Los Angeles Times that up to 60 percent of the 12,000
detainees then in Iraq's prisons had suffered abuse...
"The turn toward the 'Salvador option'using death squads, torture and
mass repression to terrorise the Iraqi population into accepting US
control of the countrywas signalled by the appointment of John
Negroponte (the head of the US embassy in Honduras in the 1980s) as
ambassador to Iraq in April 2004. Steve Casteel, a key agent in US
operations in Colombia, was appointed as senior advisor to the Iraqi
interior ministry. James Steele, the main US special forces advisor to
El Salvadoran paramilitary squads, was put in charge of organising the
Wolf Brigade."
http://wsws.org/articles/2005/jul2005/iraq-j06_prn.shtml
World Socialist Web Site
US "democracy" in Iraq: death squads, torture and terror
By James Cogan
6 July 2005
On July 1, the WSWS wrote on the evidence gathered by Knight Ridder
journalists that substantiated the widespread allegations that US-backed
forces are carrying out the extra-judicial killing of suspected
opponents of the US occupation.
A report detailing their findings was published on June 27three days
after one of the journalists, Yasser Salihee, was killed by a single
shot to the head as he approached a US checkpoint. Salihee and fellow
reporter Tom Lasseter documented dozens of cases in May and June of the
corpses of men being dumped at morgues after they had been detained by
the Wolf Brigade, the most prominent of the special police commando
units operating under the authority of the Iraqi interior ministry.
The claims contained in the Knight Ridder story have now been backed by
a feature in the July 3 edition of the British Observer, headlined
"Revealed: grim world of new Iraqi torture camps". Baghdad-based
investigative reporter Peter Beaumont wrote: "Six months ago, Human
Rights Watch (HRW) laid out a catalogue of alleged abuses being applied
to those suspected of terrorism and called for an independent complaints
body in Iraq....
"To add to HRW's allegations of beatings, electric shocks, arbitrary
arrest, forced confession and detention without trial, the Observer can
add its own charges. These include the most brutal kinds of torture,
with methods resurrected from the time of Saddam; of increasingly
widespread extra-judicial executions; and of the existence of a 'ghost'
network of detention facilitiesin parallel with those officially
acknowledgedthat exist beyond all accountability to international
human rights monitors, NGOs and even human rights officials of the new
Iraqi government."
Beaumont stated: "If there is a centre to this horror, it is Baghdad's
Ministry of the Interior, and the police commando units that operate
from there." The article went to make the following specific charges:
* Prisoners are being abused and tortured on the seventh floor of the
interior ministry headquarters.
* Prisoners are being tortured at interior ministry-run interrogation
centres at the al-Hadoud prison in the Kharkh district of Baghdad and in
the basement of a clinic in the Shoula district.
* Torture has taken place at interior ministry centres at the al-Muthana
airbase and the former National Security headquarters.
* The Wolf Brigade is using torture to extract information at its
headquarters in Baghdad's Nissor Square.
Like the Knight Ridder journalists, Beaumont reviewed morgue evidence of
men whose families allege were killed after being detained in police
commando custody. He also interviewed men who claimed to have been
tortured by the Wolf Brigade, and spoke with Western and Iraqi
officials.
Hassan an-Ni'ami, an outspoken anti-occupation cleric, was seized by
police commandos in Baghdad in late May. His hideously tortured body was
dumped at a morgue 12 hours later, with police handcuffs still attached
to his wrist. His chest had been burned, possibly with cigarettes. He
had been whipped. His nose and one arm were broken. Horrifically, his
kneecaps had been drilled through with what appeared to have been an
electric drill. Finally, he had been shot multiple times in the chest
and head.
Another man, Tahar Mohammed Suleiman al-Mashhadani, was detained by
commandos in west Baghdad. His body was found 20 days later, "tortured
almost beyond recognition" according to his family. A man calling
himself "Abu Ali" told Beaumont he was detained by commandos in mid-May.
He said he was beaten on his feet, hung by his arms from the ceiling and
threatened with being sodomised with a bottle if he did not confess to
being a "terrorist".
Torture admitted by Iraqi government
At a press conference on July 4, following the publication of Beaumont's
exposé, Iraqi government spokesman Laith Kubba baldly admitted the
veracity of the Observer report. "These things happen. We know that,"
Kubba declared. "It does not happen because the government approves it
or adopts it as policy. At the end of the day, I'm sorry to say that we
are living in a society where the culture now accepts these violations.
I'm sorry to say the culture of violence has spread."
Kubba's denial that brutality is official policy is contradicted by
everything that has been exposed about the character of the US
occupation of Iraq since the invasion in March 2003. From the Abu Ghraib
torture revelations, to the razing of Fallujah, and the daily killings
of civilians by American and government troops, the Iraqi people have
suffered constant repression at the hands of the US military and its
local collaborators.
It is not a problem of "rogue" elements. That was underscored in June,
when the head of the Iraqi government's own human rights board, Saad
Sultan, told the Los Angeles Times that up to 60 percent of the 12,000
detainees then in Iraq's prisons had suffered abuse. "We've documented a
lot of torture cases. There are beatings, punching, electric shocks to
the body, including sensitive areas, hanging prisoners upside down and
beating them and dragging them on the ground," he said.
The Times noted: "He added that police and security forces attached to
the interior ministry are responsible for most of the abuses."
Some of the abuse is not even being hidden. Alleged "terrorists",
bearing signs of torture and who have never appeared before a court, are
being paraded on a television program Terrorism in the Grip of Justice
and shown making public confessions. The program has featured Wolf
Brigade commander, Abul Waleed, and is run on the state-run, US-financed
Al Iraqiya network.
The formation of the interior ministry police commandos in mid-2004
flowed directly from the decision in US ruling circles to fight the
Iraqi resistance with tactics modeled on the US-run counterinsurgency
operations in Central America during the 1980s. It came amid the
greatest challenge to the US occupation since the invasionthe
uprising in Baghdad and across southern Iraq led by Shiite cleric
Moqtada al-Sadr, and the failure of the US military to recapture the
Sunni city of Fallujah from resistance fighters.
The turn toward the "Salvador option"using death squads, torture and
mass repression to terrorise the Iraqi population into accepting US
control of the countrywas signalled by the appointment of John
Negroponte (the head of the US embassy in Honduras in the 1980s) as
ambassador to Iraq in April 2004. Steve Casteel, a key agent in US
operations in Colombia, was appointed as senior advisor to the Iraqi
interior ministry. James Steele, the main US special forces advisor to
El Salvadoran paramilitary squads, was put in charge of organising the
Wolf Brigade.
Those whom Casteel and Steele recruited for the Wolf Brigade were former
members of Saddam Hussein's special forces and Republican
Guardveterans in mass terror against the Iraqi people. Since October
2004, they have been deployed into centres of the resistance such as
Samarra, Mosul and, most recently, the suburbs of Baghdad. Reports of
extra-judicial killings and other atrocities soon followed. A large
number of unexplained but highly suspicious killings and abductions have
also taken place, including the deaths of dozens of journalists and
scores of anti-occupation clerics and academics.
The highest levels of the new Iraqi state have been accused of
involvement in extra-judicial killings. In June 2004, two eyewitnesses
told Australian journalist Paul McGeough that the soon-to-be-installed
interim prime minister, Iyad Allawi, had murdered six prisoners at a
Baghdad prison in order to make an example of how the interior ministry
police should deal with alleged insurgents. The allegations were
published in two Australian newspapersthe Age and the Sydney Morning
Herald.
A year later, the charges against Allawi have never been convincingly
refuted or independently investigated. The only recent reference
appeared in an article last month in the Australian Sun-Herald, which
cited unnamed sources claiming that Allawi's American special forces
bodyguards and several Iraqi officials had passed lie detector tests
denying that any killings took place.
The same month as Allawi was accused of carrying out summary executions,
outraged US National Guardsmen stormed the interior ministry
headquarters after they saw prisoners being beaten in the courtyard.
They disarmed the police and searched the building. An American officer,
Captain Jarrell Southall, reported that dozens of detainees they found
"had bruises and cuts and belt or hose marks all over. I witnessed
prisoners who were barely able to walk ..." To the shock of the
Guardsmen, the US command ordered them to hand the prisoners back over
to the interior ministry police and leave the facility.
Claims that the US military and the US embassy in Iraq are not aware of
ongoing cases of extra-judicial killings, torture and abuse are simply
false. US intelligence plays the major role in gathering information on
alleged insurgents. CIA and special forces operatives advise the
interior ministry. The Wolf Brigade and other police commando formations
work in concert with American units. Moreover, under the terms of Iraq's
interim constitution, overall operational command of all forces in the
country, and therefore legal and political responsibility, resides with
the US-led occupation forces.
The character of the regime being constructed by the Bush administration
in Baghdad is clear to anyone with the integrity to state the truth. Far
from being a "democracy", an apparatus of terror has been set up to
suppress the opposition of the Iraqi people to the takeover of their
country.
