Posted on 28-5-2003
Red
Cross(ed) Out By US
By Ed Vulliamy, The Observer,
Sunday 25 May 2003
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
been denied access to what the organisation believes could be
as many as 3,000 prisoners held in searing heat. All other requests
to inspect conditions under which prisoners are being held have
been met with silence or been turned down.
There is circumstantial evidence that prisoners are being
gagged and hooded, in the manner of the Afghans and other captives
held at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba - treatment in itself questionable
under international law.
Unlike the Afghans in Cuba, there is no doubt about the
status of these captives, whether PoWs or civilians arrested
for looting or other crimes under military occupation: all have
the right, under the laws of war, to be visited and documented
by the International Red Cross. 'There is no argument about
the situation with regard to the Iraqi armed forces and even
the Fedayeen Saddam,' said the ICRC's spokeswoman in Baghdad,
Nada Doumani.
'They are prisoners of war because they have been captured during
a clear conflict between two states. If they served in the armed
forces or in a militia with distinctive clothing which came
under the chain of command of one of the warring states, they
are protected under article 143 of the Geneva Convention.'
The ICRC has gained access to prisoners held in camps
at Umm Qasr in the south. But with regard to the larger numbers
reportedly held in Baghdad, said Doumani, 'we are still waiting
for the green light, more than a month after the end of the
conflict. This is in breach of the third Geneva Convention.'
She said the laws of war should give the ICRC access 'as quickly
as possible'.
The airport camps are also said to contain many hundreds
of civilians detained for looting, who, Doumani said, 'do not
fit into the category of prisoners of war, according to the
Americans'.
Civilians held, she said, have similar rights because
they have been detained by an occupying power, which the ICRC
insists the Americans to be, even if they do not use those words
of themselves.
'Civilian prisoners under a military occupation have
the right to be visited and documented,' she said, 'and for
their next-of-kin to be informed. Hundreds of families are looking
around Baghdad for members of their families who have gone missing
and are believed to have been arrested. They are being taken
somewhere, but no one knows where.'
A US military source said a mutiny occurred at the beginning
of last week at one compound at the airport zone - for the most
part a sealed-off area and the site of some of the heaviest
civilian casualties as the Americans surged into the Iraqi capital.
The rebellion was 'dealt with' by the US authorities,
said the source, with no confirmation or denial of deaths.
Witnesses to the camps are few, since no Iraqi prisoners
taken to them have been released. But a cameraman for the France
3 television channel, arrested at the Palestine Hotel, did manage
a glimpse. Leo Nicolian has documentation signed by a Lieutenant
Brad Fisher saying he was wrongly arrested (and beaten, with
a black eye to prove it) for the alleged theft of a bag from
an American reporter.
He was held at the tennis court compound along with,
he said, about 50 other prisoners, and told he was detained
'for investiga tion'. On his way out, Nicolian said he passed
a bigger encampment in which he saw 'hundreds of men' hooded,
with their arms tied behind their backs.
A worker for a non-governmental aid organisation, who
asked not to be named, told The Observer that he saw men in
a similar state aboard a truck, apparently in transit from one
place to another. The aid worker said he managed to video the
scene.
Doumani said there was no specific wording in the Geneva
Convention on the American practice of hooding and gagging,
but that the law did specify that prisoners be treated humanely.
'We have to assess what is humane,' she said
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