DISPATCH FROM DOWN UNDER
Israeli 'sex scandal' envoy calls off Canberra job
An Israeli diplomat allegedly involved in a sex scandal while serving in Brazil five years ago has voluntarily withdrawn his candidacy to serve in Israel's embassy in Canberra.
Aryeh Scher was to replace Amir Laty, the Israeli diplomat thrown out of Australia in December on national security grounds.
Both Israel and Australia have been tightlipped about Mr Laty's expulsion.
But it has been revealed that Mr Laty had rekindled a friendship with the daughter of Attorney-General Philip Ruddock and had been due to spend Christmas with the Ruddock family, before authorities ordered his expulsion.
An Israeli foreign ministry spokesman said Scher informed Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom that because of the negative "atmosphere" his appointment had created both in Israel and Australia, he has decided to forego the appointment, the Jerusalem Post reported today.
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2005/02/18/1108609391246.html
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Expelled diplomat linked to Ruddock daughter
The innuendo surrounding Australia's expulsion of an Israeli diplomat continues, with the former consul allegedly claiming his departure was related to his friendship with the daughter of Philip Ruddock.
Caitlin Ruddock, 26, an accounting lecturer at the University of NSW, reportedly met the expelled consul, Amir Laty, while the two were studying in Beijing and continued the friendship during his 18-month stint in Canberra.
This week's Australian Jewish News reported that Mr Laty was planning to attend a Christmas lunch at the Attorney-General's home but was barred from attending after Australian authorities ordered his expulsion.
An amused Ms Ruddock would not comment yesterday.
"This issue has nothing to do with me," Ms Ruddock told the Herald. "You should speak to my dad's office."
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2005/02/17/1108609350998.html
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'Palestinian hanging' torture revealed
An Iraqi whose corpse was photographed with grinning US soldiers at the Abu Ghraib prison died under CIA interrogation while in a position condemned by human rights groups as torture.
It was revealed today he was suspended by his wrists, with his hands cuffed behind his back.
The death of the prisoner, Manadel al-Jamadi, became known last year when the Abu Ghraib prison scandal broke. The US military said then that the death had been ruled a homicide. But the exact circumstances under which the man died were not disclosed.
The prisoner died in a position known as "Palestinian hanging," documents reviewed by The AP showed.
It is unclear whether that position was approved by the Bush administration for use in CIA interrogations.
The spy agency, which faces congressional scrutiny over its detention and interrogation of terror suspects at the Baghdad prison and elsewhere, declined to comment for this story, as did the Justice Department.
Al-Jamadi was one of the CIA's "ghost" detainees at Abu Ghraib - prisoners being held secretly by the agency.
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2005/02/18/1108609385820.html
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Former exile on track to win Iraq's top post
Iraq's interim Vice-President, a soft-spoken doctor and former exile who leads the Dawa party, has emerged as a surprise front-runner to assume the powerful post of prime minister.
Ibrahim al-Jaafari, 58, a United Iraqi Alliance candidate, became the top contender for the prime minister's job after his main rival, the interim Finance Minister, Adel Abdul Mahdi, dropped out on Tuesday.
The alliance, a largely Shiite coalition tacitly backed by the country's most influential religious leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani, won 48 per cent of the vote in the elections on January 30 for a 275-member parliament. Under a complicated formula, the alliance is expected to hold a slim majority with 140 seats.
In negotiations this week, it has tried to come up with a consensus choice for a position that will become the government's public face.
"There is an initial agreement to nominate Dr Ibrahim Jaafari," said Adnan Ali, a spokesman for the Dawa party.
Another official taking part in the negotiations and two officials with a non-governmental organisation involved in supporting the political process - all of whom spoke on condition of anonymity - said they, too, believed Dr Jaafari was the frontrunner. "It is already basically decided," one of the officials said. But "there is still a lot of horse-trading to do".
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2005/02/16/1108500157443.html
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Ice hockey season cancelled
The National Hockey League cancelled its season on Wednesday unable to reach a new collective bargaining agreement with locked out players becoming the first North American professional sports league to lose an entire schedule due to a labour dispute.
A grim-faced league commissioner Gary Bettman began a news conference in New York by apologising to fans than announcing the season had been cancelled.
"When I stood before you last September I said, NHL teams will not play again until our economic problems have been solved," said Bettman.
"As I stand before you today it is my sad duty to announce that because the solution has not yet been attained it is no longer practical to conduct even an abbreviated season.
"I have no choice but to announce the formal cancellation of play for 2004-2005."
Owners had been seeking to impose a salary cap on players, something their union had steadfastly refused to consider since the lockout began last September until Monday when they said they would be prepared to accept a cap of $US52 million ($A66.15 million) per team, which was rejected by the owners.
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2005/02/17/1108500189547.html
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Lawyers call for release of Australian held in Iraq
The Federal Government must ensure the United States either charged a Melbourne man being held in Iraq or released him, the Law Council of Australia said yesterday.
Iraqi-born Australian citizen Ahmed Aziz Rafiq was arrested by Kurdish forces in northern Iraq in February last year and was reportedly handed over to coalition forces for investigation as a terror suspect.
Law Council president John North said there were now reports US authorities were planning to release Mr Rafiq.
He called on the Australian Government to make sure there was no further delay of Mr Rafiq's release.
"If Mr Rafiq was to be charged with any offence, whether relating to terrorism or other crimes, this should have happened ages ago," he said in a statement.
"The Australian Government must press for his immediate release and repatriation to Australia."
Mr North said the Law Council had repeatedly approached the Government about Mr Rafiq but had never had a meaningful answer as to why he had been detained in an overseas prison without charge for such a long time.
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2005/02/15/1108230004186.html
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Shias stand firm against the bombers
Suicide attacks fail to deter worshippers
Prayers were just ending at the al-Baya' mosque in west Baghdad on Friday when the two young men stepped from a minibus taxi and approached the entrance. They wore black, like the hundreds of worshippers gathered inside and outside, but something was wrong.
The younger one, no older than 18, tried to pass security guards without being searched while his companion, about 25, walked to the far side of the entrance before heading for the doorway.
That was as much warning the Shia mosque had that it was under attack, the latest target of suicide bombers who strike almost daily in Iraq on a scale never before seen anywhere, a test case in terror for the population.
Once challenged by the guard, witnesses said yesterday, the teenager's rigid expression turned to terror, the eyes widening, the mouth gaping. He knew what was about to happen.
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1418525,00.html
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UK link to torture jail's rules
Army lawyer saw document on interrogation techniques
A British official was involved in drafting rules permitting extreme interrogation techniques at Abu Ghraib jail in Baghdad, centre of the controversy over the use of torture by US forces against Iraqi prisoners.
Last night it emerged that the government has been forced to retract claims that no British military officer had seen or been involved with the crucial document allowing guards to subject detainees to interrogation methods including the use of dogs, sleep deprivation and stress positions, in breach of the Geneva Convention.
Last year the jail achieved notoriety when photographs emerged of guards forcing prisoners to strip naked and simulate sex acts. Other photographs showed detainees being set upon with dogs and beaten.
The Armed Forces Minister, Adam Ingram, has admitted in a letter to a Plaid Cymru MP, Adam Price, that a senior British Army lawyer assigned to the coalition's legal department in Baghdad contributed to 'comments provided by his superior' when drafting the document.
It is not known if the officer supported or opposed the document, but the revelation raises serious questions about who in the Army's chain of command knew of the interrogation techniques being employed at Abu Ghraib and when.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1418645,00.html
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Call it what you like - this is hell
Mark Danner exposes the double speak that underpins Bush's 'war on terror' in Torture and Truth.
Peter Conrad on how America's response to 9/11 unleashed an obscene nightmare
Torture and Truth: America,
Abu Ghraib and the War on Terror byMark Danner Granta £16.99
Five days after 9/11, Vice-President Cheney emerged from the fortified burrow in which he'd been awaiting Armageddon and - glowering as blackly as the oil he no doubt dreams of - explained how the government intended to respond to the terrorists. President Bush was already babbling about a crusade and remembering the 'dead or alive' posters that used to be displayed in the Wild West. But Cheney did not invoke the chivalric idealism of Arthurian knights and sheriffs with tin badges. The fictions that helped him to deal with these new political facts were demon-haunted and apocalyptic. He had cast himself as Darth Vader: he therefore explained to an NBC interviewer that the administration from now on would 'work through, sort of, the dark side'.
That meant, as it turned out, the suspension of habeas corpus and of the Geneva conventions that regulate the treatment of prisoners of war. Alberto Gonzalez, Bush's legal counsel (since promoted to attorney general), supplied him with a 'new paradigm' for conducting a campaign against rogue killers from failed states who targeted civilians: since terrorists ignored the laws, why should America and its raggle-taggle band of allies bother about humane niceties?
Last year, when the photographs of detainees at Abu Ghraib being sexually shamed or threatened by dogs were published, the 'dark side' was placed on view in bright, brash colour. An investigation revealed that torture was being used to obtain confessions. One zealous American soldier, symbolically outfitted in his full uniform, had even sodomised a prisoner; unfortunately the man was too busy screaming to divulge any information of value. Other Americans did their anal interrogating with broomsticks or chemical lights, or brought in dogs to do the job for them.
Bush, testily insisting that his henchmen had been instructed to do nothing illegal, said: 'We have laws on the books.' What this meant was expensive lawyers were busy devising methods of circumventing those laws. An article in a recent New Yorker describes the vogue for outsourcing torture. Suspects abducted by the CIA are loaded in shackles onto executive jets, and delivered to countries such as Egypt, Syria and Jordan whose secret police have robust ways of asking questions.
Mark Danner - toiling through official reports and transcripts of interviews with prisoners and witnesses, as well as conducting his own investigation in Iraq - has exposed the false piety in disavowals of responsibility by Bush and Donald Rumsfeld, and established official complicity in the abuse.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1418338,00.html
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Leave our country now
From the first days of the US-British invasion of Iraq, oil workers have resisted foreign occupation
Hassan Juma'a Awad Friday February 18, 2005 The Guardian
We lived through dark days under Saddam Hussein's dictatorship. When the regime fell, people wanted a new life: a life without shackles and terror; a life where we could rebuild our country and enjoy its natural wealth. Instead, our communities have been attacked with chemicals and cluster bombs, and our people tortured, raped and killed in our homes.
Saddam's secret police used to creep over the roofs into our homes at night; occupation troops now break down our doors in broad daylight. The media do not show even a fraction of the devastation that has engulfed Iraq. Journalists who dare to report the truth of what is happening have been kidnapped by terrorists. This serves the agenda of the occupation, which aims to eliminate witnesses to its crimes.
Workers in Iraq's southern oilfields began organising soon after British occupying forces invaded Basra. We founded our union, the Southern Oil Company Union, just 11 days after the fall of Baghdad in April 2003. When the occupation troops stood back and allowed Basra's hospitals, universities and public services to be burned and looted, while they defended only the oil ministry and oilfields, we knew we were dealing with a brutal force prepared to impose its will without regard for human suffering. From the beginning, we were left in no doubt that the US and its allies had come to take control of our oil resources.
The occupation authorities have maintained many of Saddam's repressive laws, including the 1987 order which robbed us of basic union rights, including the right to strike. Today, we still have no official recognition as a trade union, despite having 23,000 members in 10 oil and gas companies in Basra, Amara, Nassiriya, and up to Anbar province. However, we draw our legitimacy from the workers, not the government. We believe unions should operate regardless of the government's wishes, until the people are able finally to elect a genuinely accountable and independent Iraqi government, which represents our interests and not those of American imperialism.
Our union is independent of any political party. Most trade unions in Britain only seem to be aware of one union federation in Iraq, the regime-authorised Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions, whose president, Rassim Awadi, is deputy leader of the US-imposed prime minister Ayad Allawi's party. The IFTU's leadership is carved up between the pro-government Communist party, Allawi's Iraqi National Accord, and their satellites. In fact, there are two other union federations, which are linked to political parties, as well as our own organisation.
Our union has already shown it is able to stand its ground against one of the most powerful US companies, Dick Cheney's KBR, which tried to take over our workplaces with the protection of occupation forces.
We forced them out and compelled their Kuwaiti subcontractor, Al Khourafi, to replace 1,000 of the 1,200 employees it brought with it with Iraqi workers, 70% of whom are unemployed today. We also fought US viceroy Paul Bremer's wage schedule, which dictated that Iraqi public sector workers must earn ID 69,000 ($35) per month, while paying up to $1,000 a day to thousands of foreign mercenaries. In August 2003 we took strike action and shut down all oil production for three days. As a result, the occupation authorities had to
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1417372,00.html
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Why I won't fight in Iraq George Solomou Tuesday February 15, 2005 The Guardian
I am resigning from the Territorial Army because I believe the war in Iraq is wrong. This has not been an easy decision. I have been in the TA for five years - years in which I have learned a lot; won a humanitarian award for helping save the life of a fellow soldier; made many friends; and, I hope, contributed something to this country.
I have no doubt that some of my fellow soldiers will feel I am letting them down. Since I have spoken out against the war in the last few weeks I have had a lot of support from soldiers, but I have also been called a coward. I am a trained medic and there is no doubt my skills could be used in the field to save lives. But after a lot of soul-searching I have concluded my priority must be to try to save lives by taking a public stand against this war.
Of course, when you join the armed forces you have to be prepared to fight. But not any war. Most people in Britain think the war in Iraq is wrong, and that is presumably because all the arguments used to justify it have proved to be hollow. We know there were no links between Iraq and international terrorism at the time the war started (though there are now). It is now official that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and the idea that the war has made the world a safer place is a sick joke.
Soldiers cannot be above moral considerations. Though the British army scandalously tries to hide this fact, the UN enshrines the right of members of the armed forces to object and opt out of particular wars on political, religious or moral grounds. Before the war started even our own generals were demanding firm commitments from Tony Blair that there was proof that Saddam Hussein was armed and dangerous. They were worried about the legality of the war. The UN resolutions used to justify the war only had force if Iraq was a threat to the world or to the region. We now know there was no evidence for this. So we are faced with a situation where even the UN secretary general, Kofi Annan, has said the war was illegal.
So I am resigning because I don't want to fight a war that is unjustified and illegal. But I also have a deep concern that British soldiers are being used in Iraq. Soldiers from my regiment tell me that much of their work in southern Iraq involves protecting convoys of oil tankers shuttling between Basra and the Kuwaiti border. Their stories have just confirmed my growing cynicism about the motives for the war. It has taken me two years to be able to say it, but I really believe that our foreign policy is being driven by the needs of US power, particularly the need to control the flow of oil.
This is a very bitter thing to say because the troops are suffering. Two close colleagues have suffered permanent injuries in Iraq. Their lives have been shattered and it must be said they have been treated very poorly by the army. Reports suggest that on top of the 80 dead, 7-800 British troops have been seriously wounded. Many more are suffering mental trauma. The experience of the Falklands and the first Gulf war shows that the scars of war run very deep, even among the officially uninjured. I know veterans who struggle daily with post-traumatic stress disorder more than 10 years after seeing active service. The legacy can last a lifetime. It is a scandal that young lives are being lost and ruined just so George Bush can keep control of the oil in the Middle East.
People have said to me that we created this mess, we should sort it out. The Iraqis need many things: they need medical supplies, they need their infrastructure rebuilt, they need jobs. The one thing they don't need is foreign troops on their streets. In fact, it is the presence of US and British troops that is creating the tension and violence, which seems certain to continue regardless of last month's elections. We have become symbols of foreign domination. That is why there is no way we can provide security. Only the Iraqis themselves can do that, and the longer we stay, the more the situation will get out of hand. We must allow the Iraqis to get on with building their own future - even if they make mistakes
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1414822,00.html
Shia delight Leader Monday February 14, 2005 The Guardian
It is one of the more striking facts about the Iraqi election that it took two weeks from polling day to get the results that were announced yesterday. But it was highly unusual in another way too: rarely before has the outcome of an election in an Arab country been unknown in advance. In the days of the Ba'athist dictatorship votes regularly produced 99% or 100% in favour of the only candidate. The announcement by the electoral commission in Baghdad heralded a new era - whatever you think of how and why Saddam Hussein was overthrown, the motives and honesty of George Bush or Tony Blair, and whether it has all been worth the cost in blood, misery, chaos and endless international acrimony.
The uncertified results - still open to complaints amid doubts about their fairness - are no surprise. The Shia Muslims who make up 60% of the Iraqi population, excluded from power since the state was carved out of the Ottoman empire, have become the dominant political group, though with 48% of the vote (and the insistent encouragement of their religious leaders) they did not do as well as expected. Nevertheless, this amounts to a huge change that has generated palpable nervousness in the Middle East's Sunni-ruled kingdoms and republics.
With 130 of the 250 seats in the new national assembly, the United Iraqi Alliance inspired by the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani will have to build a coalition - a far better outcome than one in which the Shia could rule alone. The result is even better news for the country's Kurds, living semi-independently in the north since the end of the first Gulf war. Their 25% of the vote gives them 70 seats, huge leverage and a good chance that the veteran politician Jalal Talabani will be Iraq's president while a federal constitution is being written. The future of Ayad Allawi, the interim US-backed prime minister who won a disappointing 14% of the vote, remains in doubt.
The worst part of the result was also the most easily predictable: the very low participation by Sunnis, the 20% of the population who lost most with the overthrow of Saddam. Turnout in Al-Anbar province, which comprises towns like Falluja and Ramadi, was just 2%, though a far healthier 29% in mainly Sunni Salahadin. The pressures of insurgency and intimidation, especially targeting the fledgling security forces, were powerful disincentives to vote. And for many the very idea of holding an election under American bayonets was anathema.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1412233,00.html
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Sorry George, but Iraq has given you the purple finger The party likely to win the election opposes the US presence and policies
'The Iraqi people gave America the biggest thank you in the best way we could have hoped for." Reading this election analysis from Betsy Hart, a columnist for the Scripps Howard News Service, I found myself thinking about my late grandmother.
Half blind and a menace behind the wheel of her Chevrolet, she adamantly refused to surrender her car keys. She was convinced that everywhere she drove (flattening the house pets of Philadelphia along the way), people were waving and smiling at her. "They are so friendly!" We had to break the bad news. "They aren't waving with their whole hand, grandma - just with their middle finger."
So it is with Betsy Hart and the other near-sighted election observers. They think the Iraqi people have finally sent America those long-awaited flowers and sweets, when Iraq's voters just gave them the (purple) finger. Judging by the millions of votes already counted, Iraqis have voted overwhelmingly to throw out the US-installed Ayad Allawi, who refused to ask the United States to leave. A decisive majority voted for the United Iraqi Alliance (UIA); the second plank in the UIA platform called for "a timetable for the withdrawal of the multinational forces from Iraq".
There are more single-digit messages embedded in the winning coalition's platform. Some highlights: "Adopting a social security system under which the state guarantees a job for every fit Iraqi ... and offers facilities to citizens to build homes"; the alliance also pledges "to write off Iraq's debts, cancel reparations and use the oil wealth for economic development projects". In short, Iraqis voted to repudiate the radical free-market policies imposed by the former chief American envoy Paul Bremer and locked in by a recent agreement with the International Monetary Fund.
So will the people who got all choked up watching Iraqis flock to the polls support these democratically chosen demands? Please. "You don't set timetables," George Bush said four days after the Iraqis voted for exactly that. Likewise, Tony Blair called the elections "magnificent" but dismissed a firm timetable out of hand. The UIA's pledges to expand the public sector, keep the oil and drop the debt will likely suffer similar fates. At least if Adel Abd al-Mahdi gets his way - he's Iraq's finance minister and the man suddenly being touted as the leader of Iraq's next government.
Al-Mahdi is the Bush administration's Trojan horse in the UIA. (You didn't think they were going to put all their money on Allawi, did you?) In October, he told a gathering of the American Enterprise Institute that he planned to "restructure and privatise [Iraq's] state-owned enterprises", and in December he made another trip to Washington to unveil plans for a new oil law, "very promising to the American investors". It was al-Mahdi himself who oversaw the signing of a flurry of deals with Shell, BP and ChevronTexaco in the weeks before the elections, and it is he who negotiated the recent austerity deal with the IMF.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1411350,00.html
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Sunnis admit poll boycott blunder and ask to share power Rory Carroll in Baghdad Tuesday February 15, 2005 The Guardian
Iraq's Arab Sunnis will do a U-turn and join the political process despite their lack of representation in the newly elected national assembly, Sunni leaders said yesterday.
Many Sunnis protested that the election was flawed and unfair, but in the wake of Sunday's results, which confirmed the marginalisation of what was Iraq's ruling class, their political parties want to lobby for a share of power.
"Our view is that this election was a step towards democracy and ending the occupation," said Ayad al-Samaray, the assistant general secretary of the Iraqi Islamic party. He said unnamed Sunni leaders blundered in depicting the election as a deepening of the occupation.
The insurgency ravaging Iraq is based in Sunni areas, and there were fears that the violence would escalate if the once-dominant minority was further alienated. A call by clerics for a boycott, and threats by insurgents meant very few Sunnis voted in the January 30 poll.
Having endured the brunt of US attacks in towns such as Falluja and Ramadi, many derided the ballot as an attempt to legitimise a foreign occupation. The consequent landslide for the Shias and Kurds means that they will drive the new government and the drafting of a constitution.
An alliance of cleric-backed Shias won 48% of the vote, which could give it a wafer-thin majority in the 275-seat assembly. Kurds won 26%, and a slate headed by the outgoing prime minister, Ayad Allawi, won almost 14%.
All three blocs have promised to reach out to the Sunnis, who comprise a fifth of the population but won just a handful of seats because of low turnouts in their areas. This will soon be tested as parties forge alliances and tussle for government posts, including that of prime minister and president.
Secular Sunni leaders yesterday accepted the victors' invitation to participate, potentially draining support from the insurgency.
"We can't say it was wise or logical to not participate; it was an emotional decision," said Mr Samaray. "Now the Sunni community faces the fact that it made a big mistake and that it would have been far better to participate."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1414818,00.html
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Shunned prime minister Allawi becomes outsider Brian Whitaker Monday February 14, 2005 The Guardian
Iraq's prime minister Ayad Allawi faces a tough battle to keep his job following the election results. Despite having the advantages of an incumbent, his list of candidates came third with slightly less than 14% of the votes, though he could still emerge from backroom deal-making as a compromise choice to run the country.
Although Allawi has had some opportunities to play the role of world statesman, such as playing host to Tony Blair in Baghdad and addressing Congress, he seems to have been unable to translate that into electoral success.
His campaign, on which he reportedly spent $4m (£2.14m), was one of the slickest. Despite security problems, he managed to do some campaigning around the country and offered traditional inducements to voters, such as promising to create 250,000 jobs in Baghdad. More controversially, his campaign sent food baskets to Baghdad's poor (with a political message attached) and handed out gifts and cash to Iraqi journalists.
As a secular Shia and an ex-Ba'athist who fled into exile and then won backing from the CIA and British intelligence, he has at some time made friends - and enemies - with just about everyone.
Since becoming caretaker prime minister he has cultivated a tough-guy image - Saddam without the moustache, as some Iraqis refer to him. His backing for military offensives against rebellious cities has won him credit in some places, but others note how much he has had to rely on the Americans and how his approach has not brought the country any closer to stability.
His brief tenure has also put Iraq on familiar ground in other areas, with a recent report by Human Rights Watch accusing the new Iraqi police of systematic torture.
But Mr Allawi's secularism appeals to Iraqis who fear attempts to impose strict Islamic rules, either by militant Sunnis or the majority Shias.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1412304,00.html
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Abuse of Iraqi prisoners an exercise in fun, prosecution says Audrey Gillan in Osnabrück Friday February 18, 2005 The Guardian
The alleged abuse of Iraqi prisoners was "an exercise in fun" for the delectation of British servicemen, a court martial in Germany was told yesterday.
The Army Prosecuting Authority summed up its case against three soldiers accused of the mistreatment of Iraqi looters who were rounded up and punished at Camp Breadbasket just outside Basra.
A panel of seven officers was asked to remember how they felt on the first day of the case, when they saw 22 photographs showing naked men being forced to simulate sex acts. The "good reputation" of the army had been affected by these images.
Lieutenant Colonel Nick Clapham, prosecuting, said: "All the photographs speak for themselves and cry out for an explanation. It's whether the explanation is good enough."
He said he was not asking them to convict the men in order to find a scapegoat for what went on at Camp Bread basket in May 2003. The abused men may have been looters but they were under the protection of the British army and should not have been abused.
Corporal Daniel Kenyon, 33, faces several charges including aiding and abetting soldiers - who have never been identified - to force the Iraqis to simulate sex acts, and failing to report the alleged abuse.
Lance Corporal Mark Cooley, 25, denies that he acted in a cruel way when he was photographed while pretending to punch a prisoner, and driving a forklift truck with a detainee suspended from its prongs. He claims he was moving the Iraqi man out of the sun.
Lance Corporal Darren Larkin, 30, has already pleaded guilty to assault after being pictured dressed in boxer shorts standing on top of a prisoner. He was cleared of forcing two Iraqis to strip naked.
The defence has claimed that the alleged abuse stemmed from a mission to capture and punish the Iraqi looters, which was codenamed Operation Ali Baba. An order to make the prisoners work hard, given by the camp's commanding officer, Major Dan Taylor, contravened the Geneva convention, the court has heard.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1417334,00.html
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Papers reveal Bagram abuse · Prisoners subjected to 'mock executions' · Photographs of detainees being sexually humiliated Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington and James Meek Friday February 18, 2005 The Guardian
New evidence has emerged that US forces in Afghanistan engaged in widespread Abu Ghraib-style abuse, taking "trophy photographs" of detainees and carrying out rape and sexual humiliation.
Documents obtained by the Guardian contain evidence that such abuses took place in the main detention centre at Bagram, near the capital Kabul, as well as at a smaller US installation near the southern city of Kandahar.
The documents also indicate that US soldiers covered up abuse in Afghanistan and in Iraq - even after the Abu Ghraib scandal last year.
A thousand pages of evidence from US army investigations released to the American Civil Liberties Union after a long legal battle, and made available to the Guardian, show that an Iraqi detained at Tikrit in September 2003 was forced to withdraw his report of abuse after soldiers told him he would be held indefinitely.
Meanwhile, photographs taken in southern Afghanistan showing US soldiers from the 22nd Infantry Battalion posing in mock executions of blindfolded and bound detainees, were purposely destroyed after the Abu Ghraib scandal to avoid "another public outrage", the documents show.
In the dossier, the Iraqi detainee claims that three US interrogators in civilian clothing dislocated his arms, stuck an unloaded gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger, choked him with a rope until he lost consciousness, and beat him with a baseball bat.
"After they tied me up in the chair, then they dislocate my both arms. He asked to admit before I kill you then he beat again and again," the prisoner says in his statement. "He asked me: Are you going to report me? You have no evidence. Then he hit me very hard on my nose, and then he stepped on my nose until he broken and I started bleeding."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1417362,00.html
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Senior officer denies destroying 'incriminating' photos Staff and agencies Friday February 11, 2005
The commander of the British soldiers accused in the Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal denied at their court martial today that he had disposed of incriminating photographs.
Corporal Daniel Kenyon, 33, is the most senior soldier accused of the ill-treatment of captured looters at the Camp Breadbasket relief base in Basra, southern Iraq, in May 2003, shortly after Saddam Hussein was ousted.
He and two other soldiers are being tried after another solider took a film to be developed to a British shop which showed images of Iraqi detainees, some naked or bound, being forced to simulate sex acts.
Today the court martial at a British base in Osnabrück, Germany, heard that a series of different photographs seized from Cpl Kenyon's home ended on April 8 2003, which was more than a month before the alleged abuse took place.
Prosecutor Lieutenant Colonel Nick Clapham suggested the reason for this was because Cpl Kenyon had disposed of later photographs of the incidents which took place at the camp.
Cpl Kenyon, from Newcastle upon Tyne, denied this and claimed he had simply run out of film.
Lt Col Clapham said: "I am suggesting you were an avid photographer who took many pictures, not that you ran out of film but that we don't have the later films because they are incriminating. You know what I am suggesting?"
Cpl Kenyon replied: "I know what you are suggesting but you are wrong ... I wasn't going to the Gulf to take photographs, I was going to fight a war."
The corporal admitted he could be seen taking a photograph in the background of a picture of one of his co-defendants, Lance Corporal Darren Larkin, who was standing on top of a bound Iraqi prisoner.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1411016,00.html
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Seniors behaviour ellected soldiers
Camp Breadbasket in Iraq was a "dirty infection", because senior soldiers allowed Iraqis to be physically hurt, a court martial heard yesterday.
The senior of the three British soldiers accused of abusing prisoners said his men had been "squeaky clean" when they arrived at the camp, but had seen "wrongdoing" up the chain of command which had infected them.
Corporal Daniel Kenyon, 33, said he had not reported that soldiers were beating Iraqis, out of loyalty to his battalion and because "you don't go grassing up a sergeant major".
He did not report soldiers who had forced men to strip and simulate sex acts, because he felt those above him had no "moral courage".
He said: "What I want the court to understand was how Breadbasket camp was being run. My section was squeaky clean and Breadbasket was one dirty infection."
Cpl Kenyon told the court martial in Osnabrück, Germany, that he blew his top when he found his men laughing at Iraqis who were being forced to simulate oral sex for the camera. His reaction to a scene he described as "beyond belief" was one of "outrage and anger".
He shouted and swore at the members of his platoon when he found them humiliating the Iraqi thieves captured in an anti-looting mission.
The Iraqis were told to put their clothes back on and the soldiers were rounded up and given a "bollocking".
"I was just explaining to them that because there were people doing that sort of thing, we weren't to do that. It wasn't the done thing," he said.
Cpl Kenyon, of the 1st Battalion, the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers, denied seeing his men force the Iraqis to simulate anal sex and take photographs. He said: "I guarantee that no pictures or no other positions like this would have happened if I was there."
He is accused of aiding and abetting unidentified soldiers who orchestrated the sex show, and of failing to report the incident. He denies both charges, and denies failing to report that his co-accused Lance Corporal Mark Cooley allegedly tied up an Iraqi and drove him around as he hung from a forklift truck,
Asked why he did not report it, he said: "I was going to report something which in my eyes wasn't physically hurting someone to people allowing other Iraqis to be physically hurt?" Those above him were not fit persons to report to.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1410689,00.html
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Families of dead Redcaps hit out at officers Relatives dismiss MoD 'cover-up' after Iraq murders Richard Norton-Taylor Friday February 18, 2005 The Guardian
The families of six British military policemen murdered in Iraq demanded action against army officers yesterday, accusing them of incompetence, negligence, and displaying complete disregard for the men's safety.
They dismissed as a cover-up a Ministry of Defence board of inquiry into the deaths of the Redcaps, who were killed by violent demonstrators in the town of Majar al-Kabir on June 24 2003.
They said they refuted the board's findings that the deaths "could not have been prevented" and that Majar was a "benign" town.
Senior officers involved in the incident had been "exonerated and sanitised by promotions though the families feel they displayed a cavalier attitude for the safety of the Redcaps along with a total lack of duty of care", the families said in a statement after a meeting at the MoD.
Had such events taken place in a civilian organisation, it would be a "clear-cut case of corporate manslaughter", they added. The MoD has taken no action against any soldier or officer as a result of the incident.
The board of inquiry investigated the deaths of Sergeant Simon Hamilton-Jewell, Corporal Russell Aston, Corporal Paul Graham Long, Corporal Simon Miller, Lance-Corporal Benjamin John McGowan Hyde, and Lance-Corporal Thomas Keys.
The men had been told by their commanders to hand in equipment such as distress signals, ammunition, morphine packs and radio masts.
The board painted a picture of confusion and sloppy procedures, compounded by poor intelligence and radios which did not work. It said the military policemen were ill-equipped, unable to call for help, and their whereabouts were unknown to their commanders.
However, it concluded that it was impossible to "state categorically that their fate would have been different if they had carried more ammunition or if communications had been better". It was directed not to attribute blame or recommend disciplinary action.
Yesterday, the families released a letter from Brigadier Stephen Andrews, the army's director of personal services, referring to "local systemic weaknesses in army procedures as applied to individuals on the ground".
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1417255,00.html
FO defends secrecy of Iraq advice Patrick Wintour, chief political correspondent Wednesday February 16, 2005 The Guardian
The Foreign Office's arguments for keeping secret the date on which the attorney general was first asked whether an invasion of Iraq would be illegal is "implausible and wrong", the parliamentary ombudsman, Ann Abraham, has ruled.
But the department has decided to ignore the decision, saying that releasing the date might be misinterpreted and might and inhibit free discussion in the government.
Releasing the date would make it necessary to reveal other information to put it in context, the Foreign Office said. If such information were put in the public domain, it might be misinterpreted, it added.
Lord Lester, a Liberal Democrat peer, requested the date under the code on open government, the precursor to the Freedom of Information Act.
He wanted to discover how long the government had been planning an invasion, and was investigating whether the attorney general, Lord Goldsmith, had adapted his advice, as has been alleged, under last minute pressure from Downing Street and the forces.
He said the attitude of the Foreign Office to his request simply for the date was "Kafkaesque and deplorable".
The government has already announced that it will not release the advice itself.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1415376,00.html
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War crimes 'relevant' to trials of protesters
Richard Norton-Taylor Wednesday February 16, 2005 The Guardian
Opponents of the invasion of Iraq prosecuted for trespass on military bases were denied justice, the high court was told yesterday, because they were not allowed to argue they had acted to prevent war crimes in an illegal conflict.
The test case was brought by three groups: Greenpeace activists who chained themselves to tanks at Marchwood military port; Valerie Swain, convicted after cutting a fence at a US bomber base in Gloucestershire; and Lindis Percy, veteran co-founder of the Campaign for the Accountability of American Bases.
She entered a secret US communications base in Northamptonshire and put an upside-down Stars and Stripes flag on the gate, with the words "War in Iraq - Immoral, illegal, Madness" written on it.
At their trials, district judges refused to hear the war crimes defence. The high court was asked to rule on this. Maurice Mendelson QC, representing 14 Greenpeace activists, told Lord Justice Waller and Mr Justice Jack that it had been wrong to rule the defence "non-justiciable" on grounds it related to policy decisions that were a matter for the government, not the courts.
"It is crystal clear that crimes under the International Criminal Court Act are justiciable in the English courts, whether or not those crimes are committed pursuant to defence or foreign policy," he said. To argue otherwise would in effect "grant the executive immunity from the criminal law".
The treaty setting up the court said war crimes included "ancillary" acts as well as primary acts - hence covered "aiding and abetting" US military action.
Nicholas Blake QC, counsel for Ms Percy, argued it was "more than plausible" that the Croughton base commander had been briefed on the bombings of Baghdad. If so, he had knowledge "sufficient to fix him with the mental element of aiding and abetting" the "clearly excessive" attacks by US forces which killed civilians as well as soldiers.
The hearing continues today. Special reports The anti-war movement Iraq Afghanistan Useful links 28.01.2003: Guide to anti-war websites Stop the War Coalition (UK)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1415389,00.html
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Iraq election results fail to stem violence Agencies Monday February 14, 2005
The first full day after Iraq's election results were announced saw three Iraqi troops die in a roadside bomb, two Baghdad police shot dead in a drive-by shooting, an oil pipeline detonated and a woman and child killed by a mortar attack.
As the newly elected politicians attempted to agree on a power sharing coalition behind closed doors - a process expected to last weeks - it was also reported that a kidnapped Swedish man had been threatened with decapitation by his purported hostage-takers.
Meanwhile, in Washington the White House requested a supplementary $80bn (£42bn) from Congress to fund the ongoing costs of military operations in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
Around the world, leaders welcomed last night's election results as a positive step in Iraq's evolution.
On the ground in Iraq, a roadside bomb killed three National Guards when it was detonated in Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, Mudafar Al-Juburi from the Dyala police station said. Three soldiers were wounded, he added.
The oilfield attack occurred at the North Oil Company's Al-Dibbis oilfield near Kirkuk, said Major General Anwar Mohammad Amin. The pipeline supplied oil for internal use and the damage will hamper the country's oil production, he said.
It would take workers at least three days to extinguish the blaze and repair the pipeline, Amin added.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,1414572,00.html
Iraq hospital bomb kills 17
Agencies Saturday February 12, 2005
A car bomb exploded in front of a hospital south of Baghdad this morning, killing 17 and wounding 16, police said, a day after 23 were killed in two attacks aimed at the Shiite community.
A police captain, who refused to give his name, said today's blast occurred in front of the Musayyib General Hospital, about 55 kilometres (35 miles) south of the capital.
Elsewhere, a prominent Iraqi judge under Saddam Hussein, Taha al-Amiri, was assassinated this morning by two gunmen in the southern port city of Basra, said Lt. Col. Karim al-Zaidi.
Al-Amiri, a former chief judge at Basra's highest criminal court, is one of several former Ba'ath Party figures assassinated in the Basra area during the past 18 months.
Police in Mosul said they discovered the bodies of six men dressed in Iraqi National Guard uniforms dumped on a main highway near the city.
The men had been shot in the chest and head, said police Lt. Ali Hussein. They were found in the area of Intisar, east of Mosul.
Police in Kirkuk said they were on the trail of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian militant who has claimed responsibility for many of the worst attacks in Iraq, including the beheading of several foreign hostages. "He came to Kirkuk from Mosul," a source in the Kirkuk police department said. "There's a possibility that he might be captured at any moment."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1411517,00.html
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Firm plans to exploit Iraq's wasted gas Dan Milmo Monday February 14, 2005
The Guardian
A Texas-based oil company with a potentially lucrative gas processing agreement in Iraq will today announce plans to float on the Alternative Investment Market.
Gulfsands Petroleum signed a memorandum of understanding with the Iraqi oil ministry last month to gather and process gas generated by oil fields in the province of Misan. Currently the gas is flared off, an environmentally damaging practice that also wastes a source of natural gas.
A share placing on Aim by stockbroker Seymour Pierce will take place towards the end of next month and is expected to raise £25m. The proceeds will be used to fund the Misan project, pay off debt and finance exploration work in the US and Syria.
Gulfsands said the construction of a gas gathering system, a natural gas liquids plant and pipelines will be done in two phases over five years. Once completed, the project is expected to produce 46,600 barrels of natural gas liquids a day and 338m cubic feet of dry sweet natural gas a day. Gulfsands said the project is believed to be the largest infrastructure project undertaken by private international investors in Iraq since the war ended in May 2003.
The untapped potential of Iraq's oil resources has also attracted the attention of BP and Shell, who have submitted bids to develop oilfields there.
John Dorrier, the chairman and chief executive of Gulfsands, said the plant would provide electricity and jobs for Iraqis. "We have briefed representatives of the Iraqi government, the US government and various international financing institutions about the project and its beneficial impact for the Iraqi people, environment and economy."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1412319,00.html
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RAF rules out Hercules bomb Richard Norton-Taylor and Colin Blackstock Thursday February 10, 2005
The Guardian
The initial findings of an RAF board of inquiry into the crash a Hercules aircraft north of Baghdad has found no evidence of a bomb on board, defence sources said last night.
They said a range of possibilities were still being looked at, including a missile strike from the ground.
A report in the Sun newspaper that the right wing of the plane was blown off could also point to metal fatigue or another problem with the ageing aircraft.
An MoD spokesman said last night: "We don't speculate when the findings of a board of inquiry have yet to be concluded.
"For the benefit of all concerned, including the families of the deceased, we want to get this resolved as quickly as possible, but we need to ascertain the facts before we make any announcement."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1409970,00.html
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Head of UN oil-for-food programme suspended over 'misconduct'
David Pallister
Tuesday February 8, 2005
The Guardian
The head of the UN oil-for-food programme in Iraq and a senior UN official who dealt with contracts for the programme have been suspended following an independent investigation that accused them of misconduct, a UN spokesman said yesterday.
Benon Sevan, who was in charge of the $64bn (£34.5bn) humanitarian programme, and Joseph Stephanides, who heads the UN security council affairs division, were informed on Friday that they had been suspended with pay, UN spokesman Fred Eckhard said.
Mr Sevan and Mr Stephanides were told they would receive a letter this week "laying out the charges against them", which will allow them to defend themselves before UN disciplinary bodies in what will likely be a lengthy appeals process, he said.
"Suspension is the beginning of a disciplinary process," Mr Eckhard said.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1408060,00.html
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More recruits to the refusenik ranks Thursday February 17, 2005 The Guardian
Like George Solomou (Why I won't fight in Iraq, February 15), my husband, Abdullah William Webster, has refused to fight in Iraq on conscientious grounds. Unlike George, my husband, an American in the US army, has been branded a criminal and sentenced to 14 months in prison at a court martial. On top of this and painful separation from his family, he now stands to lose his pension and to be regarded as a convicted felon.
My husband is a professional soldier with a distinguished 20-year-long career. He fought in the first Gulf war and performed difficult peacekeeping duties in Bosnia and Kosovo. Far from being a deserter or a coward, he is a brave man with principles who is being punished for his conscientiously held beliefs.
Amnesty has adopted Abdullah as a prisoner of conscience and is calling for his release. Since when did opposing a controversial war make you a criminal? Sue WebsterBirmingham
So, Mr Solomou, as your comrades fight insurgents and try desperately to give Iraq some democracy, you stay at home and pontificate about "morals". Clearly the oath of allegiance has passed you by.Allan FriswellClitheroe, Lancs
George Solomou is part of a great and growing tradition of refuseniks around the world saying no under article 8 of the Nuremberg charter, that a soldier has a duty to refuse any order to commit a crime against humanity. Refusenik Camilo Mejia (one of 5,500 US deserters) is in prison for refusing to fight in Iraq. Refusenik Shimri Tzameret won his right not to serve in the Israeli army after two years in prison.
Solomou is the first UK soldier to call on other soldiers "to speak out or opt out ... soldiers cannot be above moral considerations". Michael Kalmanovitzwww.refusingtokill.net
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1416212,00.html
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Fig-leaf freedom
One election does not a democracy make,
writes Brian Whitaker
President George Bush has pronounced the election in Iraq a success. "The world is hearing the voice of freedom from the centre of the Middle East," he said yesterday.
Since this is more or less what he was bound to say anyway, the only surprise is that he waited until four hours after the polls had closed before saying it.
It's a curious sort of freedom where candidates cannot campaign openly for fear of their lives and where, despite the tightest security that the occupation armies and the Iraqi forces can provide - curfews, banning cars from the streets, intensive searches at polling stations, etc - more than 40 people still die.
Violence on that scale is by no means unusual at election time in other parts of the world. Four years ago, for instance, municipal elections in Yemen, where there was no insurgency, left 29 people dead.
The problem in Iraq, though, is that such violence is not a one-off. It is a regular, almost daily, occurrence and nobody realistically expects it to subside any time soon.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1402530,00.html
An Israeli diplomat allegedly involved in a sex scandal while serving in Brazil five years ago has voluntarily withdrawn his candidacy to serve in Israel's embassy in Canberra.
Aryeh Scher was to replace Amir Laty, the Israeli diplomat thrown out of Australia in December on national security grounds.
Both Israel and Australia have been tightlipped about Mr Laty's expulsion.
But it has been revealed that Mr Laty had rekindled a friendship with the daughter of Attorney-General Philip Ruddock and had been due to spend Christmas with the Ruddock family, before authorities ordered his expulsion.
An Israeli foreign ministry spokesman said Scher informed Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom that because of the negative "atmosphere" his appointment had created both in Israel and Australia, he has decided to forego the appointment, the Jerusalem Post reported today.
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2005/02/18/1108609391246.html
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Expelled diplomat linked to Ruddock daughter
The innuendo surrounding Australia's expulsion of an Israeli diplomat continues, with the former consul allegedly claiming his departure was related to his friendship with the daughter of Philip Ruddock.
Caitlin Ruddock, 26, an accounting lecturer at the University of NSW, reportedly met the expelled consul, Amir Laty, while the two were studying in Beijing and continued the friendship during his 18-month stint in Canberra.
This week's Australian Jewish News reported that Mr Laty was planning to attend a Christmas lunch at the Attorney-General's home but was barred from attending after Australian authorities ordered his expulsion.
An amused Ms Ruddock would not comment yesterday.
"This issue has nothing to do with me," Ms Ruddock told the Herald. "You should speak to my dad's office."
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2005/02/17/1108609350998.html
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'Palestinian hanging' torture revealed
An Iraqi whose corpse was photographed with grinning US soldiers at the Abu Ghraib prison died under CIA interrogation while in a position condemned by human rights groups as torture.
It was revealed today he was suspended by his wrists, with his hands cuffed behind his back.
The death of the prisoner, Manadel al-Jamadi, became known last year when the Abu Ghraib prison scandal broke. The US military said then that the death had been ruled a homicide. But the exact circumstances under which the man died were not disclosed.
The prisoner died in a position known as "Palestinian hanging," documents reviewed by The AP showed.
It is unclear whether that position was approved by the Bush administration for use in CIA interrogations.
The spy agency, which faces congressional scrutiny over its detention and interrogation of terror suspects at the Baghdad prison and elsewhere, declined to comment for this story, as did the Justice Department.
Al-Jamadi was one of the CIA's "ghost" detainees at Abu Ghraib - prisoners being held secretly by the agency.
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2005/02/18/1108609385820.html
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Former exile on track to win Iraq's top post
Iraq's interim Vice-President, a soft-spoken doctor and former exile who leads the Dawa party, has emerged as a surprise front-runner to assume the powerful post of prime minister.
Ibrahim al-Jaafari, 58, a United Iraqi Alliance candidate, became the top contender for the prime minister's job after his main rival, the interim Finance Minister, Adel Abdul Mahdi, dropped out on Tuesday.
The alliance, a largely Shiite coalition tacitly backed by the country's most influential religious leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani, won 48 per cent of the vote in the elections on January 30 for a 275-member parliament. Under a complicated formula, the alliance is expected to hold a slim majority with 140 seats.
In negotiations this week, it has tried to come up with a consensus choice for a position that will become the government's public face.
"There is an initial agreement to nominate Dr Ibrahim Jaafari," said Adnan Ali, a spokesman for the Dawa party.
Another official taking part in the negotiations and two officials with a non-governmental organisation involved in supporting the political process - all of whom spoke on condition of anonymity - said they, too, believed Dr Jaafari was the frontrunner. "It is already basically decided," one of the officials said. But "there is still a lot of horse-trading to do".
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2005/02/16/1108500157443.html
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Ice hockey season cancelled
The National Hockey League cancelled its season on Wednesday unable to reach a new collective bargaining agreement with locked out players becoming the first North American professional sports league to lose an entire schedule due to a labour dispute.
A grim-faced league commissioner Gary Bettman began a news conference in New York by apologising to fans than announcing the season had been cancelled.
"When I stood before you last September I said, NHL teams will not play again until our economic problems have been solved," said Bettman.
"As I stand before you today it is my sad duty to announce that because the solution has not yet been attained it is no longer practical to conduct even an abbreviated season.
"I have no choice but to announce the formal cancellation of play for 2004-2005."
Owners had been seeking to impose a salary cap on players, something their union had steadfastly refused to consider since the lockout began last September until Monday when they said they would be prepared to accept a cap of $US52 million ($A66.15 million) per team, which was rejected by the owners.
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2005/02/17/1108500189547.html
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Lawyers call for release of Australian held in Iraq
The Federal Government must ensure the United States either charged a Melbourne man being held in Iraq or released him, the Law Council of Australia said yesterday.
Iraqi-born Australian citizen Ahmed Aziz Rafiq was arrested by Kurdish forces in northern Iraq in February last year and was reportedly handed over to coalition forces for investigation as a terror suspect.
Law Council president John North said there were now reports US authorities were planning to release Mr Rafiq.
He called on the Australian Government to make sure there was no further delay of Mr Rafiq's release.
"If Mr Rafiq was to be charged with any offence, whether relating to terrorism or other crimes, this should have happened ages ago," he said in a statement.
"The Australian Government must press for his immediate release and repatriation to Australia."
Mr North said the Law Council had repeatedly approached the Government about Mr Rafiq but had never had a meaningful answer as to why he had been detained in an overseas prison without charge for such a long time.
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2005/02/15/1108230004186.html
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Shias stand firm against the bombers
Suicide attacks fail to deter worshippers
Prayers were just ending at the al-Baya' mosque in west Baghdad on Friday when the two young men stepped from a minibus taxi and approached the entrance. They wore black, like the hundreds of worshippers gathered inside and outside, but something was wrong.
The younger one, no older than 18, tried to pass security guards without being searched while his companion, about 25, walked to the far side of the entrance before heading for the doorway.
That was as much warning the Shia mosque had that it was under attack, the latest target of suicide bombers who strike almost daily in Iraq on a scale never before seen anywhere, a test case in terror for the population.
Once challenged by the guard, witnesses said yesterday, the teenager's rigid expression turned to terror, the eyes widening, the mouth gaping. He knew what was about to happen.
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1418525,00.html
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UK link to torture jail's rules
Army lawyer saw document on interrogation techniques
A British official was involved in drafting rules permitting extreme interrogation techniques at Abu Ghraib jail in Baghdad, centre of the controversy over the use of torture by US forces against Iraqi prisoners.
Last night it emerged that the government has been forced to retract claims that no British military officer had seen or been involved with the crucial document allowing guards to subject detainees to interrogation methods including the use of dogs, sleep deprivation and stress positions, in breach of the Geneva Convention.
Last year the jail achieved notoriety when photographs emerged of guards forcing prisoners to strip naked and simulate sex acts. Other photographs showed detainees being set upon with dogs and beaten.
The Armed Forces Minister, Adam Ingram, has admitted in a letter to a Plaid Cymru MP, Adam Price, that a senior British Army lawyer assigned to the coalition's legal department in Baghdad contributed to 'comments provided by his superior' when drafting the document.
It is not known if the officer supported or opposed the document, but the revelation raises serious questions about who in the Army's chain of command knew of the interrogation techniques being employed at Abu Ghraib and when.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1418645,00.html
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Call it what you like - this is hell
Mark Danner exposes the double speak that underpins Bush's 'war on terror' in Torture and Truth.
Peter Conrad on how America's response to 9/11 unleashed an obscene nightmare
Torture and Truth: America,
Abu Ghraib and the War on Terror byMark Danner Granta £16.99
Five days after 9/11, Vice-President Cheney emerged from the fortified burrow in which he'd been awaiting Armageddon and - glowering as blackly as the oil he no doubt dreams of - explained how the government intended to respond to the terrorists. President Bush was already babbling about a crusade and remembering the 'dead or alive' posters that used to be displayed in the Wild West. But Cheney did not invoke the chivalric idealism of Arthurian knights and sheriffs with tin badges. The fictions that helped him to deal with these new political facts were demon-haunted and apocalyptic. He had cast himself as Darth Vader: he therefore explained to an NBC interviewer that the administration from now on would 'work through, sort of, the dark side'.
That meant, as it turned out, the suspension of habeas corpus and of the Geneva conventions that regulate the treatment of prisoners of war. Alberto Gonzalez, Bush's legal counsel (since promoted to attorney general), supplied him with a 'new paradigm' for conducting a campaign against rogue killers from failed states who targeted civilians: since terrorists ignored the laws, why should America and its raggle-taggle band of allies bother about humane niceties?
Last year, when the photographs of detainees at Abu Ghraib being sexually shamed or threatened by dogs were published, the 'dark side' was placed on view in bright, brash colour. An investigation revealed that torture was being used to obtain confessions. One zealous American soldier, symbolically outfitted in his full uniform, had even sodomised a prisoner; unfortunately the man was too busy screaming to divulge any information of value. Other Americans did their anal interrogating with broomsticks or chemical lights, or brought in dogs to do the job for them.
Bush, testily insisting that his henchmen had been instructed to do nothing illegal, said: 'We have laws on the books.' What this meant was expensive lawyers were busy devising methods of circumventing those laws. An article in a recent New Yorker describes the vogue for outsourcing torture. Suspects abducted by the CIA are loaded in shackles onto executive jets, and delivered to countries such as Egypt, Syria and Jordan whose secret police have robust ways of asking questions.
Mark Danner - toiling through official reports and transcripts of interviews with prisoners and witnesses, as well as conducting his own investigation in Iraq - has exposed the false piety in disavowals of responsibility by Bush and Donald Rumsfeld, and established official complicity in the abuse.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1418338,00.html
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Leave our country now
From the first days of the US-British invasion of Iraq, oil workers have resisted foreign occupation
Hassan Juma'a Awad Friday February 18, 2005 The Guardian
We lived through dark days under Saddam Hussein's dictatorship. When the regime fell, people wanted a new life: a life without shackles and terror; a life where we could rebuild our country and enjoy its natural wealth. Instead, our communities have been attacked with chemicals and cluster bombs, and our people tortured, raped and killed in our homes.
Saddam's secret police used to creep over the roofs into our homes at night; occupation troops now break down our doors in broad daylight. The media do not show even a fraction of the devastation that has engulfed Iraq. Journalists who dare to report the truth of what is happening have been kidnapped by terrorists. This serves the agenda of the occupation, which aims to eliminate witnesses to its crimes.
Workers in Iraq's southern oilfields began organising soon after British occupying forces invaded Basra. We founded our union, the Southern Oil Company Union, just 11 days after the fall of Baghdad in April 2003. When the occupation troops stood back and allowed Basra's hospitals, universities and public services to be burned and looted, while they defended only the oil ministry and oilfields, we knew we were dealing with a brutal force prepared to impose its will without regard for human suffering. From the beginning, we were left in no doubt that the US and its allies had come to take control of our oil resources.
The occupation authorities have maintained many of Saddam's repressive laws, including the 1987 order which robbed us of basic union rights, including the right to strike. Today, we still have no official recognition as a trade union, despite having 23,000 members in 10 oil and gas companies in Basra, Amara, Nassiriya, and up to Anbar province. However, we draw our legitimacy from the workers, not the government. We believe unions should operate regardless of the government's wishes, until the people are able finally to elect a genuinely accountable and independent Iraqi government, which represents our interests and not those of American imperialism.
Our union is independent of any political party. Most trade unions in Britain only seem to be aware of one union federation in Iraq, the regime-authorised Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions, whose president, Rassim Awadi, is deputy leader of the US-imposed prime minister Ayad Allawi's party. The IFTU's leadership is carved up between the pro-government Communist party, Allawi's Iraqi National Accord, and their satellites. In fact, there are two other union federations, which are linked to political parties, as well as our own organisation.
Our union has already shown it is able to stand its ground against one of the most powerful US companies, Dick Cheney's KBR, which tried to take over our workplaces with the protection of occupation forces.
We forced them out and compelled their Kuwaiti subcontractor, Al Khourafi, to replace 1,000 of the 1,200 employees it brought with it with Iraqi workers, 70% of whom are unemployed today. We also fought US viceroy Paul Bremer's wage schedule, which dictated that Iraqi public sector workers must earn ID 69,000 ($35) per month, while paying up to $1,000 a day to thousands of foreign mercenaries. In August 2003 we took strike action and shut down all oil production for three days. As a result, the occupation authorities had to
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1417372,00.html
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Why I won't fight in Iraq George Solomou Tuesday February 15, 2005 The Guardian
I am resigning from the Territorial Army because I believe the war in Iraq is wrong. This has not been an easy decision. I have been in the TA for five years - years in which I have learned a lot; won a humanitarian award for helping save the life of a fellow soldier; made many friends; and, I hope, contributed something to this country.
I have no doubt that some of my fellow soldiers will feel I am letting them down. Since I have spoken out against the war in the last few weeks I have had a lot of support from soldiers, but I have also been called a coward. I am a trained medic and there is no doubt my skills could be used in the field to save lives. But after a lot of soul-searching I have concluded my priority must be to try to save lives by taking a public stand against this war.
Of course, when you join the armed forces you have to be prepared to fight. But not any war. Most people in Britain think the war in Iraq is wrong, and that is presumably because all the arguments used to justify it have proved to be hollow. We know there were no links between Iraq and international terrorism at the time the war started (though there are now). It is now official that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and the idea that the war has made the world a safer place is a sick joke.
Soldiers cannot be above moral considerations. Though the British army scandalously tries to hide this fact, the UN enshrines the right of members of the armed forces to object and opt out of particular wars on political, religious or moral grounds. Before the war started even our own generals were demanding firm commitments from Tony Blair that there was proof that Saddam Hussein was armed and dangerous. They were worried about the legality of the war. The UN resolutions used to justify the war only had force if Iraq was a threat to the world or to the region. We now know there was no evidence for this. So we are faced with a situation where even the UN secretary general, Kofi Annan, has said the war was illegal.
So I am resigning because I don't want to fight a war that is unjustified and illegal. But I also have a deep concern that British soldiers are being used in Iraq. Soldiers from my regiment tell me that much of their work in southern Iraq involves protecting convoys of oil tankers shuttling between Basra and the Kuwaiti border. Their stories have just confirmed my growing cynicism about the motives for the war. It has taken me two years to be able to say it, but I really believe that our foreign policy is being driven by the needs of US power, particularly the need to control the flow of oil.
This is a very bitter thing to say because the troops are suffering. Two close colleagues have suffered permanent injuries in Iraq. Their lives have been shattered and it must be said they have been treated very poorly by the army. Reports suggest that on top of the 80 dead, 7-800 British troops have been seriously wounded. Many more are suffering mental trauma. The experience of the Falklands and the first Gulf war shows that the scars of war run very deep, even among the officially uninjured. I know veterans who struggle daily with post-traumatic stress disorder more than 10 years after seeing active service. The legacy can last a lifetime. It is a scandal that young lives are being lost and ruined just so George Bush can keep control of the oil in the Middle East.
People have said to me that we created this mess, we should sort it out. The Iraqis need many things: they need medical supplies, they need their infrastructure rebuilt, they need jobs. The one thing they don't need is foreign troops on their streets. In fact, it is the presence of US and British troops that is creating the tension and violence, which seems certain to continue regardless of last month's elections. We have become symbols of foreign domination. That is why there is no way we can provide security. Only the Iraqis themselves can do that, and the longer we stay, the more the situation will get out of hand. We must allow the Iraqis to get on with building their own future - even if they make mistakes
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1414822,00.html
Shia delight Leader Monday February 14, 2005 The Guardian
It is one of the more striking facts about the Iraqi election that it took two weeks from polling day to get the results that were announced yesterday. But it was highly unusual in another way too: rarely before has the outcome of an election in an Arab country been unknown in advance. In the days of the Ba'athist dictatorship votes regularly produced 99% or 100% in favour of the only candidate. The announcement by the electoral commission in Baghdad heralded a new era - whatever you think of how and why Saddam Hussein was overthrown, the motives and honesty of George Bush or Tony Blair, and whether it has all been worth the cost in blood, misery, chaos and endless international acrimony.
The uncertified results - still open to complaints amid doubts about their fairness - are no surprise. The Shia Muslims who make up 60% of the Iraqi population, excluded from power since the state was carved out of the Ottoman empire, have become the dominant political group, though with 48% of the vote (and the insistent encouragement of their religious leaders) they did not do as well as expected. Nevertheless, this amounts to a huge change that has generated palpable nervousness in the Middle East's Sunni-ruled kingdoms and republics.
With 130 of the 250 seats in the new national assembly, the United Iraqi Alliance inspired by the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani will have to build a coalition - a far better outcome than one in which the Shia could rule alone. The result is even better news for the country's Kurds, living semi-independently in the north since the end of the first Gulf war. Their 25% of the vote gives them 70 seats, huge leverage and a good chance that the veteran politician Jalal Talabani will be Iraq's president while a federal constitution is being written. The future of Ayad Allawi, the interim US-backed prime minister who won a disappointing 14% of the vote, remains in doubt.
The worst part of the result was also the most easily predictable: the very low participation by Sunnis, the 20% of the population who lost most with the overthrow of Saddam. Turnout in Al-Anbar province, which comprises towns like Falluja and Ramadi, was just 2%, though a far healthier 29% in mainly Sunni Salahadin. The pressures of insurgency and intimidation, especially targeting the fledgling security forces, were powerful disincentives to vote. And for many the very idea of holding an election under American bayonets was anathema.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1412233,00.html
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Sorry George, but Iraq has given you the purple finger The party likely to win the election opposes the US presence and policies
'The Iraqi people gave America the biggest thank you in the best way we could have hoped for." Reading this election analysis from Betsy Hart, a columnist for the Scripps Howard News Service, I found myself thinking about my late grandmother.
Half blind and a menace behind the wheel of her Chevrolet, she adamantly refused to surrender her car keys. She was convinced that everywhere she drove (flattening the house pets of Philadelphia along the way), people were waving and smiling at her. "They are so friendly!" We had to break the bad news. "They aren't waving with their whole hand, grandma - just with their middle finger."
So it is with Betsy Hart and the other near-sighted election observers. They think the Iraqi people have finally sent America those long-awaited flowers and sweets, when Iraq's voters just gave them the (purple) finger. Judging by the millions of votes already counted, Iraqis have voted overwhelmingly to throw out the US-installed Ayad Allawi, who refused to ask the United States to leave. A decisive majority voted for the United Iraqi Alliance (UIA); the second plank in the UIA platform called for "a timetable for the withdrawal of the multinational forces from Iraq".
There are more single-digit messages embedded in the winning coalition's platform. Some highlights: "Adopting a social security system under which the state guarantees a job for every fit Iraqi ... and offers facilities to citizens to build homes"; the alliance also pledges "to write off Iraq's debts, cancel reparations and use the oil wealth for economic development projects". In short, Iraqis voted to repudiate the radical free-market policies imposed by the former chief American envoy Paul Bremer and locked in by a recent agreement with the International Monetary Fund.
So will the people who got all choked up watching Iraqis flock to the polls support these democratically chosen demands? Please. "You don't set timetables," George Bush said four days after the Iraqis voted for exactly that. Likewise, Tony Blair called the elections "magnificent" but dismissed a firm timetable out of hand. The UIA's pledges to expand the public sector, keep the oil and drop the debt will likely suffer similar fates. At least if Adel Abd al-Mahdi gets his way - he's Iraq's finance minister and the man suddenly being touted as the leader of Iraq's next government.
Al-Mahdi is the Bush administration's Trojan horse in the UIA. (You didn't think they were going to put all their money on Allawi, did you?) In October, he told a gathering of the American Enterprise Institute that he planned to "restructure and privatise [Iraq's] state-owned enterprises", and in December he made another trip to Washington to unveil plans for a new oil law, "very promising to the American investors". It was al-Mahdi himself who oversaw the signing of a flurry of deals with Shell, BP and ChevronTexaco in the weeks before the elections, and it is he who negotiated the recent austerity deal with the IMF.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1411350,00.html
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Sunnis admit poll boycott blunder and ask to share power Rory Carroll in Baghdad Tuesday February 15, 2005 The Guardian
Iraq's Arab Sunnis will do a U-turn and join the political process despite their lack of representation in the newly elected national assembly, Sunni leaders said yesterday.
Many Sunnis protested that the election was flawed and unfair, but in the wake of Sunday's results, which confirmed the marginalisation of what was Iraq's ruling class, their political parties want to lobby for a share of power.
"Our view is that this election was a step towards democracy and ending the occupation," said Ayad al-Samaray, the assistant general secretary of the Iraqi Islamic party. He said unnamed Sunni leaders blundered in depicting the election as a deepening of the occupation.
The insurgency ravaging Iraq is based in Sunni areas, and there were fears that the violence would escalate if the once-dominant minority was further alienated. A call by clerics for a boycott, and threats by insurgents meant very few Sunnis voted in the January 30 poll.
Having endured the brunt of US attacks in towns such as Falluja and Ramadi, many derided the ballot as an attempt to legitimise a foreign occupation. The consequent landslide for the Shias and Kurds means that they will drive the new government and the drafting of a constitution.
An alliance of cleric-backed Shias won 48% of the vote, which could give it a wafer-thin majority in the 275-seat assembly. Kurds won 26%, and a slate headed by the outgoing prime minister, Ayad Allawi, won almost 14%.
All three blocs have promised to reach out to the Sunnis, who comprise a fifth of the population but won just a handful of seats because of low turnouts in their areas. This will soon be tested as parties forge alliances and tussle for government posts, including that of prime minister and president.
Secular Sunni leaders yesterday accepted the victors' invitation to participate, potentially draining support from the insurgency.
"We can't say it was wise or logical to not participate; it was an emotional decision," said Mr Samaray. "Now the Sunni community faces the fact that it made a big mistake and that it would have been far better to participate."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1414818,00.html
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Shunned prime minister Allawi becomes outsider Brian Whitaker Monday February 14, 2005 The Guardian
Iraq's prime minister Ayad Allawi faces a tough battle to keep his job following the election results. Despite having the advantages of an incumbent, his list of candidates came third with slightly less than 14% of the votes, though he could still emerge from backroom deal-making as a compromise choice to run the country.
Although Allawi has had some opportunities to play the role of world statesman, such as playing host to Tony Blair in Baghdad and addressing Congress, he seems to have been unable to translate that into electoral success.
His campaign, on which he reportedly spent $4m (£2.14m), was one of the slickest. Despite security problems, he managed to do some campaigning around the country and offered traditional inducements to voters, such as promising to create 250,000 jobs in Baghdad. More controversially, his campaign sent food baskets to Baghdad's poor (with a political message attached) and handed out gifts and cash to Iraqi journalists.
As a secular Shia and an ex-Ba'athist who fled into exile and then won backing from the CIA and British intelligence, he has at some time made friends - and enemies - with just about everyone.
Since becoming caretaker prime minister he has cultivated a tough-guy image - Saddam without the moustache, as some Iraqis refer to him. His backing for military offensives against rebellious cities has won him credit in some places, but others note how much he has had to rely on the Americans and how his approach has not brought the country any closer to stability.
His brief tenure has also put Iraq on familiar ground in other areas, with a recent report by Human Rights Watch accusing the new Iraqi police of systematic torture.
But Mr Allawi's secularism appeals to Iraqis who fear attempts to impose strict Islamic rules, either by militant Sunnis or the majority Shias.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1412304,00.html
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Abuse of Iraqi prisoners an exercise in fun, prosecution says Audrey Gillan in Osnabrück Friday February 18, 2005 The Guardian
The alleged abuse of Iraqi prisoners was "an exercise in fun" for the delectation of British servicemen, a court martial in Germany was told yesterday.
The Army Prosecuting Authority summed up its case against three soldiers accused of the mistreatment of Iraqi looters who were rounded up and punished at Camp Breadbasket just outside Basra.
A panel of seven officers was asked to remember how they felt on the first day of the case, when they saw 22 photographs showing naked men being forced to simulate sex acts. The "good reputation" of the army had been affected by these images.
Lieutenant Colonel Nick Clapham, prosecuting, said: "All the photographs speak for themselves and cry out for an explanation. It's whether the explanation is good enough."
He said he was not asking them to convict the men in order to find a scapegoat for what went on at Camp Bread basket in May 2003. The abused men may have been looters but they were under the protection of the British army and should not have been abused.
Corporal Daniel Kenyon, 33, faces several charges including aiding and abetting soldiers - who have never been identified - to force the Iraqis to simulate sex acts, and failing to report the alleged abuse.
Lance Corporal Mark Cooley, 25, denies that he acted in a cruel way when he was photographed while pretending to punch a prisoner, and driving a forklift truck with a detainee suspended from its prongs. He claims he was moving the Iraqi man out of the sun.
Lance Corporal Darren Larkin, 30, has already pleaded guilty to assault after being pictured dressed in boxer shorts standing on top of a prisoner. He was cleared of forcing two Iraqis to strip naked.
The defence has claimed that the alleged abuse stemmed from a mission to capture and punish the Iraqi looters, which was codenamed Operation Ali Baba. An order to make the prisoners work hard, given by the camp's commanding officer, Major Dan Taylor, contravened the Geneva convention, the court has heard.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1417334,00.html
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Papers reveal Bagram abuse · Prisoners subjected to 'mock executions' · Photographs of detainees being sexually humiliated Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington and James Meek Friday February 18, 2005 The Guardian
New evidence has emerged that US forces in Afghanistan engaged in widespread Abu Ghraib-style abuse, taking "trophy photographs" of detainees and carrying out rape and sexual humiliation.
Documents obtained by the Guardian contain evidence that such abuses took place in the main detention centre at Bagram, near the capital Kabul, as well as at a smaller US installation near the southern city of Kandahar.
The documents also indicate that US soldiers covered up abuse in Afghanistan and in Iraq - even after the Abu Ghraib scandal last year.
A thousand pages of evidence from US army investigations released to the American Civil Liberties Union after a long legal battle, and made available to the Guardian, show that an Iraqi detained at Tikrit in September 2003 was forced to withdraw his report of abuse after soldiers told him he would be held indefinitely.
Meanwhile, photographs taken in southern Afghanistan showing US soldiers from the 22nd Infantry Battalion posing in mock executions of blindfolded and bound detainees, were purposely destroyed after the Abu Ghraib scandal to avoid "another public outrage", the documents show.
In the dossier, the Iraqi detainee claims that three US interrogators in civilian clothing dislocated his arms, stuck an unloaded gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger, choked him with a rope until he lost consciousness, and beat him with a baseball bat.
"After they tied me up in the chair, then they dislocate my both arms. He asked to admit before I kill you then he beat again and again," the prisoner says in his statement. "He asked me: Are you going to report me? You have no evidence. Then he hit me very hard on my nose, and then he stepped on my nose until he broken and I started bleeding."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1417362,00.html
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Senior officer denies destroying 'incriminating' photos Staff and agencies Friday February 11, 2005
The commander of the British soldiers accused in the Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal denied at their court martial today that he had disposed of incriminating photographs.
Corporal Daniel Kenyon, 33, is the most senior soldier accused of the ill-treatment of captured looters at the Camp Breadbasket relief base in Basra, southern Iraq, in May 2003, shortly after Saddam Hussein was ousted.
He and two other soldiers are being tried after another solider took a film to be developed to a British shop which showed images of Iraqi detainees, some naked or bound, being forced to simulate sex acts.
Today the court martial at a British base in Osnabrück, Germany, heard that a series of different photographs seized from Cpl Kenyon's home ended on April 8 2003, which was more than a month before the alleged abuse took place.
Prosecutor Lieutenant Colonel Nick Clapham suggested the reason for this was because Cpl Kenyon had disposed of later photographs of the incidents which took place at the camp.
Cpl Kenyon, from Newcastle upon Tyne, denied this and claimed he had simply run out of film.
Lt Col Clapham said: "I am suggesting you were an avid photographer who took many pictures, not that you ran out of film but that we don't have the later films because they are incriminating. You know what I am suggesting?"
Cpl Kenyon replied: "I know what you are suggesting but you are wrong ... I wasn't going to the Gulf to take photographs, I was going to fight a war."
The corporal admitted he could be seen taking a photograph in the background of a picture of one of his co-defendants, Lance Corporal Darren Larkin, who was standing on top of a bound Iraqi prisoner.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1411016,00.html
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Seniors behaviour ellected soldiers
Camp Breadbasket in Iraq was a "dirty infection", because senior soldiers allowed Iraqis to be physically hurt, a court martial heard yesterday.
The senior of the three British soldiers accused of abusing prisoners said his men had been "squeaky clean" when they arrived at the camp, but had seen "wrongdoing" up the chain of command which had infected them.
Corporal Daniel Kenyon, 33, said he had not reported that soldiers were beating Iraqis, out of loyalty to his battalion and because "you don't go grassing up a sergeant major".
He did not report soldiers who had forced men to strip and simulate sex acts, because he felt those above him had no "moral courage".
He said: "What I want the court to understand was how Breadbasket camp was being run. My section was squeaky clean and Breadbasket was one dirty infection."
Cpl Kenyon told the court martial in Osnabrück, Germany, that he blew his top when he found his men laughing at Iraqis who were being forced to simulate oral sex for the camera. His reaction to a scene he described as "beyond belief" was one of "outrage and anger".
He shouted and swore at the members of his platoon when he found them humiliating the Iraqi thieves captured in an anti-looting mission.
The Iraqis were told to put their clothes back on and the soldiers were rounded up and given a "bollocking".
"I was just explaining to them that because there were people doing that sort of thing, we weren't to do that. It wasn't the done thing," he said.
Cpl Kenyon, of the 1st Battalion, the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers, denied seeing his men force the Iraqis to simulate anal sex and take photographs. He said: "I guarantee that no pictures or no other positions like this would have happened if I was there."
He is accused of aiding and abetting unidentified soldiers who orchestrated the sex show, and of failing to report the incident. He denies both charges, and denies failing to report that his co-accused Lance Corporal Mark Cooley allegedly tied up an Iraqi and drove him around as he hung from a forklift truck,
Asked why he did not report it, he said: "I was going to report something which in my eyes wasn't physically hurting someone to people allowing other Iraqis to be physically hurt?" Those above him were not fit persons to report to.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1410689,00.html
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Families of dead Redcaps hit out at officers Relatives dismiss MoD 'cover-up' after Iraq murders Richard Norton-Taylor Friday February 18, 2005 The Guardian
The families of six British military policemen murdered in Iraq demanded action against army officers yesterday, accusing them of incompetence, negligence, and displaying complete disregard for the men's safety.
They dismissed as a cover-up a Ministry of Defence board of inquiry into the deaths of the Redcaps, who were killed by violent demonstrators in the town of Majar al-Kabir on June 24 2003.
They said they refuted the board's findings that the deaths "could not have been prevented" and that Majar was a "benign" town.
Senior officers involved in the incident had been "exonerated and sanitised by promotions though the families feel they displayed a cavalier attitude for the safety of the Redcaps along with a total lack of duty of care", the families said in a statement after a meeting at the MoD.
Had such events taken place in a civilian organisation, it would be a "clear-cut case of corporate manslaughter", they added. The MoD has taken no action against any soldier or officer as a result of the incident.
The board of inquiry investigated the deaths of Sergeant Simon Hamilton-Jewell, Corporal Russell Aston, Corporal Paul Graham Long, Corporal Simon Miller, Lance-Corporal Benjamin John McGowan Hyde, and Lance-Corporal Thomas Keys.
The men had been told by their commanders to hand in equipment such as distress signals, ammunition, morphine packs and radio masts.
The board painted a picture of confusion and sloppy procedures, compounded by poor intelligence and radios which did not work. It said the military policemen were ill-equipped, unable to call for help, and their whereabouts were unknown to their commanders.
However, it concluded that it was impossible to "state categorically that their fate would have been different if they had carried more ammunition or if communications had been better". It was directed not to attribute blame or recommend disciplinary action.
Yesterday, the families released a letter from Brigadier Stephen Andrews, the army's director of personal services, referring to "local systemic weaknesses in army procedures as applied to individuals on the ground".
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1417255,00.html
FO defends secrecy of Iraq advice Patrick Wintour, chief political correspondent Wednesday February 16, 2005 The Guardian
The Foreign Office's arguments for keeping secret the date on which the attorney general was first asked whether an invasion of Iraq would be illegal is "implausible and wrong", the parliamentary ombudsman, Ann Abraham, has ruled.
But the department has decided to ignore the decision, saying that releasing the date might be misinterpreted and might and inhibit free discussion in the government.
Releasing the date would make it necessary to reveal other information to put it in context, the Foreign Office said. If such information were put in the public domain, it might be misinterpreted, it added.
Lord Lester, a Liberal Democrat peer, requested the date under the code on open government, the precursor to the Freedom of Information Act.
He wanted to discover how long the government had been planning an invasion, and was investigating whether the attorney general, Lord Goldsmith, had adapted his advice, as has been alleged, under last minute pressure from Downing Street and the forces.
He said the attitude of the Foreign Office to his request simply for the date was "Kafkaesque and deplorable".
The government has already announced that it will not release the advice itself.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1415376,00.html
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War crimes 'relevant' to trials of protesters
Richard Norton-Taylor Wednesday February 16, 2005 The Guardian
Opponents of the invasion of Iraq prosecuted for trespass on military bases were denied justice, the high court was told yesterday, because they were not allowed to argue they had acted to prevent war crimes in an illegal conflict.
The test case was brought by three groups: Greenpeace activists who chained themselves to tanks at Marchwood military port; Valerie Swain, convicted after cutting a fence at a US bomber base in Gloucestershire; and Lindis Percy, veteran co-founder of the Campaign for the Accountability of American Bases.
She entered a secret US communications base in Northamptonshire and put an upside-down Stars and Stripes flag on the gate, with the words "War in Iraq - Immoral, illegal, Madness" written on it.
At their trials, district judges refused to hear the war crimes defence. The high court was asked to rule on this. Maurice Mendelson QC, representing 14 Greenpeace activists, told Lord Justice Waller and Mr Justice Jack that it had been wrong to rule the defence "non-justiciable" on grounds it related to policy decisions that were a matter for the government, not the courts.
"It is crystal clear that crimes under the International Criminal Court Act are justiciable in the English courts, whether or not those crimes are committed pursuant to defence or foreign policy," he said. To argue otherwise would in effect "grant the executive immunity from the criminal law".
The treaty setting up the court said war crimes included "ancillary" acts as well as primary acts - hence covered "aiding and abetting" US military action.
Nicholas Blake QC, counsel for Ms Percy, argued it was "more than plausible" that the Croughton base commander had been briefed on the bombings of Baghdad. If so, he had knowledge "sufficient to fix him with the mental element of aiding and abetting" the "clearly excessive" attacks by US forces which killed civilians as well as soldiers.
The hearing continues today. Special reports The anti-war movement Iraq Afghanistan Useful links 28.01.2003: Guide to anti-war websites Stop the War Coalition (UK)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1415389,00.html
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Iraq election results fail to stem violence Agencies Monday February 14, 2005
The first full day after Iraq's election results were announced saw three Iraqi troops die in a roadside bomb, two Baghdad police shot dead in a drive-by shooting, an oil pipeline detonated and a woman and child killed by a mortar attack.
As the newly elected politicians attempted to agree on a power sharing coalition behind closed doors - a process expected to last weeks - it was also reported that a kidnapped Swedish man had been threatened with decapitation by his purported hostage-takers.
Meanwhile, in Washington the White House requested a supplementary $80bn (£42bn) from Congress to fund the ongoing costs of military operations in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
Around the world, leaders welcomed last night's election results as a positive step in Iraq's evolution.
On the ground in Iraq, a roadside bomb killed three National Guards when it was detonated in Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, Mudafar Al-Juburi from the Dyala police station said. Three soldiers were wounded, he added.
The oilfield attack occurred at the North Oil Company's Al-Dibbis oilfield near Kirkuk, said Major General Anwar Mohammad Amin. The pipeline supplied oil for internal use and the damage will hamper the country's oil production, he said.
It would take workers at least three days to extinguish the blaze and repair the pipeline, Amin added.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,1414572,00.html
Iraq hospital bomb kills 17
Agencies Saturday February 12, 2005
A car bomb exploded in front of a hospital south of Baghdad this morning, killing 17 and wounding 16, police said, a day after 23 were killed in two attacks aimed at the Shiite community.
A police captain, who refused to give his name, said today's blast occurred in front of the Musayyib General Hospital, about 55 kilometres (35 miles) south of the capital.
Elsewhere, a prominent Iraqi judge under Saddam Hussein, Taha al-Amiri, was assassinated this morning by two gunmen in the southern port city of Basra, said Lt. Col. Karim al-Zaidi.
Al-Amiri, a former chief judge at Basra's highest criminal court, is one of several former Ba'ath Party figures assassinated in the Basra area during the past 18 months.
Police in Mosul said they discovered the bodies of six men dressed in Iraqi National Guard uniforms dumped on a main highway near the city.
The men had been shot in the chest and head, said police Lt. Ali Hussein. They were found in the area of Intisar, east of Mosul.
Police in Kirkuk said they were on the trail of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian militant who has claimed responsibility for many of the worst attacks in Iraq, including the beheading of several foreign hostages. "He came to Kirkuk from Mosul," a source in the Kirkuk police department said. "There's a possibility that he might be captured at any moment."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1411517,00.html
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Firm plans to exploit Iraq's wasted gas Dan Milmo Monday February 14, 2005
The Guardian
A Texas-based oil company with a potentially lucrative gas processing agreement in Iraq will today announce plans to float on the Alternative Investment Market.
Gulfsands Petroleum signed a memorandum of understanding with the Iraqi oil ministry last month to gather and process gas generated by oil fields in the province of Misan. Currently the gas is flared off, an environmentally damaging practice that also wastes a source of natural gas.
A share placing on Aim by stockbroker Seymour Pierce will take place towards the end of next month and is expected to raise £25m. The proceeds will be used to fund the Misan project, pay off debt and finance exploration work in the US and Syria.
Gulfsands said the construction of a gas gathering system, a natural gas liquids plant and pipelines will be done in two phases over five years. Once completed, the project is expected to produce 46,600 barrels of natural gas liquids a day and 338m cubic feet of dry sweet natural gas a day. Gulfsands said the project is believed to be the largest infrastructure project undertaken by private international investors in Iraq since the war ended in May 2003.
The untapped potential of Iraq's oil resources has also attracted the attention of BP and Shell, who have submitted bids to develop oilfields there.
John Dorrier, the chairman and chief executive of Gulfsands, said the plant would provide electricity and jobs for Iraqis. "We have briefed representatives of the Iraqi government, the US government and various international financing institutions about the project and its beneficial impact for the Iraqi people, environment and economy."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1412319,00.html
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RAF rules out Hercules bomb Richard Norton-Taylor and Colin Blackstock Thursday February 10, 2005
The Guardian
The initial findings of an RAF board of inquiry into the crash a Hercules aircraft north of Baghdad has found no evidence of a bomb on board, defence sources said last night.
They said a range of possibilities were still being looked at, including a missile strike from the ground.
A report in the Sun newspaper that the right wing of the plane was blown off could also point to metal fatigue or another problem with the ageing aircraft.
An MoD spokesman said last night: "We don't speculate when the findings of a board of inquiry have yet to be concluded.
"For the benefit of all concerned, including the families of the deceased, we want to get this resolved as quickly as possible, but we need to ascertain the facts before we make any announcement."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1409970,00.html
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Head of UN oil-for-food programme suspended over 'misconduct'
David Pallister
Tuesday February 8, 2005
The Guardian
The head of the UN oil-for-food programme in Iraq and a senior UN official who dealt with contracts for the programme have been suspended following an independent investigation that accused them of misconduct, a UN spokesman said yesterday.
Benon Sevan, who was in charge of the $64bn (£34.5bn) humanitarian programme, and Joseph Stephanides, who heads the UN security council affairs division, were informed on Friday that they had been suspended with pay, UN spokesman Fred Eckhard said.
Mr Sevan and Mr Stephanides were told they would receive a letter this week "laying out the charges against them", which will allow them to defend themselves before UN disciplinary bodies in what will likely be a lengthy appeals process, he said.
"Suspension is the beginning of a disciplinary process," Mr Eckhard said.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1408060,00.html
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More recruits to the refusenik ranks Thursday February 17, 2005 The Guardian
Like George Solomou (Why I won't fight in Iraq, February 15), my husband, Abdullah William Webster, has refused to fight in Iraq on conscientious grounds. Unlike George, my husband, an American in the US army, has been branded a criminal and sentenced to 14 months in prison at a court martial. On top of this and painful separation from his family, he now stands to lose his pension and to be regarded as a convicted felon.
My husband is a professional soldier with a distinguished 20-year-long career. He fought in the first Gulf war and performed difficult peacekeeping duties in Bosnia and Kosovo. Far from being a deserter or a coward, he is a brave man with principles who is being punished for his conscientiously held beliefs.
Amnesty has adopted Abdullah as a prisoner of conscience and is calling for his release. Since when did opposing a controversial war make you a criminal? Sue WebsterBirmingham
So, Mr Solomou, as your comrades fight insurgents and try desperately to give Iraq some democracy, you stay at home and pontificate about "morals". Clearly the oath of allegiance has passed you by.Allan FriswellClitheroe, Lancs
George Solomou is part of a great and growing tradition of refuseniks around the world saying no under article 8 of the Nuremberg charter, that a soldier has a duty to refuse any order to commit a crime against humanity. Refusenik Camilo Mejia (one of 5,500 US deserters) is in prison for refusing to fight in Iraq. Refusenik Shimri Tzameret won his right not to serve in the Israeli army after two years in prison.
Solomou is the first UK soldier to call on other soldiers "to speak out or opt out ... soldiers cannot be above moral considerations". Michael Kalmanovitzwww.refusingtokill.net
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1416212,00.html
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Fig-leaf freedom
One election does not a democracy make,
writes Brian Whitaker
President George Bush has pronounced the election in Iraq a success. "The world is hearing the voice of freedom from the centre of the Middle East," he said yesterday.
Since this is more or less what he was bound to say anyway, the only surprise is that he waited until four hours after the polls had closed before saying it.
It's a curious sort of freedom where candidates cannot campaign openly for fear of their lives and where, despite the tightest security that the occupation armies and the Iraqi forces can provide - curfews, banning cars from the streets, intensive searches at polling stations, etc - more than 40 people still die.
Violence on that scale is by no means unusual at election time in other parts of the world. Four years ago, for instance, municipal elections in Yemen, where there was no insurgency, left 29 people dead.
The problem in Iraq, though, is that such violence is not a one-off. It is a regular, almost daily, occurrence and nobody realistically expects it to subside any time soon.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1402530,00.html
posted by Kangaroo Brisbane Australia at 11:33 AM
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