Red Cross Says Abuse Systematic
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Kevin
Bush has said the abuses were the result of the “wrongdoing of a few.”
However, the report says “the use of ill-treatment against (Iraqi) persons deprived of their liberty went beyond exceptional cases and might be considered a practice tolerated by” coalition forces.
A senior Red Cross official added: “We were dealing here with a broad pattern, not individual acts. There was a pattern and a system.”
“ICRC (Red Cross) delegates directly witnessed and documented a variety of methods used to secure the cooperation of the persons deprived of their liberty with their interrogators,” according to the confidential report. The 24-page document was confirmed as authentic by the International Committee for the Red Cross (ICRC) after it was published today by the Wall Street Journal.
The Red Cross report says its delegates saw how detainees at Abu Ghraib were kept “completely naked in totally empty concrete cells and in total darkness.” It said it found evidence supporting prisoners’ allegations of other forms of abuse during arrest, initial detention and interrogation.
Among the evidence were burns, bruises and other injuries consistent with the abuse that prisoners alleged, it said.
The report cites abuses – some “tantamount to torture” – including brutality, hooding, humiliation and threats of “imminent execution.”
“These methods of physical and psychological coercion were used by the military intelligence in a systematic way to gain confessions and extract information and other forms of cooperation from persons who had been arrested in connection with suspected security offenses or deemed to have an ‘intelligence value.”‘
The agency said arrests allegedly tended to follow a pattern.
It is sickening that the Bushies have brought our country to this. It is inexcusable and rock solid proof that they do not deserve to hold the positions of responsibility and trust that they aspire to.
