IOF Newsletter No 135

IOF Newsletter No 135

6th December 2009

Contents

Military news

Abuse

Daily life

Corporate takeover

Anti-war news

Upcoming events

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Military news

Many die in string of Iraq attacks

Al-Jazeera reports (November 17th): At least 13 members of an Iraqi tribe who took up arms against al-Qaeda have been killed by armed men in Iraqi army uniforms in execution-style attacks west of Baghdad, the capital.

Mohammed al-Zoubai, a resident, said on Monday that the attackers raided Saidan district of Zouba, 20km from Baghdad, overnight and took six residents from their homes, lined them up in a field and shot them dead.

The killers then stormed the home of Attala Ouda al-Shuker, a leader in the Sahwa (Awakening) movement of Sunni tribesmen who joined US forces in 2006, and shot dead three of his sons and four other relatives, al-Zoubai said.

Abuse

Baha Mousa inquiry hears how British officers approved of abuse of prisoners

The Guardian reports (November 16th): The only soldier convicted over the death of the Iraqi civilian Baha Mousa told how officers had approved of the abuse of prisoners and in one case made a young detainee "hysterical" by pretending to set him on fire.

Former corporal Donald Payne also told the public inquiry into the death that every member of his unit was commanded to kick and punch detainees. He admitted indulging in "gratuitous" violence as he described the hours leading up to the death of the Basra hotel receptionist on 15 September 2003. Iraqi detainees were subjected to hooding, stress positions and sleep deprivation, all of which were banned by the government in 1972. The treatment was "very obviously inhumane", he agreed when questioned at the inquiry.

'Commanding officer Jorge Mendonca threatened to blow Iraqi prisoner's head off'

The Times reports (November 17th): The only British soldier convicted of a war crime in Iraq alleged that his former commanding officer held a gun to a prisoner’s head and threatened “to blow his face off”.

Former Corporal Donald Payne, of the 1st Battalion The Queen’s Lancashire Regiment, was giving evidence for the first time at the public inquiry into the death of Baha Musa.

Officer 'abused Iraqi prisoners'

TBBC adds (November 16th): The only soldier convicted in connection with the death of Iraqi Baha Mousa claims that he witnessed an Army officer abuse other prisoners. Former corporal Donald Payne told a public inquiry into Mr Mousa's death that he saw a group led by Lt Craig Rodgers "kick and/or punch" prisoners.

Iraqi 'was beaten and sexually abused'

The Independent reports (November 16th): British soldiers forced an Iraqi detainee to wear an orange jump suit and told him that he was to be executed at Guantanamo Bay, according to new torture allegations being investigated by the Ministry of Defence.

The 23-year-old man claims he was beaten and sexually abused by female and male soldiers and then flown to a British detention centre in southern Iraq which he believed was the infamous US naval base.

The case is one of 33 claims being investigated by the Government which raise concerns that British soldiers and interrogators may have used torture techniques developed by the Americans. Other claims made to the Ministry of Defence include rape, electrocution and sexual humiliation similar to that employed by the Americans in Abu Ghraib jail.

Army faces new inquiry on Iraq torture deaths

The Independent reports (November 22nd): An announcement of a new public inquiry into fresh allegations of torture against British troops will heap further pressure on the British Army and the Government regarding abuse in Iraq.

The Defence Secretary, Bob Ainsworth, will tell the Commons that the new inquiry will focus on the Battle of Danny Boy, which took place in May 2004 and involved soldiers from the Argyll and Southern Highlanders and the Princess of Wales's Royal Regiment.

Families claim that some of 20 insurgents killed at Majar al-Kabir were abused before they died, making it more difficult for ministers to continue to insist torture was not routinely carried out by British soldiers during the six-year conflict.

Dismissal of Case for Guard in Iraq

AP report (November 20th): The US Justice Department intends to drop manslaughter and weapons charges against one of the security guards from the company formerly known as Blackwater Worldwide who were involved in deadly Baghdad shootings in September 2007, prosecutors said in court documents.

The shootings in Nisour Square left 17 Iraqis dead and set off inquiries that led the State Department to cancel the company’s lucrative contract to guard American diplomats in Iraq.

Iraqi cleaner takes UK to court over alleged sexual harassment

The Times reports (November 16th): An Iraqi cleaner who claims that she was sexually harassed at the British Embassy and at the ambassador’s residence in Baghdad is taking the Government to court over its alleged failure to investigate her complaints.

The case will challenge a decision by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to allow KBR, the American company contracted to maintain the two premises, to conduct its own investigation into the allegations, rather than carry out an independent inquiry. It will also examine whether the FCO failed to protect the cleaner’s human rights after she allegedly became the victim of sexual harassment by several British KBR managers in 2006 and early 2007.

Daily Life

Iraq planning to hang up to 126 women by year's end

Seattle Post Globe reports (November 19th): Iraq is planning to execute up to 126 women by the end of this year. At least 9 may be hanged within the next two weeks. Human rights groups say the only crime committed by many of these women was to serve in the government of Saddam Hussein. Others, according to human rights groups like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, were convicted of common crimes based on confessions that were the result of torture.

Amnesty reports that at least 1,000 men and women are now on death row in Iraq, a country that has one of the highest rates of execution in the world.

TV commentator who criticized government is shot

LA Times reports (November 24th): Baghdad is buzzing about the shooting of a prominent TV commentator who regularly criticized the government on his show "Without Fences" on the privately owned Al-Diyar TV station.

Imad Abadi was shot in the head and neck by gunmen using a pistol equipped with a silencer at about 8 p.m. as he rode in his car in the Salhiya neighborhood not far from Baghdad's Green Zone.

Growing concern over humanitarian situation in Fallujah

International Coalition to ban Uranium Weapons reports (November 19th): ICBUW is deeply concerned by press reports of a steep rise in birth defects in Fallujah, Iraq, following the two attacks by US forces in 2004. Such stories are sadly familiar to anyone who has followed the history of Iraq after the wars in 1991 and 2003, and it has long been thought that the use of uranium weapons – so-called ‘depleted uranium’ – in both conflicts has played a role in the rise in deformities among newborns.

ICBUW calls for the US to immediately clarify what role uranium weapons played in the two attacks on Fallujah; to provide details of areas where these weapons were used in both Iraq wars to civil society and to the Iraqi authorities; to provide funding for independent scientific research to establish the cause of these effects, and for medical and technical assistance to the victims.

U.S. Fears Iraqis Will Not Keep Up Rebuilt Projects

NY Times reports (November 20th): While Iraq has often been guilty of poor management, American authorities have repeatedly failed to ask Iraqis what sort of projects they needed and have not followed up with adequate training.

Many Iraqis have criticized the rebuilding effort as wasteful. “Where is the reconstruction?” asked Sahar Kadhum, a resident of Kut, about 100 miles southeast of Baghdad. “The city is sleeping on hills of garbage.”

Indeed, despite the billions in American funds, more than 40 percent of Iraqis still lack access to clean water, according to the Iraqi government. Ninety percent of Iraq’s 180 hospitals do not have basic medical and surgical supplies, according to the aid organization Oxfam. Iraqis also have disproportionately high rates of infant mortality, cerebral palsy and cancer.

Iraq’s most notorious reconstruction project might be the $165 million Basra Children’s Hospital in the south. Its completion has been delayed by more than four years, and the project is $115 million over budget. Once the hospital opens — perhaps next year — there will be too few doctors and other medical staff members to take advantage of much of its modern equipment.

The 2009 Transparency International index in full

The Guardian reports (November 16th): Out of 180 countries surveyed for good governance and freedom from corruption, Iraq comes 176th.

Inquiry Begun on Municipal Fraud

Reuters reports (November 23rd): Iraqi authorities are investigating large-scale fraud in the Baghdad city government, where employees have stolen millions of dollars, officials said. According to the chairman of the provincial council in Baghdad, Kamel al-Zaidy, investigators found that $20 million had been siphoned away by a gang cashing checks in the names of fake employees at a bank branch in city hall.

Iraq refugees face dwindling UN funds, creating concerns of unrest

Christian Science Monitor reports (November 19th): More than six years after the invasion of Iraq, up to 2 million refugees remain stranded in neighbouring countries and fears are rising that international support for them is fading, threatening more long-term regional unrest.

At the UNHCR headquarters here in Damascus hundreds of refugees continue to gather daily desperately seeking assistance. "I have nothing and I really need help," explained Abu Ali, who arrived in Syria from Baghdad just three months ago, escaping continued sectarian violence. "I had to leave: they say there's security, but on the ground it's a different story. They still kill you because of your ID papers."

But the UNHCR says that international attention and financial support is moving away from the crisis, leaving them unable to address the needs of the lingering refugee population.

720 brutally murdered as 'gay cleansing' continues unchecked in Iraq

Examiner reports (November 16th): An organization dedicated to securing asylum for LGBT refugees from Iraq estimates that over 720 LGBT men and women have been murdered by extremist militias in the last six years.

London-based Iraqi LGBT reports the Iraqi government has largely been absent in pursuing the roaming "death squads" in Iraq who seek out LGBT victims, likely due to the influence of extremist Shia religious parties that are calling for a moral cleansing of Iraq.

The organization says the rise of fundamentalist groups in Iraq since the 2003 U.S. invasion has proven deadly to LGBT Iraqis, who are now being forced to either hide or face the consequences. On its website, Iraqi LGBT says, "there is little hope for Iraqis suffering under the new socio-political climate. Once the most liberal and secular of the Arab nations, nowadays religious extremism has taken hold of the country to the detriment of its people."

Gypsies are outcasts in Iraq

The News reports (November 29th): Squeezed between a rubbish dump and a dry riverbed, Al-Zuhoor has no clean water or electricity and the gypsies who live here are at the margins of the new, ultra-conservative Iraq. The men were professional singers or musicians and the women were invited to dance at feasts, weddings and parties in Iraq, having migrated to the Middle East from India centuries ago.

Today, with the war-torn country primarily run by religious leaders, as opposed to the mostly secular society that existed under Saddam, the Roma community feels ostracised.

Corporate takeover

Iraqis spent $80m on ADE651 bomb detectors described as useless

The Times reports (November 28th): The Iraqi parliament is looking into the sale by a British company of “bomb detectors” costing millions of pounds amid claims that they do not work.

In the past two years Iraq’s security forces have spent more than $80 million (£47 million) on the detectors made by ATSC Ltd, based in Yeovil, Somerset.

The devices, which consist of little more than a telescopic radio aerial on a black plastic handle, were each sold for the price of a new car and are in use at army and police checkpoints across the bomb-ravaged country.

The Iraqi parliament is scrutinising the purchase after an article appeared in The New York Times in which the American Major-General Richard J. Rowe Jr, who oversees Iraqi police training for the US, said: “I have no confidence that these work.”