Video Shows
More US Iraq Abuse
By Aljazeera
08 March, 2005
Aljazeera
US
Army soldiers in Iraq have filmed themselves kicking a gravely wounded
prisoner in the face and making the arm of a corpse appear to wave.The
video, made public on Monday, was shot by Florida National Guard soldiers.
They edited and
compiled it into a DVD in January 2004, with various sections bearing
titles such as Those Crafty Little Bastards, and Another Day, Another
Mission, Another Scumbag.The soldiers' unit served in the city of Ramadi,
about 110km west of Baghdad, before returning home a year ago.
The video's existence
had been revealed in army documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties
Union under court order through the Freedom of Information Act.
The Pentagon did
not release the video, saying it believed it had been destroyed. But
a Florida newspaper, The Palm Beach Post, obtained it and posted some
of it on its website on Monday.
The ACLU has obtained
thousands of pages of documents from the Pentagon and said they show
a pattern of widespread abuses of detainees by military forces in Iraq.
"It didn't
rise to the level of criminal abuse, according to the investigations.
Clearly, the soldiers probably exercised poor judgement ... and I'm
sure that they were admonished by their command for their actions"
Digital pictures
that were disclosed last year of US soldiers abusing prisoners at Iraq's
Abu Ghraib prison drew international condemnation.
Soldiers depicted
in the new video would not face criminal charges, the Pentagon said.One
section of the video shows a bound and wounded prisoner sprawled on
the ground, and displays his bullet entry and exit wounds.
Army documents quoted
a soldier at the scene as saying he "thought the dude eventually
died. We weren't in any hurry to call the medics"
In another part
of the video, a soldier grabs the arm of a truck driver who has just
been shot dead and makes the corpse wave to the camera.
The events that
preceded the incident were not shown on the video.
The newspaper reported
that US troops had stopped the truck and ordered the driver to step
out, but he ran back into the vehicle and sped away only to be shot
dead by a US soldier.
It said the booby-trapped
rear door of the truck exploded.
Documents released
by the Pentagon showed that army criminal investigators looked into
the matter and decided no criminal charges were warranted against the
soldiers.
The documents showed
the army deemed the actions shown on the video "inappropriate"
rather than criminal.
"It didn't
rise to the level of criminal abuse, according to the investigations,"
said Lieutenant-Colonel Jeremy Martin, a spokesman at the Pentagon.
"Clearly, the
soldiers probably exercised poor judgment ... and I'm sure that they
were admonished by their command for their actions."
"It's difficult
for me to understand why nobody was held accountable for the abuse of
detainees here. There's no justification for kicking an enemy prisoner
of war when he's wounded on the ground in front of you and about to
die"
Ramadi has been
a flashpoint in the guerrilla war that followed the US-led invasion
of Iraq in 2003.
Thousands of Iraqis
have been killed in the war as well as more than 1500 US troops.
ACLU lawyer Jamil
Jaffer said the army documents indicated that a soldier stated he destroyed
disks containing the video to avoid having it released to the news media,
and a colonel stated the unit's leaders would probably destroy copies.
"It's difficult
for me to understand why nobody was held accountable for the abuse of
detainees here. There's no justification for kicking an enemy prisoner
of war when he's wounded on the ground in front of you and about to
die," Jaffer said.
"Clearly, there's
some stuff in this video that's inappropriate but not criminal. But
then there's quite a lot of other stuff in here that does seem to be
criminal," he added.