Revelations of “systemic” torture by Brit ish military

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Revelations of “systemic” torture by British military
By Paul Mitchell
28 October 2010

The Guardian newspaper has obtained access to training manuals that detail the
interrogation techniques used by British military personnel in Iraq. In an
exclusive report published Monday, the newspaper quotes from the documents,
which are described as an “Introduction to Interrogation and Tactical Questioning”.

According to the Guardian, the documents advocate the use of “threats, sensory
deprivation and enforced nakedness”. Guardian reporter Ian Cobain writes that
the training manuals urge interrogators “to provoke humiliation, insecurity,
disorientation, exhaustion, anxiety and fear in the prisoners they are
questioning, and suggest ways in which this can be achieved”.

A PowerPoint slide dated September 2005 recommending the use of enforced nudity
to humiliate detainees says, “Get them naked”. According to Cobain, the
documents advise that prisoners be kept naked if they do not obey commands.

Blindfolds and ear muffs are among the equipment listed in the training manuals,
along with plastic handcuffs. Interrogators are advised that they can legally
deprive prisoners of sleep. While prisoners must be allowed eight hours rest out
of every 24 hours of questioning, this does not have to be 8 continuous hours,
according to the manuals seen by the Guardian.

All these techniques are in contravention of the Geneva Convention of 1949. The
Convention prohibits the use of “moral or physical coercion” and “outrages upon
personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment”.

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) originally released the documents for the inquiry
into the death of Baha Mousa. An Iraqi hotel worker, he was tortured to death in
British custody. The documents were never used as evidence and have not been
published or released on the inquiry’s website. The Guardian acquired them under
a Freedom of Information Act request.

All of the documents were created after 2005 and indicate that these techniques
were in use after Baha Mousa’s death at the hands of British troops in September
2003. Some of the documents were written after January 2008, when a British
military inquiry claimed that the abuse of prisoners was not endemic.

The Guardian revelations follow a preliminary high court ruling in July this
year which found that “There is an arguable case that the alleged ill-treatment
was systemic, and not just at the whim of individual soldiers”.

The ruling came after the court had seen evidence presented on behalf of 102
Iraqis held as prisoners by the British military. A legal team led by Birmingham
solicitor Phil Shiner claims to have evidence of systematic abuse of detainees.
It includes the cases of 59 Iraqi civilians who say they were hooded by British
troops. Eleven claim to have been subjected to electric shocks, 122 claim that
ear muffs were used for sound deprivation, 131 say they experienced sight
deprivation through the use of blackened goggles, 52 say they were deprived of
sleep, 39 allege they experienced enforced nakedness, and 18 claim that they
were forced to watch pornographic DVDs.

In addition, a number of cases have emerged in which British troops allegedly
killed Iraqi civilians. The case of Baha Mousa is one of the few that ever
reached court. One soldier was jailed for a year after pleading guilty to
inhumane treatment of Baha Mousa, but six other soldiers were acquitted.

Most cases have never reached court. Abdul Jabbar Musa Ali, a 55-year-old head
teacher, was detained by soldiers of the Black Watch and allegedly kept hooded
and beaten. Other prisoners claim that his screams stopped abruptly. When his
family retrieved his body they found it to be extensively bruised.

Tanik Mahmoud was dead on arrival at a US Air Force base. It is alleged that he
was kicked to death in a British Chinook helicopter by members of a Royal Air
Force regiment who had detained him at a checkpoint.

Ather Karim Khalaf is said to be have been shot and beaten at a British
checkpoint after his car door swung open and struck a British soldier. He
subsequently died in hospital from his injuries.

Nineteen-year-old Said Shabram drowned after he was allegedly pushed into the
Shatt-al-Arab waterway by British troops. Another man, Munaan Baili Akaili, was
rescued by passersby.

The rescued man said, “Said and I were very afraid and started begging the
soldier to stop. The soldier continued to push us towards the edge. He seemed to
get agitated that we would not jump in, and at one point I thought he was
getting so angry he would shoot us. The soldiers were laughing. The soldier with
the gun suddenly pushed us into the water”.

The training manuals that the Guardian has obtained are consistent with a
mounting body of evidence pointing to the use of torture and inhumane treatment
as a matter of routine by British forces during the occupation of Iraq. British
treatment of prisoners seems to have been consistent with that employed by US
forces at Abu Ghraib and other detention centres.

The training manuals form part of courses run by F Branch, which is part of the
Joint Services Intelligence Organisation (JSIO). The JSIO’s headquarters are at
Chicksands in Bedfordshire, about an hour’s drive north of London. The Labour
government deployed the JSIO into Iraq, where top secret Joint Field
Intelligence Teams (JFIT) operated inside detention camps under its aegis.

British military and intelligence were clearly aware that the techniques
described in the manuals were illegal under international and British law, since
they insisted that the JFITs keep their activities secret. In some cases even
the commanding officers of the facilities were not informed.

There is a long history of such brutality by British interrogators. According to
the Guardian, the documents describe how the military developed its
interrogation techniques over decades of counter-insurgency campaigns in Borneo,
Malaya, South Arabia, Palestine, Cyprus and Northern Ireland.

They stress the need for interrogators to find discreet and “nasty” places, such
as shipping containers, “out of hearing” and “away from media”, to conduct
interrogations. Experience in other operations had shown the importance of
avoiding bad publicity, the manuals explained. They warned that problems had
been created by “our own side” during operations in Oman, where Britain fought
two wars in defence of the sultan before deposing him and installing his son.

Prisoners, one manual says, should be “conditioned” before questioning in order
to provoke “anxiety/fear”, “insecurity”, “disorientation” and “humiliation.”
Interrogators are advised to probe the detainee’s anus and search behind his
foreskin.

Another recommended technique is “positional asphyxiation.” Baha Mousa is
believed to have died as a result of this technique. It involves a soldier
kneeling on the prisoner’s back and slowly tightening the hood that has been put
over his head. Baha Mousa’s body also had 93 separate injuries, consistent with
a severe and sustained beating.

The Ministry of Defence responded to the Guardian report by claiming it was
“committed to fully observing the law at all times”. It stated, “Torture and
abuse of detainees are prohibited and anyone suspected of committing acts of
torture or abuse will be investigated and dealt with appropriately”.

The MoD statement added that “some past practices and training methods were not
compliant with acceptable standards and [it] has been working hard to remedy
deficiencies where identified”.

The MoD’s assurances are not credible. It was only through years of persistent
effort to extract information from the Ministry of Defence by lawyers acting for
Mousa’s family that the latest documents ever came to light.

There is a consistency between the recent revelations in the Guardian, the
evidence from WikiLeaks, and the Baha Mousa court case, all of which document
systemic practices involving the abuse and torture of prisoners. These crimes
have been sanctioned and overseen at the highest levels of the British military
and political establishment.

While the Guardian has acted as whistleblower, the liberal media has little
desire to expose the full extent of the crimes involved. At the same time as it
published the revelations about the secret training manuals for interrogators,
the Guardian gave space to former foreign secretary Jack Straw to appeal for the
Human Rights Act to become a part of the British national character.

Straw was in the Labour government that joined the illegal US invasion of Iraq.
If the same criteria were applied here that were applied at the Nuremberg
Tribunal for Nazi war criminals, Straw and many of his colleagues, including
former prime minister Tony Blair, would find themselves in the dock.

http://wsws.org/articles/2010/oct2010/tort-o28.shtml

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