Iraq: Amnesty International this week reported allegations of ill-treatment by US and British troops in Iraq. Kathleen Cavanaugh, who contributed to the report, spoke to Lara Marlowe
Dr Kathleen Cavanaugh has impeccable credentials for participating in Amnesty International's Iraq crisis mission. A lecturer in law at the Irish Centre for Human Rights at NUI Galway, she has done extensive research in Northern Ireland, Israel and the Occupied Territories.
In May and June, she spent six weeks in Iraq, starting in the British-controlled area around Basra and moving slowly up to Baghdad. Her research has contributed to reports by Amnesty International, including the Iraq Memorandum on law and order issues, published by the human rights group this week.
The document deplores conditions in at least six detention centres where thousands of Iraqis are held by US and British troops, and reveals a pattern of ill treatment constituting torture, as defined by the Geneva Convention.
Because Amnesty has been given almost no access to detention centres, they had to rely on interviews with Iraqis. One of the most surprising US moves was to refill Saddam Hussein's most infamous charnel house, Abu Ghraib prison. On June 13th, 22-year-old Ala' Jassem was killed and seven men were wounded when US soldiers opened fire on a prison riot there. Eyewitnesses told Amnesty that Jassem was in a tent when he was shot.
Lack of preparation is no excuse for the US and British failure to conduct arrests, interrogation and imprisonment according to the standards of international human rights law, Dr Cavanaugh says.
"They understood before they went in that there was going to be a period of occupation ... The Geneva Convention obliges, legally binds, both the US and the UK to provide adequate security for civilians - medical care, water, basic needs. Amnesty has consistently reported the failure to meet those obligations. They simply cannot step back and say it was poor planning."
Dr Cavanaugh is especially concerned that human rights abuses by occupation forces have continued and spread.
"One of the absolute rights is that an individual cannot be subjected to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, whether during hostilities or after. From the time Amnesty began taking statements from PoWs in April, there was a pattern of cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, by both the Americans and the British."
Mistreatment described in this week's memorandum includes beatings, sleep deprivation, inadequate food and water, open trenches instead of toilets, forcing prisoners to remain for long periods in uncomfortable positions and subjecting them to bright lights and loud music.
"Instead of it just being in the aftermath of hostilities, when everyone would be a PoW held in a temporary detention centre," Dr Cavanaugh said, "we're seeing the same patterns extended to those we classify as detainees."
Dr Cavanagh interviewed two men whose noses were broken while in British custody. "When they were processed in the Umm Qasr centre, where they were taken from a temporary holding facility, they had to have their pictures taken. I could clearly see from the pictures that their noses were twice the size of the persons' sitting in front of me."
Amnesty has reported the case of an old man who was beaten so badly by British troops that he lost consciousness and woke up in hospital.
One of many shocking case studies in this week's memorandum is the story of 12-year-old Mohammad al-Kubaisi, who was shot dead by an American soldier in Baghdad on June 26th. Mohammad was carrying bedding up to the roof of his house around 9.30 p.m. when a soldier standing on the opposite roof saw him and took aim.
His mother Wafa told Amnesty that about 20 US soldiers kicked her aside as she held her bleeding son, and offered no medical treatment. Neighbours tried to take the boy to hospital, but they were stopped by a US tank, handcuffed and thrown face down on the ground. During the half-hour that ensued, Mohammad died without ever reaching hospital. On July 9th, US soldiers told the al-Kubaisi family that a soldier had been detained in connection with Mohammad's killing.
Dr Cavanaugh contributed to Amnesty's report on the March-April 2002 Israeli assault on the West Bank. She pointed out similarities between Israeli, US and British methods. All three occupation forces use plastic ties to bind prisoners' hands. The IDF blindfolds detainees, while US and British troops put hoods over their heads.
"The Israelis said, 'We are trying to do processing and we are not in contravention. We have to be able to get information from these individuals'," Dr Cavanaugh recalls. "We're starting to see the Americans say very similar things."
Britain has signed the Additional Protocol One to the Geneva Conventions, which provides protection to fighters who do not fulfil criteria for PoW status. But the US and Israel refuse to recognise the protocol, leaving Palestinian fighters, al-Qaeda supporters, suspected Taliban - and now the Fedayeen Saddam - in a legal twilight zone where they benefit from neither the protection accorded to PoWs nor that specified for civilians. Washington bases its special category of "unlawful combatants" or "unprivileged combatants" on a second World War spy case.
"The interpretation by the US has been a form of rewriting of international law," Dr Cavanaugh explains. "They say they are fighting new wars, and that the Geneva Convention no longer accommodates those wars."
Dr Cavanaugh insists it would be in the best interest of the US and Britain to respect human rights law and humanitarian law. "It would help build a foundation that would make it possible for Iraqi society to be based on a human rights ethos," she says.
"Deprivation of those rights is something the Iraqis saw too much of with the former regime. It's something you don't want to see reintroduced by the occupying powers."