Excerpts from Red Cross report on Iraq

The ICRC draws the attention of the Coalition Forces to a number of serious violations of humanitarian law:

-Brutality against protected person upon capture and initial custody, sometimes causing death or serious injury.

-Physical or psychological coercion during interrogation to secure information.

-Prolonged solitary confinement in cells devoid of daylight.

-Excessive or disproportionate use of force against persons deprived of their liberty resulting in death or injury during their period of internment.

-Seizure and confiscation of private belongings.

The main places of internment where mistreatment allegedly took place included battle group unit stations; the military sections of Camp Cropper and Abu Ghraib Correctional Facility; Al-Baghdadi, Heat Base and Hubbania Camp in Ramadi governate; Tikrit holding area (former Saddam Hussein Islamic School); a former train station Al-Khaim, near the Syrian border, turned into a military base; the Ministry of Defense and Presidential Palace in Baghdad, the former mukhabarat office in Basra, as well as several Iraqi police stations in Baghdad.

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Methods of Ill-Treatment

-Hooding, used to prevent people from seeing and to disorient them, and also to prevent them from breathing freely. ... Hooding could last for periods from a few hours up to two to four consecutive days, during which hoods were lifted only for drinking, eating or going to the toilets.

-Handcuffing with flexi-cuffs, which were sometimes made so tight and used for such extended periods that they caused skin lesions and long-term aftereffects on the hands (nerve damage), as observed by the ICRC.

-Beating with hard objects (including pistols and rifles), slapping, punching, kicking with knees or feet on various parts of the body (legs, sides, lower back, groin).

-Pressing the face into the ground with boots.

-Threats.

-Being stripped naked for several days while held in solitary confinement in an empty and completely dark cell that included a latrine.

-Being paraded naked outside cells in front of other persons deprived of their liberty and guards, sometimes hooded or with women's underwear over the head.

-Acts of humiliation such as being made to stand naked against the wall of the cell with arms raised or with women's underwear over the head for prolonged periods, while being laughed at by guards, including female guards, and sometimes photographed in this position.

-Being attached repeatedly over several days, for several hours each time, with handcuffs to the bars of their cell door in humiliating (i.e., naked or in underwear) and/or uncomfortable position causing physical pain.

-Exposure while hooded to loud noise or music, prolonged exposure while hooded to the sun over several hours.

-Being forced to remain for prolonged periods in stress positions such as squatting or standing with our without the arms lifted.

These methods of physical or psychological coercion were used by the military intelligence in a systematic way to gain confessions and extract information or other forms of cooperation from person who had been arrested in connection with suspected security offenses or deemed to have an "intelligence value."

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/apmideast_story.asp?category=1107&slug=Red%20Cross%20Excerpts