Iraq war logs: British legal threat as UN calls on Obama to look at torture claims

[Panaconda]

Iraq war logs: British legal threat as UN calls on Obama to look at torture claims

• MoD and US condemn action taken by WikiLeaks
• Lawyer warns crimes may have involved UK forces


WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange defended the decision to release the Iraq logs at a press conference in London today. Photograph: Andrew Winning/Reuters

Britain's role in the alleged torture and unlawful killing of Iraqi civilians may be the subject of legal action following the publication of nearly 400,000 leaked military documents by the website WikiLeaks. British lawyers said the classified US army field reports embroiled British as well as American forces in an alleged culture of abuse and extrajudicial killings in Iraq. Solicitor Phil Shiner of Public Interest Lawyers, appearing alongside WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange at a press conference in London today, said some of the deaths documented in the reports may have involved British forces and could now go through the UK courts.

The Iraq logs, Shiner said, indicated that UK as well as US commanders were likely to have ignored evidence of torture by the Iraqi authorities, contrary to international law. He said: "Some of these deaths will be in circumstances where the UK have a very clear legal responsibility. This may be because the Iraqis died while under the effective control of UK forces – under arrest, in vehicles, helicopters or detention facilities."

A number of the documents detail allegations of abuse by UK soldiers. Two reports dated 23 June 2008 describe claims by two Iraqi men – both Shias – that they were punched and kicked by unidentified British soldiers. Both men, according to the reports on the WikiLeaks website, suffered injuries that would have been consistent with their claims. There is no apparent record of an investigation of the allegations.

...

As Assange defended the decision to disclose the documents – saying it was of "immense importance" to reveal the truth about the conflict – the UN warned that if the logs pointed to clear violations of the UN convention against torture, Barack Obama's administration had a clear obligation to investigate them.

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/oct/23/iraq-war-logs-legal-britain

[Richard Steele]

1. K&R

[City Lights]

2. R&K. nt

[glitch]

3. K & Bloody R nt

[Panaconda]

4. US Under Pressure on WikiLeaks Allegations

US Under Pressure on WikiLeaks Allegations
"If there's enough truth early on enough then perhaps we won't see these kind of wars."

LONDON -- Washington on Sunday came under increasing pressure to investigate allegations in the leaked Iraq war documents published by WikiLeaks, which Britain's deputy premier called "shocking".

Governments and human rights organisations alike put the focus on answers to the allegations made against US, allied and Iraqi troops as the whistleblowing website released 400,000 classified US military documents.

The flood of material from 2004 to 2009 offers a grim snapshot of the conflict, especially of the abuse of Iraqi civilians by Iraqi security forces.

The heavily redacted logs appear to show that the US military turned a blind eye to evidence of torture and abuse of civilians by the Iraqi authorities.

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http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/10/24-0

[Panaconda]

5. Atrocity Now: Wikileaks Release Puts Spotlight Back on Continuing War Crime in Iraq

Atrocity Now: Wikileaks Release Puts Spotlight Back on Continuing War Crime in Iraq
Written by Chris Floyd
Friday, 22 October 2010 22:55


Many, many years ago, I noted in the Moscow Times that shortly after the 2003 invasion, the United States had begun hiring some of Saddam's old torturers as the invaders sought to quell the then-nascent "insurgency" -- i.e., the opposition to foreign occupation that when carried out by white men, such as the French during World War II, goes by the more ringing name of "resistance." Here's part of that report, from August 29, 2003:

Here's a headline you don't see every day: "War Criminals Hire War Criminals to Hunt Down War Criminals."

Perhaps that's not the precise wording used by the Washington Post this week, but it is the absolute essence of its story about the Bush Regime's new campaign to put Saddam's murderous security forces on America's payroll.

Yes, the sahibs in Bush's Iraqi Raj are now doling out American tax dollars to hire the murderers of the infamous Mukhabarat and other agents of the Baathist Gestapo – perhaps hundreds of them. The logic, if that's the word, seems to be that these bloodstained "insiders" will lead their new imperial masters to other bloodstained "insiders" responsible for bombing the UN headquarters in Baghdad – and killing another dozen American soldiers while Little George was playing with his putts during his month-long Texas siesta.

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http://www.chris-floyd.com/articles/1-latest-news/2037-atrocity-now-wikileaks-release-puts-spotlight-back-on-continuing-war-crime-in-iraq.html

[TBF]

6. Recommend. nt

[Panaconda]

7. Here's a source for many stories

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/iraq-war-logs

And another:
http://warlogs.owni.fr/

And another:
http://www.iraqwarlogs.com/

[blindpig]

8. k&r

[kgnu_fan]

9. Kick and stop the war!

[Panaconda]

10. Iraq war logs: These crimes were not secret, they were tolerated

Iraq war logs: These crimes were not secret, they were tolerated

The most shocking of the revelations in the current batch of leaked Iraq war logs is that most of the acts of torture and murder were committed in the open. They weren't secret. They were tolerated, sanitised – justified, even. Take the Wolf Brigade, the 2nd battalion of the interior ministry's special commandos. Everybody knew about them. You would see them in their pick-up trucks wearing balaclavas. When there was a sectarian murder people would talk about the wolves, until they became a shorthand to describe a certain kind of cruel violence. The wolf commandos became killers in the uniform of the Iraqi police.

I recall speaking to UN human rights investigators, western police advisers, diplomats and army officers about what was going on. In 2005 an Iraqi government official confirmed a list of places where she believed torture and murder were taking place. A British police mentor described entering the office of a notorious figure at the interior ministry and found a man with a bag over his head standing in the corner of the office.

Some of us who covered Iraq wrote about what we found. In summer 2005, I described the operation of the torture squads. Human rights organisations prepared their own reports. But nothing very much happened, except excuses.

When the bodies started turning up in western Baghdad in 2004, the official line was that it was former Ba'athists who were being killed. Like the looting that occurred in the aftermath of the fall of Iraq, it was "understood." The victims probably deserved it, was the unspoken intimation. Officials, British and American, were really not that bothered.

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/oct/25/iraq-torture-no-secret

[maryf]

11. K&Rnt