{"id":11258,"date":"2011-08-29T09:33:16","date_gmt":"2011-08-29T17:33:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=11258"},"modified":"2011-08-29T09:33:16","modified_gmt":"2011-08-29T17:33:16","slug":"night-raids-and-war-crimes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2011\/08\/29\/night-raids-and-war-crimes\/","title":{"rendered":"Night Raids and War Crimes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Just wanted to quickly draw attention to<a href=\"http:\/\/wikileaks.org\/cable\/2006\/04\/06GENEVA763.html#par2006\"> this WikiLeaks State Department diplomatic cable<\/a> which details a horrible war crime committed by the US in Iraq in 2006. The cable excerpts a letter written by Philip Alston, Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary, or Arbitrary Executions to the US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>I would like to draw the attention of your Government to information I have received regarding a raid conducted by the Multinational Forces (MNF) on 15 March 2006 in the house of Faiz Harrat Al-Majma&#8217;ee, a farmer living in the outskirts of Al-Iss Haqi District in Balad (Salah-El-Din Governorate).<\/p>\n<p>I have received various reports indicating that at least 10 persons, namely Mr. Faiz Hratt Khalaf, (aged 28), his wife Sumay&#8217;ya Abdul Razzaq Khuther (aged 24), their three children Hawra&#8217;a (aged 5) Aisha ( aged 3) and Husam (5 months old), Faiz&#8217;s mother Ms. Turkiya Majeed Ali (aged 74), Faiz&#8217;s sister (name unknown), Faiz&#8217;s nieces Asma&#8217;a Yousif Ma&#8217;arouf (aged 5 years old), and Usama Yousif Ma&#8217;arouf (aged\u00a03 years), and a visiting relative Ms. Iqtisad Hameed Mehdi (aged 23) were killed during the raid.<\/p>\n<p>According to the information received, American troops approached Mr. Faiz&#8217;s home in the early hours of 15 March 2006. It would appear that when the MNF approached the house, shots were fired from it and a confrontation ensued for some 25 minutes. The MNF troops entered the house, handcuffed all residents and executed all of them. After the initial MNF intervention, a US air raid ensued that destroyed the house.<\/p>\n<p>Iraqi TV stations broadcast from the scene and showed bodies of the victims (i.e. five children and four women) in the morgue of Tikrit. Autopsies carries out at the Tikrit\u00a0Hospital&#8217;s morgue revealed that all corpses were shot in the head and handcuffed.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Night raids like this, by the way, have become <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wgbh\/pages\/frontline\/kill-capture\/\">one of the primary strategies in Afghanistan<\/a>. Frequent readers will note Antiwar.com&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/news.antiwar.com\/2011\/01\/05\/nato-troops-kill-three-civilians-in-afghan-night-raid\/\">persistent highlighting<\/a> of <a href=\"http:\/\/news.antiwar.com\/2011\/05\/18\/karzai-nato-killed-four-civilians-in-afghan-night-raid\/\">these raids<\/a> which <a href=\"http:\/\/news.antiwar.com\/2011\/04\/05\/afghan-governor-nato-kills-six-civilians-in-night-raid\/\">very<\/a>, very <a href=\"http:\/\/news.antiwar.com\/2010\/02\/12\/family-us-troops-killed-civilians-in-latest-afghan-night-raid\/\">often kill civilians<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Just wanted to quickly draw attention to this WikiLeaks State Department diplomatic cable which details a horrible war crime committed by the US in Iraq in 2006. The cable excerpts a letter written by Philip Alston, Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary, or Arbitrary Executions to the US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice: I would like [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":86,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-11258","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11258","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/86"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11258"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11258\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11259,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11258\/revisions\/11259"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11258"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11258"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11258"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=11258"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}