{"id":18617,"date":"2013-03-06T12:34:38","date_gmt":"2013-03-06T20:34:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=18617"},"modified":"2013-03-06T14:11:11","modified_gmt":"2013-03-06T22:11:11","slug":"pentagon-ran-torture-centers-in-iraq-atrocities-revealed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2013\/03\/06\/pentagon-ran-torture-centers-in-iraq-atrocities-revealed\/","title":{"rendered":"Pentagon Ran Torture Centers in Iraq, Atrocities Revealed"},"content":{"rendered":"

“The Pentagon sent a US veteran of the ‘dirty wars’ in Central America to oversee sectarian police commando units in\u00a0Iraq\u00a0that set up secret detention and\u00a0torture\u00a0centres to get information from insurgents,” The Guardian<\/em> reports<\/a>. “These units conducted some of the worst acts of torture during the US occupation and accelerated the country’s descent into full-scale civil war.”<\/p>\n

After a 15-month investigation, The Guardian<\/em>\u00a0and the BBC Arabic has published its findings<\/a> about the torture and atrocities organized and committed by US officials reporting directly to the highest echelons of the US government, including General David Petraeus.<\/p>\n

“I remember a 14-year-old who was tied to one of the library’s columns,” said General Muntadher al-Samari,\u00a0one of the Bush administration’s Iraqi proxies who helped run the torture centers. “And he was tied up, with his legs above his head. Tied up. His whole body was blue because of the impact of the cables with which he had been beaten.”<\/p>\n

The report was “sparked by the release of\u00a0classified US military logs<\/a>\u00a0on WikiLeaks that detailed hundreds of incidents where US soldiers came across tortured detainees in a network of detention centers run by the police commandos across Iraq.”<\/p>\n

Antiwar.com reported on<\/a> some of those leaks at the time: On May 30, 2006, the WikiLeaks releases revealed, \u201ca joint US-Iraqi inspection\u201d of an Iraqi detention facility \u201cdiscovered more than 1,400 detainees in squalid, cramped conditions,\u201d many of whom were illegally detained. Prisoners \u201cdisplayed bruising, broken bones, and lash-marks, many claimed to have been hung by handcuffs from a hook in the ceiling and beaten on the soles of their feet and their\u00a0buttocks.\u201d<\/p>\n

The inspectors found a torture contraption where\u00a0\u201da hook\u2026on the ceiling of an empty room at the facility\u201d was \u201cattached [to] a chain-and-pulley system ordinarily used for lifting vehicles\u201d and that \u201capparent bloodspots stained the floor underneath.\u201d All 41 prisoners interviewed by US inspectors had reported being tortured and 37 juveniles were held illegally.<\/p>\n

Rape and sexual abuse, primarily of young teenagers, was also widespread. \u201cA number of juvenile detainees,\u201d reads the cable, \u201calleged\u2026that interrogators had used threats and acts of anal rape to induce confessions and had forced juveniles to fellate them during interrogations.\u201d<\/p>\n

Other instances of\u00a0close cooperation between the US and abusive Iraqi forces in the MOI<\/a>\u00a0have been previously uncovered and the Iraq War Logs published by WikiLeaks revealed\u00a0a secret US military order<\/a>\u00a0to\u00a0ignore cases of torture and abuse by Iraqi interrogators<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Guardian<\/em> has compiled their findings into a 50-minute documentary which can be viewed here<\/a>.<\/p>\n