There is a story bubbling up right now. Who knows at what level it will reach the "real media".
Here are some starting points.
First
this picture....
Note that this is the
World Press Photo Of The Year. Altho I have tried hard to keep up with the Iraq torture story, this photo only becamse known to me today. The rest of the world has seen it.... American press has not published it as far as I can tell.
The rest of the world is also seeing explosive news reporting on the abuse of children by US troops. Some months ago I remember a story that came and went in about a day about children being detained in order to frighten their parents into talking.
Now a German news program has done a feature on this sutuation and it is infuriating Europeans. This from a
a Norwegian media source.
Thanks especially to
Sadly, No,
Atrios,
No More Mister Nice Blog and others for doing the work our press is afraid to do.
There is a story bubbling up right now. Who knows at what level it will reach the "real media".
Here are some starting points.
First
this picture....
Note that this is the
World Press Photo Of The Year. Altho I have tried hard to keep up with the Iraq torture story, this photo only becamse known to me today. The rest of the world has seen it.... American press has not published it as far as I can tell.
The rest of the world is also seeing explosive news reporting on the abuse of children by US troops. Some months ago I remember a story that came and went in about a day about children being detained in order to frighten their parents into talking.
Now a German news program has done a feature on this sutuation and it is infuriating Europeans. This from a
a Norwegian media source.
Norwegian authorities reacted with shock and disgust Tuesday to a documentary on German TV that American soldiers allegedly have been holding children in prisons in Iraq, and abusing them as well. The Norwegians joined the Red Cross and Amnesty International in calling for an immediate end to the abuse, and release of the underage prisoners, some of whom are as young as 12 years.
The geman video can be seen here (RealPlayer format).
Altho much of it is in German, it concerns (as far as I can tell) reports from one of the same US soldiers who blew the whistle on the other torture stories. He is interviewed in this piece.
The Weblog, Sadly, No , has provided some partial translations of this video here.
Some of it I reprint here. For the rest, see Sadly, No. They dug up most of this and appear to be leading the charge on this story. There are links there to other WebLogs monitoring this story.
Soldiers looking for terrorists storm an apartment. Children are sometimes arrested during these raids. What the Army does with them, it will not say. We investigate. Meet with sources.
One that knows something about this is Sergeant Samuel Provance, from the US Military. He spent half a year stationed at Abu Ghraib. Today, 5 months later, we meet him in Heidelberg.....
(snip)
"He was very afraid, very alone. He had the thinnest arms I had ever seen. His whole body trembled. His wrists were so thin we couldn't put handcuffs on him. As I saw him for the first time and led him to the interrogation, I felt sorry. The interrogation specialists threw water over him and put him into a car, drove him around through the extremely cold night. Afterwards, they covered him with mud and showed him to his imprisoned father, on whom they'd tried other interrogation methods.
They hadn't been able to get him to speak, though. The interrogation specialists told me that after the father saw his son in this condition, his heart was broken, he started crying, and he promised to tell them anything they wanted." --Samuel Provance
(snip)
One that has seen the children's section with his own eyes is the Iraqi journalist Suhaib Badr-Addin Al-Baz. Our correspondent met with him in Baghdad. He explains how he was picked up while reporting and jailed 74 days in Abu Ghraib:
"There I saw a camp for kids, young, certainly not yet of puberty age. There must have been hundreds of kids. Some were released, others are certainly still there." --Suhaib Badr-Addin Al-Baz
(snip)
From his cell in the adult's section he hears a girl of maybe 12 years of age crying. Later he found out that her brother was held in a cell on the second floor of the prison. Once or twice he says, he saw the girl himself. [...] "She called out her brother's name. She was beaten, she cried out "they took off my clothes, they poured water on me."" --Suhaib Badr-Addin Al-Baz
He heard her cries every day. [...]
(snip)
"Children picked up in Basra and Kerbala were routinely transferred to a prison in Um Qasr." --UNICEF
(snip)
"This classification of children as 'prisoners' is alarming given that they are held for an undetermined period of time, without contact with their family or expectation of a trial." --UNICEF
(Snip)
"Over the course of 19 visits in 6 different detention facilities from January to May of this year, we counted 107 children. These facilities were under the control of coalition troops." --Florian Westphal, ICRC.
(snip)
"UNICEF asked to visit this facility in July 2003, but access was denied." --UNICEF
No independent observers have been in this facility since December, according to UNICEF. [...]
Thanks especially to Sadly, No, Atrios, No More Mister Nice Blog and others for doing the work our press is afraid to do.
RatoncitoPerez