American-led invaders: divide & rule - bedfellows with ignorant sect leaders

This August 30th report by Ali al-Fadhily from INSIDE IRAQ, appears on the Dahr Jamail hard News site (extract):

John Sifton, researcher for Human Rights Watch, told reporters Aug. 24 that "the allegations of abuse are far worse for Iraqi facilities than for those detainees in U.S. custody. It is difficult to know the Iraqi detainee population. There are both official and unofficial Iraqi detention systems."

Sifton said Human Rights Watch and other human rights organisations "have concerns about a 50 percent increase in detainees because it is 50 percent more people at risk of having been arbitrarily detained or, worse, of being handed over to Iraqi officers who might subject them to torture."

Sifton added that there are no reliable numbers provided by the Iraqi government on the number of detainees, and that the U.S. military will not provide the numbers either.

"My three sons were selling vegetables in Baghdad at the wholesale market when Americans took them away over a year ago," 55-year-old Saadiya from the Abu Ghraib area west of Baghdad told IPS. "We learned three months later that they were taken to Bucca prison near Basra. They were only farmers, and now they are listed as terrorists just because they are Sunni."

Stories like this are recounted all over the western areas of Iraq, where Sunni Arabs are the dominant population.

"A roadside bomb exploded near our house and killed three Americans," Sumaya, a woman from the Dora area of southwest Baghdad told IPS. "Then American tanks came with hundreds of soldiers and arrested over 30 men from the neighbourhood, including my husband. We were asleep when the blast occurred at 5 am, and it was curfew hours, but they still wanted us to tell them who did it. Now I have to work and feed my four children."

Continue reading [full "August 30th SURGE article"]

Abuses by American troops in full view of the public are also very common, as Fadhily reports in this article dealing with Samarra district 125 km north of Baghdad, (extract):

Thul-Faqar Ali, a lawyer and human rights activist who fled Samarra to Baghdad told IPS. "It is true that there was strong resistance to the occupation, but most of those who got killed, injured or detained were innocent civilians. The U.S. occupation forces in Samarra were so brutal that they conducted many executions on site."

The survivor of two young males who were forced into the Tigris River at gunpoint by American troops had this to say:

"I could hear them laughing," Marwan told a reporter of the Jan. 3, 2004 incident, recalling how U.S. soldiers pushed him and his cousin into the river. "They were behaving like they were watching a comedy on stage."

A U.S. military court acquitted Sgt. 1st Class Tracy Perkins, 33, of involuntary manslaughter but convicted him of assault, according to Ali al-Fadhili's report [full "Samarra Sept 6th article"]