Navy corpsman pressured to "Keep His Mouth Shut"
/U.S. Navy documents released today by the American Civil Liberties
Union (ACLU) reveal that abuse and even torture of detainees by U.S.
Marines in Iraq was widespread. One Navy criminal investigator sent an
email in June 2004 describing his Iraq caseload "exploding" with "high
visibility cases." "Day after day, new stories of torture are coming to
light, and we need to know how these abuses were allowed to happen,"
said ACLU Executive Director Anthony D. Romero. "This kind of
widespread abuse could not have taken place without a leadership
failure of the highest order." The release of these documents follows a
federal court order that directed the Defense Department and other
government agencies to comply with a year-old request under the Freedom
of Information Act filed by the ACLU, the Center for Constitutional
Rights, Physicians for Human Rights, Veterans for Common Sense and
Veterans for Peace. The New York Civil Liberties Union is co-counsel in
the case. The documents the ACLU released today, posted online at
www.aclu.org/torturefoia, describe substantiated incidents of torture
and abuse by U.S. Marines, including:
- holding a pistol to the back of a detainee's head while another Marine took a picture (Karbala, May 2003)
- ordering four Iraqi juveniles to kneel while a pistol was "discharged to conduct a mock execution" (Adiwaniyah, June 2003)
- severely burning a detainee's hands by covering them in alcohol and igniting them (Al Mumudiyah, August 2003); and
- shocking a detainee with an electric transformer, causing the detainee to "dance" as he was shocked (Al Mumudiyah, April 2004)
