Malnutrition doubled since US invasion: UNICEF

The 6th of December 2004

The United Nations Children's Fund, UNICEF, warned today that the number of young Iraqi children suffering from acute malnutrition has nearly doubled since the March 2003 invasion, as health and living conditions have deteriorated.
Almost eight per cent of Iraqi children younger than five suffer from chronic diarrhoea and protein deficiency, the agency's latest reports said.
"This means that hundreds of thousands of children are today suffering the severe effects of diarrhoea and nutrient deficiencies," UNICEF executive director Carol Bellamy said.
Diarrhoea, caused mainly by unsafe water and in some areas lack of clean supplies, is responsible for 70 per cent of child deaths in Iraq, the agency said.
Water treatment plants, already in poor condition, have suffered more damage since the invasion. In Baghdad, 40 per cent of the water system has been damaged, with water lines either broken or contaminated.
Sewage treatment plants no longer work because of problems with the electrical supply, poor maintenance, and damage caused since the invasion.

AFP

SMH 6-12-4

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/12/06/1102182194844.html

Let's get this into perspective. People that are tortured will say and do whatever they think the torturer wants to hear or see, in an attempt to stop the torture.

This naturally makes any facts gleaned from torture extremely unreliable! And our government believes such information should be allowed as testimony in court.
Government won't oppose torture evidence

Saturday, The 4th of December 2004.

The Federal Government says that while torture is inappropriate, it has no intention of fighting plans by the United States Government to use evidence gained through torture in the trial of Guantanamo Bay detainees.
A court in Washington has been told that military panels at the prison in Cuba can use evidence obtained through torture.
Australia's Attorney-General Philip Ruddock says that while such evidence is not an accepted part of civilian trials, it is an approach used in military trials.
He says it is also used in international criminal tribunals that the United Nations has established.
"Military commissions, if allegations are raised that evidence was obtained inappropriately, its probative value, that is the weight you can put on it, is tested in the process," he said.
"We've always known that that was the approach in the military trial arrangements."
Lawyers acting for Australian detainees in Cuba had earlier today called for the Government to renounce the practice.
Two Australians, Mamdouh Habib and David Hicks, are being held at Guantanamo Bay.
The lawyer for Hicks, Stephen Kenny, says the US Government's plan to use evidence resulting from torture will hamper any chance of a fair trial.
He says any abuse of human rights by the US Government is unacceptable.
"If you want to try people, give them the proper protection, give them the same rights you give your own citizens and put them before a proper court and give them a chance to defend themselves," he said.
"Don't take them to a place where you're trying to hide them beyond the rule of law, which is what they did in Guantanamo Bay."
Mr Kenny says Saddam Hussein's regime was criticised for human rights abuses against defectors and the US Government should not be using the same tactics in the trial of Guantanamo Bay detainees.
"For the Americans to start saying they'll do this, essentially what they are doing is behaving as a third world dictatorship and frankly that is a very great concern," he said.
Mr Kenny has again called on the Australian Government to bring Hicks home and allow him to defend himself against allegations of war crimes before an Australian court.
Human rights
About 70 years ago, the United States Supreme Court ruled evidence gained through torture was inadmissible.
But the deputy associate Attorney-General, Brian Boyle, has told the District Court in Washington DC that the Guantanamo review panels are allowing such evidence.
Michael Ratner, a human rights lawyer with the Centre for Constitutional Rights, says he was shocked by the Bush administration's admission.
"Never in my 30 years of being a human rights lawyer would I ever expected to be in the state that we've arrived at," he said.
Mr Ratner says the admission amounts to a tacit acceptance of torture.
"You're saying to another country or another place, 'torture people and we'll just use the product of it'," he said.
He says the Howard Government must condemn torture and the use of evidence produced from it.
This week the International Committee of the Red Cross accused the US military of using tactics "tantamount to torture" on prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, a claim the Pentagon rejects.

ABC 4-12-4

http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200412/s1257996.htm

US argues Guantanamo detainees have no constitutional rights

Thursday, the 2nd of December 2004.

A group of 10 Guantanamo Bay prisoners who are waging a legal battle over their detention have no constitutional right to do so, US Government lawyers said and urged a judge to dismiss their cases.
Lawyers for the men being held as enemy combatants at the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, argued that their clients have the right to a fair trial and should be given the proper opportunity to defend themselves.
They urged US District Court Judge Joyce Hens Green to deny the Government's motion to dismiss the cases and to declare invalid the current military tribunal process at Guantanamo because it fails to provide due process of law.
Government lawyers told Judge Green the prisoners - who have all been deemed "enemy combatants" by a US military tribunal, which means they are not entitled to the protections normally given to prisoners of war - did not have the right to be heard in court.
"We think that the enemy petitioners... have no constitutional rights," said Brian Boyle, principal deputy associate attorney-general at the Justice Department.
"They are enemy combatants."
Human rights groups and lawyers for the prisoners say the tribunals are unfair because they do not permit the prisoners to see the evidence against them or allow them access to legal counsel.
The International Committee of the Red Cross has accused the US military of using tactics "tantamount to torture" on prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, a claim the Pentagon rejects.
Enemy combatants
Judge Green focused on the concept of "enemy combatants," and she posed a series of hypothetical scenarios to Mr Boyle over who could be considered an enemy combatant.
In one answer, Mr Boyle said an old woman in Switzerland who unknowingly gave money to an Afghan charity that passed the money to Al Qaeda could be viewed as an enemy combatant and therefore could be jailed and subject to a military tribunal.
"The Government showed its true colours today," said Barbara Olshansky of the Centre for Constitutional Rights, one of the attorneys who argued for the prisoners.
"If under this definition of enemy combatant a Swiss granny who gave money to charity can be detained indefinitely at Guantanamo, then anyone who unintentionally acts in a way the Government finds suspicious is in danger of losing their freedom," she said.
More than 500 people are being held at Guantanamo Bay, after being detained during the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan and in other operations in the US "war against terrorism".
Most of the suspected Al Qaeda members and Taliban fighters being held at the facility have not been charged or named as eligible for trial in a military tribunal.
The tribunals, formally called military commissions, were authorised by President George W Bush after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.
Thomas Wilner, one of the detainees' lawyers, cited a Supreme Court ruling in June that terror suspects had the right to use the US judicial system to contest their confinement.
"The world is waiting to see if American justice can work," Mr Wilner said.
Joe Margulies, an attorney representing another prisoner, said the current military system to determine whether or how to charge the prisoners was inadequate.
"The (tribunals) are the perfect storm of procedural inadequacy," he said. "The evidence against most prisoners consists largely of uncorroborated statements made to their interrogators."
-Reuters

ABC 2-12-4

http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200412/s1256195.htm

US mistreats Iraq civilians: journalist

The 24th of November 2004

An Iraqi journalist who stayed in Fallujah to report on the battle for his home town says he and hundreds of other civilians who eventually turned themselves in to escape the violence suffered tough, sometimes humiliating, treatment from American and Iraqi guards.
Abdul-Qader Saadi said he was subjected to multiple searches and interrogations; went unfed the first two days; was blindfolded and handcuffed; and had to sleep for days in a wooden cage buffeted by cold winds at a desert detention camp.
Saadi, who has reported part-time for The Associated Press since early in the year, also complained of having to strip naked for a medical examination by doctors he didn't know, a humiliating experience for an Arab.
"This was really painful," he said, several days after his release.
Saadi said he was held for 10 days as US interrogators tried to sort out civilians and insurgents who were detained as troops moved across Fallujah.
US officials confirmed to AP that Saadi was among those screened.

They said 1,450 people had been detained, with more than 400 released after it was determined they weren't combatants.
Before the assault, the US military had warned civilians to leave Fallujah, and most did.
Saadi sent his family to Baghdad three or four days before the offensive began, but although the AP told him he should feel free to join them, he decided to stay.
He said civilians who remained were shocked at the speed of the American advance through the city.
Five days into the battle, Saadi decided to accept a call broadcast by the Iraqi National Guard for civilians to turn themselves in at one of the city's mosques with promises to be taken to safety.
With two tanks surrounding the house where he had taken shelter, he felt he had little choice.
Saadi said he saw a few people, including a woman and child, killed by bullets as they walked toward the mosque.
He and others were taken to a railway station north of Fallujah. Women and children were separated from men, who were kept together in a room so dirty it felt like "an animal barn".
Eventually, about 400 men were crowded into the room. Lines formed for the single toilet. The detainees were given water but no food during their two days at the station, Saadi said.
Saadi said he repeatedly told Iraqi and US soldiers he was a journalist.
After a brief interrogation at the station, his press card and $US100 ($A127) were taken away, he said. He and others were blindfolded and their hands bound with plastic cuffs before they were shoved onto trucks.
After a drive of about two hours, the detainees were dragged out into a chill wind at a camp where barbed wire surrounded wooden cages.
Saadi said he and 19 others were herded into one cage. Each got a thin sponge mattress, but every three had to share a thin, olive-coloured sheet.
The men were fed three meals of US military rations every day and were taken to the toilet three times a day.
Once, Saadi said, he was denied one of his meals and ordered to pick up the rubbish as punishment for laughing.
Others who relieved themselves inside the wooden cage were locked up in a tiny, windowless room, he said.
© 2004 AP


SMH 24-11-4

http://www.smh.com.au/news/Breaking-News/US-mistreats-Iraq-civilians-journalist/2004/11/24/1101219588908.html