By Our Correspondent
NEW DELHI – Twenty years after suffering unimaginable torture and horrific abuses by the United States forces at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison and other U.S.-run detention centres in Iraq, the survivors are still waiting for redress and accountability from the global superpower, which boasts of championing the cause of human rights around the world. The U.S. government has singularly failed to provide compensation or any other succour to the innocent detainees.
The detainees had suffered the worst forms of torture and abuse at the hands of the American soldiers at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere during the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq from 2003 to 2009. The citizens of the Middle Eastern country still have no clear path to receiving redress or recognition from the U.S. government, though the effects of torture are a daily reality for many Iraqi survivors and their families.
The Human Rights Watch (HRW) – an international non-government organization headquartered in New York City that conducts research and advocacy on human rights – and other global human rights groups have extensively documented torture and other ill-treatment by the U.S. forces in Iraq. The HRW has released a report, accusing the U.S. government of failure to give any redress or recognition to the Iraqis despite their courage to come forward and give an account of their ill-treatment.
The U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003 and dominated the country until 2011 when the American troops officially withdrew. HRW Washington Director Sarah Yager said while releasing the report last week that the Iraqis who were tortured by U.S. personnel still had no clear path for filing a claim or receiving any kind of redress from the U.S. government two decades after the abuse.
Abu Ghraib was one of the several military detention centres and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) “black sites” worldwide where the U.S. forces, intelligence agents, and contractors carried out torture and other ill-treatment, or so-called enhanced interrogation techniques.
“The U.S. officials have indicated that they prefer to leave torture in the past, but the long-term effects of torture are still a daily reality for many Iraqis and their families,” Yager said. In August 2022, the Pentagon released an action plan to reduce harm to civilians in U.S. military operations, but it did not include any way to receive compensation for past instances of civilian harm.
The U.S. and its coalition allies had detained about 1 lakh Iraqis between 2003 and 2009. The survivors of abuse have come forward for years to give accounts of their treatment but received little recognition from the U.S. government and no redress. The HRW pointed out that prohibitions against torture under U.S. domestic law, the Geneva Convention of 1949, and the United Nations Convention Against Torture, as well as customary international law, are absolute.
A February 2004 report to the U.S.-led military coalition by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) stated that military intelligence officers told the ICRC that an estimated 70% to 90% of people in coalition custody in Iraq in 2003 had been arrested by mistake.
In 2004, the then U.S. President George W. Bush apologized for the “humiliation suffered by the Iraqi prisoners” at Abu Ghraib. Soon after, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told Congress that he had found a legal way to compensate Iraqi detainees who suffered grievous and brutal abuse and cruelty at the hands of a few members of the U.S. Armed Forces.
The HRW has found no evidence that the U.S. government has paid any compensation or other redress to victims of detainee abuse in Iraq, nor has the U.S. issued any individual apologies or other amends. Some victims have attempted to apply for compensation using the U.S. Foreign Claims Act, which allows foreign nationals to obtain compensation for death, injury, and damage to property from “non-combat activity or a negligent or wrongful act or omission” caused by U.S. service members.
However, it includes a so-called combat exclusion, as part of which no claims are payable if the harm results from “action by the enemy or U.S. forces engaged in armed conflict or in immediate preparation for impending armed conflict.” Furthermore, filing a claim under the Foreign Claims Act is not an option because claims must be filed within two years from the date of the alleged harm.
The HRW was unable to find public evidence that payments have been made under this law as compensation for detainee abuse, including torture. In 2007, the American Civil Liberties Union obtained documents detailing 506 claims made under the Foreign Claims Act, including 488 in Iraq and 18 in Afghanistan. The majority of claims related to harm or deaths caused by shootings, convoys and vehicle accidents.
The only case of a Foreign Claims Act payment relating to detention in those documents was for a claimant who was paid 1,000 U.S, dollars for being unlawfully detained in Iraq, with no mention of other abuse. Five other claims were for abuse in detention, but they are among 11 claims which do not contain the outcome, including whether payment was made.
Jonathan Tracy, a former Judge-Advocate who handled claims of harm in Baghdad in 2003, told HRW that he did not know of any Foreign Claims Act payments to torture survivors by the Army. “If any of the survivors received a payment, I would doubt the Army would have wanted to use Foreign Claims Act money because it could be interpreted as an admission on the government’s part,” he said.
A. U.S. submission to the U.N. Committee Against Torture in May 2006 reported that 33 detainees had by that date filed claims for compensation to the U.S. Army, 28 of which were from Iraq. The submission stated that “no compensation has been provided to date, however, compensation has been offered in two cases.” Subsequent submissions to the Committee Against Torture did not contain updates to these figures, nor did they specify whether those payments were made.
Other Iraqis have also attempted to find justice in the U.S. courts, but the U.S. Justice Department has repeatedly dismissed such cases using a 1946 law that preserves the immunity of U.S. forces for any claim arising out of the combatant activities of the military or naval forces, or the Coast Guard, during time of war.
When the photos of detainee abuse in Abu Ghraib went public, President Bush sought to minimize the systemic nature of the problem by calling it disgraceful conduct by “a few American troops”, who dishonoured the country and disregarded its values. However, investigations by HRW have found that the decisions taken at the highest levels of government enabled, sanctioned and justified these acts.
A U.S. Department of Defence document examined by HRW revealed that the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Division (CID) initiated a minimum of 506 inquiries into reported mistreatment of individuals by U.S. and coalition forces in Iraq from 2003 to 2005. This document outlined investigations into 376 incidents of physical assault, 90 incidents involving fatalities, 34 theft-related incidents, and six cases of alleged sexual assault, all attributed to U.S. and coalition forces. Despite concluding that they had taken place, no attempt was made to compensate the victims.
The invasion of Iraq was launched under the false pretext of searching for weapons of mass destruction without any legitimacy under international law. It claimed hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives. The figure is more than 10 lakh, according to some estimates. Lakhs of other people were displaced from their homes.
The disorganized regime imposed by the U.S. on Iraq fuelled decades of sectarian violence and destroyed the nation. The worst forms of human rights violations were carried out in the U.S.-run prisons, including the infamous Abu Ghraib. The full extent of what went on inside Abu Ghraib came to the knowledge of a shocked world in April 2004, when the photographs of torture were leaked into public domain.
