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January 28, 2006
Hostage Taking Non-Story

As commentator b real points out, reports of hostage taking by U.S. military in Iraq are incomplete. They fail to point out that these acts are illegal under U.S. and international laws.

Imprisoning relatives of assumed insurgents for the sole purpose of catching those assumed insurgents started in July 2003 and is continuing into 2006.

In January 2004 Human Rights Watch wrote a letter to Rumsfeld:

We are writing you with regard to several incidents in Iraq involving actions by United States forces that appear to violate the 1949 Geneva Conventions. […] In two of these incidents, U.S. forces also reportedly detained close relatives of a person that the U.S. was attempting to apprehend. In these cases the individuals detained were themselves not suspected of responsibility for any wrongdoing.

ACLU has released U.S. military documents, 1, 2 (both PDFs), obtained through FOIA requests and court orders. These documents refer to obvious U.S. hostage taking in 2004.

Yesterday Reuters and Associated Press reported on the ACLU documents. The AP report does not even mention any question of legality. With regards to law, the Reuters piece only includes a cite of one of the documents,

A June 10, 2004, memo written by the DIA employee, labeled as "secret," referred to "violations of the Geneva Convention.",

but does not elaborate.

Knight Ridder, which seams to have done the only original reporting so far, writes:

BAGHDAD, Iraq – The U.S. Army has been detaining Iraqi women to help track down husbands or fathers who are suspected terrorists, according to documents released Friday and a Knight Ridder interview with a female detainee who was released Thursday after four months in prison.

[…]

The Iraqi woman told Knight Ridder on Friday that she and eight other female detainees in her cell had often talked among themselves. She discovered that all of them were being held because U.S. officials had suspected their male relatives of having ties to terrorism.

So according to this witness, the hostage taking is ongoing. There are either no orders to follow the law, or such orders are ignored. But even Knight Ridder fails to mention these illegalities.

Hostage taking is a clear violation of the Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War especially of:

Article 3 (1): Persons taking no active part in the hostilities […], shall in all circumstances be treated humanely, […].

To this end the following acts are and shall remain prohibited at any time and in any place whatsoever with respect to the above-mentioned persons: […] (b) taking of hostages

Article 31:
No physical or moral coercion shall be exercised against protected persons, in particular to obtain information from them or from third parties.

Article 33: No protected person may be punished for an offence he or she has not personally committed. ..

Article 34: The taking of hostages is prohibited.

Under US Code Title 18 § 2441 specifically any breach of GC Article 3 is defined as a War Crime.

The LA Times, Washington Post and the New York Times only carry the above mentioned news agency reports with no crime mentioned.

Of the major bloggers only Andrew Sullivan and Laura Rozen mention the illegality.

So where is the outrage? Why do the media fail to point out the obvious? Why is this a non-story?

Posted by b on January 28, 2006 at 12:24 UTC | Permalink
Comments

As far as I can discern when the shit hits the fan on this which is any day now, a big mob of people currently being held by the Iraqis, in particular Jill Carroll of the Xtian Science Monitor are going to be released.
If Human Rights Watch is concerned about the abduction of these Iraqi wives I guess you can imagine how their husbands feel.
The issue of these women’s abduction has been a source of conflict since about the time Dubya hoisted the old mission accomplished bizzo.
Cast your minds back and consider in how many of the non-Goldstein/Lincoln Industry abductions the primary request by the abductors is the release of all women.
USuk sat back and watched an Irish/Iraqi woman be executed plus an english (I think), engineer, a US/aussie escape by the skin of his teeth and a few others the circumstances of whom I’m embarrassed to say I don’t remember, have been killed as well.
Then the insurgents wised up and took a woman journalist from a major US media outlet and I guess her friends in the media helped BushCo concentrate.
There were stories around about a week ago that women were about to be released by the US, except some of the stories speculated that the release was to do with the Carroll abduction. Remember ‘we’ don’t make deals with terrarists. You’d have to think that those reporters wouldn’t want to get in the pooh cause they won’t have colleagues running around to help them.
Anyway now the women are going to be released because of concerns about illegal detention, no-one will be able to claim BushCo did a deal with terror by releasing them.
Are we keeping up here?
The little bit I heard was in relation to some other hostages also about to get sprung. I feel like a right idjit talking like this especially if it is just more scuttlebutt.
However mainstream US media have been reporting Carroll’s abduction very low key. If /when she is released the opposite will occur.

Posted by: Debs is dead | Jan 28 2006 13:23 utc | 1

when grunt Lyndie England gets years in jail for torture while Chief Warrant Officer Welshofer gets a slap on the wrist for killing an Iraqi general during a more “rigorous” torture session, and no one in the mainstream media seems to care about it, I’m not surprised that no one cares about Iraqi women taken as hostages. (note the preferential treatment given, again, and the lack of accountability for higher ranking personnel, too)
as you note, b, the hostage taking of family members was made public a long while ago and no one seemed to care then, either, except for those whacky human rights people…as tho human rights matter when Americans feel threatened.
I believe that Gen. Taguba mentioned the same thing when he noted that 70% of ppl in jails were innocent of any crime. I believe he said something like…when soldiers would go to a house, if someone next door came outside, they could be picked up and taken to jail for interrogation when the person the army wanted was not found.
From the Financial Times, 57% of Americans polled support the idea of American action in Iran–while knowing full well about the current state of affairs and military actions in Iraq.
once America is attacked, no one else is human…didn’t the rest of the world get that message yet? Apparently attacking, even if it’s a form of suicide, is okay, is better than waiting to be attacked, or worse, negotiating some sort of workable solution…because most Americans don’t believe in a workable solution when it comes to fundamentalist Islamists. The suicide bomber ideology makes anything other than annihilation a non-option.
…this adminstration and its supporters will keep saying it in oh so many ways…
in fact, this seems to be the main idea behind American thought at this time. An attack on this country justifies ANY act against anyone else. And, as the FT shows, a pre-emptive attack appears justified because of the fear that Iran will develop nukes and won’t be deterred from using them on the U.S.
Protect and defend the constitution also means nothing in the current environment either, as has been noted. The argument is that the constitution is not a suicide pact. Of course, war should also not be a suicide pact, but that’s not discussed either.
and why should any ppl from any other country matter when Ann Coulter can suggest rat poisoning for a judge she doesn’t like…cause it’s just a joke…heh, heh. too bad someone doesn’t shove a roll of barbed wire down her… throat..heh heh, just joking…
And if you disagree too loudly, for instance, if you’re vegan or a quaker, you can expect to be monitored, b/c you’re the enemy, too. If you speak out against these tactics, you’re the equivalent of a terrorist.
Halliburton is going to build detention centers in the US…for our own protection, of course, and to keep those pesky vegans and quakers quiet…or, maybe the blacks that lived in New Orleans might find a new home if they get too angry…
Writing our representatives seems to do a lot of good…I love those form letters they send back, noting our “concerns.”
I think I understand the former Soviet ppl a lot better than I ever did before. After a while, a sense of “learned helplessness” can become SOP in an environment that condones anything for the preservation of the state, and getting out seems like the only viable solution for those who cannot get along and go along.
…and that’s my note of good cheer for the day. it’s hard not to despair when you see nothing but reactionary hatred as normal discourse on tv, online, in newspapers, from press conferences, from pundits…

Posted by: fauxreal | Jan 28 2006 15:37 utc | 2

There was a discussion going on in Israel about two years back about a proposed method of how to deter suicide bombers: by threatening to execute their entire family.
At the time, I realized that the corresponding counter-threat would be for entire families to blow themselves up. The next logical step would be to level entire villages where suicide-bomber families lived…
In any case, we have passed into a phase in our history where incompetent, overzealous (and even corrupt) officials are being granted enormous authority and yet subject to almost no answerability. We should be afraid.

Posted by: ralphieboy | Jan 28 2006 18:40 utc | 3

Lets have a show of hands, how many here still believe when ordered, that our boys wont fire on or kidnap American citizens?

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jan 28 2006 20:42 utc | 4

Uncle,
They will shoot, and some with great abandon. 67% of our fellow americans want to expand the killing to Iran.
Armegeddon! Bring it on!

Posted by: dan of steele | Jan 28 2006 21:55 utc | 5

The only reason I’m not jumping up and down about this at the moment is this.
A bloke I know has been waiting around in Jordan since before Xmas with a bunch of people on the roller-coaster of emotions as “the deals’ been done”. Then “No it’s not. There has been a backdown, someone far away says the time isn’t right” blah blah blah has torn them up.
It was late last night when I posted incoherently above.
But as I said last night, if HRW is upset imagine how the women’s husbands, mothers, sisters, sons daughters, fathers feel.
The struggle to get some of these women released has been going on for over two years. Virtually everything has been tried including ‘political deals’ just before the Iraqi elections which sprung a few.
The ante has been getting upped with more and more ‘innocent’ westerners getting abducted in the hope USuk will recognise these Iraqi women are also innocent.
I think that anyone taking hostages is beyond the pale, even if they do try and ‘be polite’ to their hostages and give them a cup of tea.
In fights like this things spin out of control. Someone may abduct someone purely for money but western governments; running at the time set by newscasts, reading polls, and focus groups, practically anything other than the matter at hand, can be too slow setting up the quid pro quo. Then the hostages are sold to someone/something who doesn’t want money, they have some of that which is how they bought the hostage/s.
They also have a loved one to be released.
I don’t know whether it was accidental or deliberate but when dealing with people whose sole currency appears to be ‘media access and control’, the insurgents discovered representatives of the major media outlets are valuable bargaining chips.
Even or maybe especially when the things sitting at other other side of the table are sleekly suited USuk officials who appear to have no concerns/love for any human being.
Then last year some shia fighters loosely attached to Chalabi’s crime family grabbed a Guardian journalist and he was out within 24 hours. Note this piece of the story:
“Irish Foreign Affairs Minister Dermot Ahern, who was involved in efforts to get Carroll freed, said that no ransom was paid.
“To the best of my knowledge no ransom was paid and I’m nearly certain of that,” he said but did not comment on whether Iraqi prisoners had been freed in exchange for Carroll’s release. “
So for the Iraqis wanting their loved ones back, it became apparent that the best catch of all was probably a reporter. A beter catch really than some mid to high ranking USuk official who would be expected to ‘go down with the ship’.
It seemed last week that at long last substanial numbers of the women held hostage by USuk were about to be released. Someone ran a story or two about that linking it to Jill Carroll of the CSM and other hostages. More denials and suddenly it was all off again.
The roller coaster plunges for loved ones in Jordan and throughout the West.
Did the more ‘concrete tales’ of female abductions by USuk occur courtesy of someone who wanted to speed up the process or to provide camouflage, or as an excuse for a substantial release of Iraqi women? Who knows?
I don’t want to sound like some social democrat politician searching for reasonableness and/or compromise but it may be a good idea not to get too het up about this over the next few days. That way a bunch of innocent and not so innocent on both sides may get a break.

Posted by: Debs is dead | Jan 28 2006 22:10 utc | 6

ABC reports on the issue. Not a word about legality and war cromes.
Critics Say Detaining Suspected Terrorists’ Wives May Backfire

In a June 10, 2004, memorandum obtained by ABC News, a Pentagon intelligence officer complains about the detention of a 28-year-old mother — still nursing her 6-month-old baby. She was held for two days even though the officer had concluded she had “no actionable intelligence leading to the arrest of her husband.”
In an exchange of e-mails obtained by The Associated Press, an Army colonel suggests challenging a wanted man whose spouse was being held “to come get his wife.”
Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, the former military police commander at the Abu Ghraib Prison where American troops were accused of torturing prisoners, said detaining wives of suspected terrorists has been a part of the war in Iraq.
“The incidents I would be familiar with occurred in 2003, and there were at least a dozen — perhaps 15 or 20,” she said. “I wouldn’t say it was a common practice, but it was a practice for the higher value detainees”

Posted by: b | Jan 30 2006 8:23 utc | 7

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