Torture
Universal Declaration of Human Rights
Article 5.
No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.
Human Rights Reports
"In all three locations, soldiers witnessed seriously abusive treatment and interrogation of detainees, including beatings, psychological torture of varying kinds, and other physical torture and mistreatment. At Camp Nama, for instance, detainees were regularly stripped naked, subjected to sleep deprivation and extreme cold, placed in painful stress positions, and beaten. At FOB Tiger, they were held without food or water for over 24 hours at a time, in temperatures sometimes exceeding 135 degrees Fahrenheit, and then taken into interrogations where they were beaten and subjected to threats. At Mosul, detainees were regularly subject to extreme sleep deprivation, exposure to extreme cold, forced exercises, and were threatened with military guard dogs.
In all three locations, the abuses appear to have been part of a regularized process of detainee abuse‹³standard operating procedure,² in the words of some of the soldiers.
Legal Standards
The acts of torture and other cruel and inhumane treatment alleged in this report do not fall within gray areas in the law. During the periods discussed in this report, U.S. and coalition forces in Iraq were bound by various provisions of the 1949 Geneva Conventions, as well as by customary international law.45 The Geneva Conventions applied not only to the armed conflict between the United States and Iraq during March and April 2003, but also to the period of occupation thereafter. Specifically, the United States continued to be bound as an occupying power by the terms of the Fourth Geneva Convention until at least June 28, 2004, when sovereignty was formally transferred to the Interim Iraqi government.46
Article 130 of the Third Geneva Convention and Article 147 of the Fourth Geneva Convention deem torture and other inhumane treatment of persons protected by the respective conventions to be ³grave breaches² of those conventions. Acts of torture and other mistreatment that took place against protected persons detailed in this report constituted grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions. The United States is bound to investigate and prosecute grave breaches that are committed by U.S. personnel in Iraq. The Geneva Conventions impose on the United States an obligation to ³search for persons alleged to have committed, or order to be committed² grave breaches and to prosecute them.Art. 147
Art. 147. Grave breaches to which the preceding Article relates shall be those involving any of the following acts, if committed against persons or
property protected by the present Convention: wilful killing, torture or inhuman treatment, including biological experiments, wilfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health, unlawful deportation or transfer or unlawful confinement of a protected person, compelling a protected person to serve in the forces of a hostile Power, or wilfully depriving a protected person of the rights of fair and regular trial prescribed in the present Convention, taking of hostages and extensive destruction and appropriation of property, not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly.
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