This television news magazine piece has caused an outcry all over Europe, for the first time I’ve found an English translation of the report. It’s after the link. It was aired on July 5; if you speak German the TV report is here. Sgt. Provance, the IT guy for the Military Intelligence unit that ordered the torture at Abu Ghraib, is interviewed and speaks English, of course.
Moderation Fritz Frey:
Reports from Iraq: the daily attack, Saddam on trial, kidnapped
soldiers, every new headline covers over the preceding one. The scandal
of the torture prison of Abu Ghraib, oh yes, that was indeed one.
REPORT has stuck to this story and has in the process come across a
totally unbelievable suspicion. In Abu Ghraib and elsewhere children
and youth have been incarcerated and mistreated. Thomas Reutter with a
difficult search for clues.
Report:
With tanks coming through the gate. U.S. soldiers storm an apartment
building looking for terrorists. Sometimes during such roundups the
soldiers also arrest children. What happens to the children? About
that the military gives no information. We investigate, as it happens,
through informants.
One of them, who is knowledgeable about these things, is Sergeant
Samuel Provance from U.S. Army Intelligence. For half a year he was
stationed in the notorious Abu Ghraib torture-prison. Today, five
months later, we meet with Sergeant Provance in Heidelberg.
His superiors have strictly forbidden him from reporting to journalists
about what he experienced in Abu Ghraib. Yet Provance wants to talk
about it nonetheless. Pangs of conscience plague him. He tells us about
one 16-year-old, whom he himself had to lead away.
O-Ton, Samuel Provance, US-Sergeant:
“He was full of fear, very alone. He had the thinnest little arms that
I have ever seen. His whole body shook. His wrists were so thin that
we could not put handcuffs on him. As soon as I saw him for the first
time and led him to the interrogation, I felt sorry for him. The
interrogation specialists doused him with water and put him in a truck.
Then they drove with him throughout the night, and at that time it
was very, very cold. Then they smeared him with mud and showed him to his
likewise imprisoned father. With him [the father] they had tried out
other interrogation methods. But they had not succeeded in making him
talk. The interrogation specialists told me that after the father had
seen his son in that condition, it broke his heart. He wept and
promised to tell them what they wanted to know.”
The son however remained in custody, and the 16-year-old was put in
with the adults. Yet Provance reported also about a special
department, expressly for children. A secret children’s wing in the
horror prison of Abu Ghraib.
One person, who has seen the children’s wing with his own eyes, is the
journalist Suhaib Badr-Addin Al-Baz. Our correspondent met him some
weeks ago in Baghdad. The Iraqi TV reporter related how he himself was
arrested arbitrarily by the Americans while shooting film and spent 74
days in Abu Ghraib.
O-Ton, Suhaib Badr-Addin Al-Baz, Fernsehreporter:
“There I saw a camp for children. Young, under the age of puberty. In
this camp were certainly hundreds of children. Some of them have been
released, others are definitely still in there.”
From his solitary cell in the adults’ wing, Suhaib heard a perhaps
12-year-old girl weeping. Later he learned that her brother was on the
third floor of the prison. One or two times, says Suhaib, he saw her
himself.
In the night, according to Suhaib, they were with her in her cell.
The girl shreiked out to the other prisoners and called out to her brother.
O-Ton, Suhaib Badr-Addin Al-Baz, Fernsehreporter:
“She was beaten. I heard her call: ‘They have undressed me. They
have poured water over me.”
Daily, says Suhaib, one heard her crying and wimpering. Many of the
prisoners wept when they heard her. Suhaib reported also about a sick
15-year-old youth. [They chased him up and down the corridor with heavy
water canisters. translation uncertain] For so long until he collapsed from
exhaustion, says Suhaib. Then they brought in his father, also a
prisoner. He had a hood over his head. From shock the youth collapsed
once again.
In the so-called “War on Terrorism,” the Americans storm Iraqi houses.
According to Suhaib, they sometimes in the process seize whole families
who appear suspicious to them. Statements from individual witnesses,
difficult to confirm.
In the report it reads:
Citation:
“Children, who had been seized in Basra and Kerbala, were routinely
put over into an internment facility in Um Qasr.
Internment camp Um Qasr. Footage/photos from 2003. Today it is too
dangerous for reporters to travel to Um Qasr. The camp, a prison
for terrorists and criminals. Precisely here should Americans
therefore hold children interned as prisoners of war.
“The classification of these children as “internees” is alarming,
since it contains them for an indefinite time in prison, without
contact with their families or expectation of legal proceedings or
trial.”
Over this up-to-now unpublished report UNICEF does not yet want to
say anything. [Their reason is that] Their own workers in Iraq
should not be put in danger. Seeking more information, we turned to
the International Committee of the Red Cross, whose helpers inspected
Um Qasr, Abu Ghraib and other places of detention. And after
intensive conversations came a further confirmation and even
statistics.
O-Ton, Florian Westphal, Internationales Komitee vom Roten Kreuz:
“We have recorded a total of 107 children between January and May of
this year in the course of 19 visits to 6 different detention places.
And it must be emphasized that these are detention places that are
controlled by coalition troops.”
In the internment camp Um Qasr and also in Abu Ghraib the Red Cross
recorded minors as prisoners. Two international organizations
confirmed to us independently of each other that the occupation
troops are holding Iraqi children prisoner. Yet we have not received
any information directly from the prisons. Even UNICEF was not
allowed to visit the child prison in Baghdad.
Zitat:
“In July 2003 UNICEF applied for a visit to this detention facility,
but access was refused.”
Since December, according to UNICEF, there have been no independent
observers in the children’s prison. To be sure, the U.S. Army opened
the scandal-prison Abu Ghraib for a tour for journalists. Yet the
reporters were presented with a for-show facility. Child prisoners
were not shown to the press.
We hold fast to this: four sources confirm independently of one
another, that occupation troops are holding children as prisoners.
Two witnesses even report instances of maltreatment. The human
rights organization Amnesty International is outraged over the
reports of Iraqi child prisoners. Barbara Lochbihler of Amnesty
International, Germany, calls for follow-up action.
O-Ton, Barbara Lochbihler, Generalsekretrin amnesty international:
“The U.S. government has to respond to this report, it must give
concrete information about how old the children are, the grounds on
which they have been detained, and under what circumstances they were
incarcerated. And here we do not know the names of the children or
how many children are there. That is scandalous.”
Concluding moderation by Fritz Frey:
Self-evidently, we have confronted the responsible authorities with
our research. The British Defense Ministry responded: Children and
youth are not being held prisoner by British troops. We are still
waiting for an answer from the American Pentagon.
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