US forces were taught torture techniques

[Tinoire]

US forces were taught torture techniques


Soldiers' accounts reveal widespread use of sleep deprivation and mock executions

Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington
Friday May 14, 2004
The Guardian

They called it "bitch in a box". On a baking hot day last August, a black Mercedes sedan pulled up at the US army base in Ramadi and two US interrogators dragged an Iraqi man out of the boot. He was gasping for air.
"They kind of had to prop him up to carry him in. He looked like he had been there for a while," said a US soldier who witnessed the Iraqi's arrival in the custody of American interrogators wearing desert camouflage but no identifying insignia.

<snip>

Other troops witnessed procedures they believed to be wrong, but felt powerless to intervene.

The soldier who watched the gasping Iraqi emerge from the Mercedes said he saw a similar episode later in August. "That was the normal procedure for them when they wanted to soften up a prisoner: stuff them in the trunk for a while and drive them around," said the soldier, who asked not to be named. "The hoods I can understand, and to have them cuffed with the plastic things, that I could see. But the trunk episode, yes, I thought it was kind of unusual."

<snip>

The interrogators were not in regular army uniform, and the soldiers never learned their real names.

<snip>

In a statement, written to support his conscientious objector application, Sgt Mejia writes that a platoon leader objected to their new duties, only to be told that his stand could end his military career.

<snip>

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1216579,00.html

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1. duplicate

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