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Iraq defaults on millions in welfare payments
Iraq defaults on millions in welfare payments
By LARA JAKES
Iraq has run out of money to pay for widows‘ benefits, farm crops and other programmes for the poor, its parliament was told yesterday. “We should ask the government where these allocations for widows’ aid have gone,” demanded Maha Adouri of Baghdad, one of the women who make up a quarter of the parliament’s’s 325 members. “There are thousands of widows who did not receive financial aid for months.” Another MP said farmers have not been paid for wheat and other crops they supplied the government for at least five months. The cause of the shortfall was unclear, but officials have worried that the deadlock over forming a new government since March’s inconclusive election ultimately would lead to funding shortages. Speaker Osama al-Nujaifi promised that the parliament would push the Iraqi government for answers on where the money went. .The MPs’ eagerness to take up an issue dear to their constituents may have been aimed in part to reverse public scorn for their own lavish pay. Despite being elected only a short time ago, MPs have continued to pull in salaries and allowances that reach £14,000 a month, as well as one-off perks such as free nights in Baghdad’s finest hotel.
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Article Source: news.scotsman.com/world/Iraq-defaults-on-millions-in.6634360.jp
WikiLeaks Announces Release 7x the Size of the Iraq War
Picture of Julian Assange during a talk at 26C3
Logs
WikiLeaks has announced an important release on its Twitter account, claiming it’ll be seven times bigger than the Iraq war logs, which are widely considered to be the biggest military leak in history.
“Next release is 7x the size of the Iraq War Logs. intense pressure over it for months. Keep us strong” was the message posted to the Wikileaks Twitter account earlier today.
The message was followed by an even bolder statement two hours later: “The coming months will see a new world, where global history is redefined.”
WikiLeaks is an organization that publishes submissions of otherwise unavailable documents, keeping the sources anonymous. It has published nearly 500,000 secret U.S. documents about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Recently, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange found himself in the center of a rape scandal. The rape charges against him were initially dropped, but the case still looms over Assange’s head, with the Swedish court recently approving a motion to bring him into custody for questioning.
No details about the upcoming release have been revealed, but the fact that it was mentioned in the same context as the Iraq war logs points to another military-related leak. What do you think Wikileaks will announce? Please, share your opinions in the comments.
Copyright © 2010 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved.
Yael Naim – She Was a Boy
ZORIAH – zoriah.net blog
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Two years ago I began a friendship with two of the wold’s most kind and talented individuals, Yael Naim and David Donatien. Before I get into our friendship, let me tell you a bit about how we met.
Music plays a big role in my work, although most of you would never know it. I studied music in university and it has been my passion, probably even more so than photography, for many, many years. As a photographer, music inspires me both while I am creating images and especially while I am editing them. My first four years working as a photojournalist I almost always had music on while I was shooting. As I grew and refined my stile I focused more on getting close to my subjects and relating to them and saved my music for before and after shoots. But the music is always there. In 2008 I had an album with me on my travels and this particular album was played more than any other. It kept me company in Iraq and was my inspiration during my projects in Gaza and the West Bank. This album was Yael and David’s first album together. It was months later that I would find out that while I was listening to Yael’s album in her birthplace, Israel, she and David were watching me on television in my birthplace, Colorado. Over the past two years I have spent a lot of my free time with Yael and David and learned to love them, and their music, more than I could have ever expected. Their music continues to inspire me and I truly hope that my work is able to do the same for them. For the past year I have been photographing Yael and David regularly. I have photographed their concerts, countless recording sessions, day trips, night trips…you name it. With the release of their new album today there will be a limited edition set of CD‘s that will come with a photography book of about forty images behind the scenes during the recording sessions. About the new album, She Was a Boy: Most of you probably know Yael and David from their hit song New Soul which you may remember from the Macbook Air ads on television. The rest of that album is also a brilliant mix of styles, languages and sounds and if you haven’t bought it yet, do so soon. She Was a Boy is, in my opinion, an evolution in Yael and David’s work. It is a wonderful journey and I am happy and proud to have been there while it was recorded. I can tell you that each and every track on the album is an amazing accomplishment in music. So much time went into perfecting each song, so many people worked with them to make a wonderful fusion of sounds and emotions. I would like to quickly thank Yael and David for their kindness and friendship and congratulate them on the album, I know how much work you put into it and all I can say is thank you from all of us who will enjoy listening to it! Thanks to everyone at the record label, Tot au Tard, it has been a pleasure working with all of you on this project and I look forward to more in the future. Yael Naim and David Donatien’s web site Yael Naim and David Donatien’s blog Here are a few of the images that will be in the limited edition book. We also plan to work on a full, coffee table book together after I tour with them this spring. I will keep you all posted on that project.
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US slammed over grim rights record
Representatives of US and international groups also expressed disappointment at Obama administration over its failure in addressing violations committed by the previous administration.
“Many of us would have been much happier two years ago, we expected very much deeper change. The momentum has been lost,” AFP quoted Gerald Staberock of the International Commission of Jurists as saying on Thursday.
Detention of terror suspects and mounting casualties by US drone attacks in Afghanistan amounted to “a grim picture on accountability,” Staberock said.
The activists say the current and previous US administrations should be accountable to all allegations of torture in Iraq and interrogations of terror suspects around the world.
“Not only is justice not being done, it is also prevented from being done,” he pointed out.
“We are now seeing that this administration is becoming an obstacle to achieving accountability in human rights,” said Jamal Dakwar, a director at the American Civil Liberties Union.
Dakwar criticized US government lawyers for defending officials of Bush administration against civil lawsuits brought by torture victims against them in court.
He said the lawyers make efforts to “extinguish” the lawsuits.
“Until today not a single victim of torture has had their day in a US court. This is very sad,” Dakwar added.
Newly-published Iraq war secrets by WikiLeaks have revealed a large number of brutalities against Iraqi civilians, many recounting tales of abuse by coalition forces.
The field reports contain numerous official accounts of alleged detainee abuse by the multi-national troops in war-torn Iraq.
One such document dating back to September 2005 depicts the forces brutally kicking and stoning a farmer over allegations that he was planting an improvised explosive device.
The secret documents published by the whistleblower website over the weekend are a part of the nearly 400,000 classified reports about the US-led invasion of Iraq dating from January 2004 to the end of 2009.
The documents have shed light on a spate of crimes and offences committed in Iraq over the past few years, including rape, assassinations and murders.
The site has also exposed documents on the similar US-led war in Afghanistan and is expected to disclose additional related details.
DB/MGH
Iraq court sentences Hussein deputy Tariq Aziz to death
THE KREMLIN, MOSCOW. Meeting with Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz.
Oct 26, 2010
By Jane Arraf | McClatchy Newspapers
BAGHDAD — Tariq Aziz, Saddam Hussein’s deputy who was the international face of the regime, was sentenced to death Tuesday by an Iraqi court.
Iraq’s high tribunal, set up to try officials from the former regime, sentenced the former deputy prime minister to hang for what it termed crimes against humanity.
The charges related to murder and torture of members of Islamic parties opposed to Hussein’s leadership. The sentence carries an automatic appeal.
Aziz, the only Christian at senior levels of the regime – where he also served as foreign minister – has been in prison since he gave himself up in 2003. He was sentenced last year to 15 years in prison for involvement in sentencing to death merchants convicted of black-market currency trading in 1992. He was also sentenced to another seven years for a campaign against Iraqi Kurds.
The current trial has been going on since December 2009. Four other defendants were also sentenced to death by the presiding judge, Mahmoud Saleh al-Hassan, who ran unsuccessfully for parliament as part of the State of Law coalition of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. One of the main targets of Saddam Hussein’s campaign against Islamic parties was Maliki’s Dawa Party.
International experts have criticized the proceedings, saying former regime officials should be tried in an international court, free of potential political influence.
Aziz is elderly and in ill health. His family and lawyer have argued that he should be released for humanitarian reasons.
The former foreign minister testified that he had a political position and had not had a role in any of the decisions of Hussein’s regime. But he was sentenced to death anyway. As Hassan literally shouted out the sentence, at one point asking Aziz if he understood, the former foreign minister looked ashen.
The court also sentenced Hussein’s former personal secretary, Abed Hmood and former Interior Minister Saadoon Shaker to death on the same charges.
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IRAQ: No work forces refugees into risky return
Image by Todd Huffman : Refugees
Umm Hassan (not her real name) fled to Amman, Jordan with her children to escape the war, but unable to support her family, returned home last year. She was back in Amman nine months later . “The situation was unbearable in Baghdad. It was so dangerous, there were explosions, and we had no source of income there either. We stayed at various relatives’ houses while I had no way to provide for my children. In the end we decided to come back to Jordan again, though we knew things would be hard,” she told IRIN in a telephone interview.
The problem is “Iraqis do not have the right to work in host countries, and those who do are immersed in the informal economy,” said Asma Al-Haidari, a Jordan-based human rights activist. Of the four main countries of asylum, only Egypt has signed the UN Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, which guarantees the right to work for legally recognized refugees.
“It is purely as a result of their desperation that some Iraqis are voluntarily returning to Iraq,” said Al-Haidari.”Some progress has been made with guaranteeing Iraqi refugees basic services such as access to primary education and health care in Syria and Jordan,” said Hana Al-Bayaty, coordinator of the Cairo-based Iraqi International Initiative on Refugees. Education
In the UNHCR survey, 87 percent said they were currently unable to cover their families’ needs, while 11 percent cited poor economic conditions and unemployment as reasons for not returning to their former homes and neighbourhoods.Most returnees to the Baghdad districts of Karkh and Resafa have not gone back to their original homes, but rather are staying with relatives, friends or in rented accommodation, mainly as a result of ongoing fears of persecution.
Somalia tops the most corrupt list
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Atrocity Now: Wikileaks Release Puts Spotlight Back on Continuing War Crime in Iraq
Official photograph of General David H. Petraeus, commander, U. S. Central Command
October 25, 2010
By Chris Floyd
Many, many years ago, I noted in the Moscow Times that shortly after the 2003 invasion, the United States had begun hiring some of Saddam‘s old torturers as the invaders sought to quell the then-nascent “insurgency” — i.e., the opposition to foreign occupation that when carried out by white men, such as the French during World War II, goes by the more ringing name of “resistance.” Here’s part of that report, from August 29, 2003:
Here’s a headline you don’t see every day: “War Criminals Hire War Criminals to Hunt Down War Criminals.”
Perhaps that’s not the precise wording used by the Washington Post this week, but it is the absolute essence of its story about the Bush Regime’s new campaign to put Saddam’s murderous security forces on America’s payroll.
Yes, the sahibs in Bush’s Iraqi Raj are now doling out American tax dollars to hire the murderers of the infamous Mukhabarat and other agents of the Baathist Gestapo perhaps hundreds of them. The logic, if that’s the word, seems to be that these bloodstained “insiders” will lead their new imperial masters to other bloodstained “insiders” responsible for bombing the UN headquarters in Baghdad and killing another dozen American soldiers while Little George was playing with his putts during his month-long Texas siesta.
Naturally, the Iraqi people even the Bush-appointed leaders of the Potemkin “Governing Council” aren’t exactly overjoyed at seeing Saddam’s goons return, flush with American money and firepower. And they’re certainly not reassured by the fact that the Bushists have also re-opened Saddam’s most notorious prison, the dread Abu Ghraib, and are now, Mukhabarat-like, filling it with Iraqis men, women and children as young as 11 seized from their homes or plucked off the street to be held incommunicado, indefinitely, without due process, just like the old days. As The Times reports, weeping relatives who dare approach the gleaming American razor-wire in search of their “disappeared” loved ones are referred to a crude, hand-written sign pinned to a spike: “No visits are allowed, no information will be given and you must leave.” Perhaps an Iraqi Akhmatova will do justice to these scenes one day.
One of the first stories out of the gate from the gigantic new release of classified documents on the Iraq War by Wikileaks details the willing connivance and cooperation between the American invaders and their Iraqi collaborators in perpetrating heinous tortures against Iraqis. As we know, the Americans themselves were not exactly averse to atrocious maltreatment of the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis they have rounded up, overwhelmingly without charges or evidence, over the long, long years of this godforsaken enterprise. (As we’ve often noted here before, at one point early in the Iraq War, the Red Cross estimated that 70-90 percent of the more than 20,000 Iraqis then being held by the Americans as “suspected terrorists” were not guilty of any crime whatsoever. And of course many thousands more have been “churned” through the system since then. Which is doubtless one of the main reasons why there is still an active “insurgency” in Iraq after so many years of continuous “counter-insurgency.” And yes, even after the “victorious” surge led by St. David Petraeus, and after the bogus “end of combat operations” declared by the Peace Laureate himself.)
But the Guardian story focuses on another key feature of the entire American Terror War — indeed, of American foreign policy for a great many bipartisan decades: using proxies to do your dirty work. The Wikileaks documents spell out case after case of torture by the American-installed Iraqi lackeys — often under the watchful eyes of American forces … and countenanced, officially and formally, by the invaders. The Guardian reports:
This is the impact of Frago 242. A frago is a “fragmentary order” which summarises a complex requirement. This one, issued in June 2004, about a year after the invasion of Iraq, orders coalition troops not to investigate any breach of the laws of armed conflict, such as the abuse of detainees, unless it directly involves members of the coalition. Where the alleged abuse is committed by Iraqi on Iraqi, “only an initial report will be made ” No further investigation will be required unless directed by HQ”.
…Hundreds of the leaked war logs reflect the fertile imagination of the torturer faced with the entirely helpless victim bound, gagged, blindfolded and isolated who is whipped by men in uniforms using wire cables, metal rods, rubber hoses, wooden stakes, TV antennae, plastic water pipes, engine fan belts or chains. At the torturer’s whim, the logs reveal, the victim can be hung by his wrists or by his ankles; knotted up in stress positions; sexually molested or raped; tormented with hot peppers, cigarettes, acid, pliers or boiling water and always with little fear of retribution since, far more often than not, if the Iraqi official is assaulting an Iraqi civilian, no further investigation will be required.
Most of the victims are young men, but there are also logs which record serious and sexual assaults on women; on young people, including a boy of 16 who was hung from the ceiling and beaten; the old and vulnerable, including a disabled man whose damaged leg was deliberately attacked. The logs identify perpetrators from every corner of the Iraqi security apparatus soldiers, police officers, prison guards, border enforcement patrols.
As the Guardian notes, the Americans were fully aware of what their charges were doing:
….There is no question of the coalition forces not knowing that their Iraqi comrades are doing this: the leaked war logs are the internal records of those forces. There is no question of the allegations all being false. Some clearly are, but most are supported by medical evidence and some involve incidents that were witnessed directly by coalition forces.
It should also be noted that many of the Iraqi “interrogation techniques” noted above have also featured systematically in the American gulag during the Bush-Obama years. In fact, we know that there is a trove of photographic evidence of rapes and tortures that have been seen by top American elected officials, including members of Congress, who talked openly of how sickening these documented atrocities were. Yet this evidence is still being withheld from the American people — at the express order of Barack Obama, and the connivance of his fellow militarists in Congress.
Speaking of the Peace Laureate, the Wikileaks document show that these countenanced and/or winked-at atrocities by the American-installed structure in Iraq are still going on today. They are not just relics of the bad old Bush years:
And it does continue. With no effective constraint, the logs show, the use of violence has remained embedded in the everyday practice of Iraqi security, with recurrent incidents up to last December. Most often, the abuse is a standard operating procedure in search of a confession, whether true or false. One of the leaked logs has a detainee being beaten with chains, cables and fists and then confessing to involvement in killing six people because “the torture was too much for him to handle.”
These are the direct fruits of the staggering act of evil that was — and is — the illegal, immoral invasion and occupation of Iraq. No, let’s go further than that. These acts are just the latest fruits in an astonishingly brutal and coldly deliberate 20-year effort to destroy the Iraqi people: an effort carried out through four presidential administrations — two Republicans, two Democrats — with the complicity of successive British governments. It is a crusade that has involved two massively destructive major military campaigns and more than a decade of draconian sanctions, all of which have led to the needless deaths of more than one and a half million innocent people.
The Bush-Clinton sanction regime — which also included a continual military component of bombing attacks — is part and parcel of what has happened in Iraq during the past hellish decade … and what is still happening there. As Joy Gordon notes in her landmark study of this cold-blooded berserkery, Invisible War, the sanctions regime:
caused hundreds of thousands of deaths; decimated the health of several million children; destroyed a whole economy; reduced a sophisticated country, in which much of the population lived as the middle class in a First World country, to the status of Fourth World countries — the poorest of the poor, such as Rwanda, Somalia, Haiti; and in a society notable for its scientists, engineers and doctors, established an economy dominated by beggars, criminals and black marketeers.
Gordon’s detailed, richly sourced and morally horrifying account of the sanctions era must be read to be believed. However bad you thought it was, the reality was much worse. I hope to be writing much more on this seminal work in the weeks to come. I strongly urge you to read it. But suffice to say for now that the manner in which Bush and Clinton officials used that dead hand of bureaucracy and cool, convoluted legalistic jargon to hide a crazed policy of murderous intent reminded me of nothing so much as the dealings of Nazi officials with the Jewish ghettos of Warsaw and Lodz before their final destruction.
We”ll have much more here on the Wikileaks release as people begin combing through the 400,000 documents. Wikileaks has done us all a great service by putting this vast war atrocity — which is still going on — back on the front pages, forcing the murderers and their accomplices and “continuers” in the halls of power to scurry around like rats caught in the light, twisting and squealing, trying to find some way to obscure the gobs of blood dripping from their hands and lips.
Author’s Bio: Chris Floyd is an American journalist. His work has appeared in print and online in venues all over the world, including The Nation, Counterpunch, Columbia Journalism Review, the Christian Science Monitor, Il Manifesto, the Moscow Times and many others. He is the author of Empire Burlesque: High Crimes and Low Comedy in the Bush Imperium, and is co-founder and editor of the “Empire Burlesque” political blog.
Iraq war logs: Apache crew killed insurgents who tried to surrender
Flickr - The U.S. Army - Promoting air-ground integration
US military legal adviser told helicopter crew that Iraqi men were valid targets as they could not surrender to aircraft.
A US gunship crew was cleared to attack two insurgents on the ground even though the pilots had reported that the men were trying to surrender, the leaked Iraq war logs reveal.
The Apache helicopter pilots killed both Iraqi men after being advised by a US military lawyer that they could not surrender to an aircraft and therefore remained valid targets. A leading military law expert consulted by the Guardian has questioned this legal advice.
The Guardian can also reveal that the helicopter involved in the incident in 2007 had the same call sign – Crazyhorse 18 – as the Apache whose crew later mistakenly killed two Reuters journalists and injured two children in a notorious shooting in urban Baghdad. The killings drew worldwide condemnation in April this year when WikiLeaks obtained video footage taken from the helicopter’s gun camera and released it on the internet.
It has not been possible to establish whether the same personnel were involved in both attacks.
According to the account of the earlier incident in the leaked logs, the insurgents had jumped out of their truck after it came under fire from the Apache. “They came out wanting to surrender,” Crazyhorse 18 signalled.
Clearance to kill came back from an unnamed lawyer at the nearby Taji airbase. “Lawyer states they can not surrender to aircraft and are still valid targets,” the log entry says.
After receiving the lawyer’s advice, the pilots reported that the men had by now got back into their truck and were attempting to drive on. The gunship made two attempts to kill the fleeing men, launching a Hellfire missile at the truck.
At first the fresh attack failed. “Individuals have run into another shack,” the crew signalled. As the Apache hovered high in the sky, a few miles north of Baghdad, the pilots viewed a zoomed-in image of the fleeing pair on their video screen.
The crew then received a further specific top-level kill instruction from brigade HQ and made another strafing run, firing bursts from long distance at 300 rounds a minute from the Apache’s 30mm cannon. This time, the gunner succeeded in killing both men.
At 1.03pm on 22 February, just 24 minutes after receiving legal clearance, the crew filed a log entry: “Crazyhorse 18 reports engaged and destroyed shack with 2X AIF [anti-Iraq forces]. Battle damage assessment is shack/dump truck destroyed.”
Crazyhorse 18 was part of the US army‘s 1st Battalion, 227th Aviation Regiment, normally based at Fort Hood, Texas. Five months after this incident, on 12 July 2007, the crew of an Apache with the same call sign mistakenly killed 22-year-old Reuters photographer Namir Noor-Eldeen and his driver, Saeed Chmagh, after opening fire on a group of eight men they believed to be insurgents armed with rocket-propelled grenades and AK47 rifles in a Baghdad suburb.
Two children were badly injured and their father killed when the Apache crew fired armour-piercing shells at a van which arrived on the scene.
The account of the February incident recorded in the classified log suggests the Crazyhorse 18 crew were not trigger-happy, but sought immediate advice from their superiors at all stages of the attack.
Under the 1907 Hague regulations, it is forbidden “to kill or wound an enemy who, having laid down his arms, or having no longer means of defence, has surrendered at discretion”.
Britain’s own official Ministry of Defence publication, the Manual of the Law of Armed Conflict, says there are practical difficulties around surrenders to aircraft, but adds: “With the advent of close-support and ground-attack helicopter units, the surrender of ground troops … has become a more practical proposition.”
One of Britain’s foremost experts on the subject, Professor Sir Adam Roberts, cast doubt on the legal advice given to the Crazyhorse 18 crew. “Surrender is not always a simple matter,” Roberts, emeritus professor of international relations at Oxford University and joint editor of Documents on the Laws of War, told the Guardian. But the reasoning given by the US military lawyer was “dogmatic and wrong”.
“The issue is not that ground forces simply cannot surrender to aircraft,” he said. “The issue is that ground forces in such circumstances need to surrender in ways that are clear and unequivocal.”
However, he added: “If the insurgents did indeed get back into the truck and drove off in the same direction as previously, then they probably acted unwisely, in a way that called into question their act of surrender … The US airmen might legitimately reckon that the truck contained weapons and that the men could be intending to rejoin the fight sooner or later.”
The detailed account of events on that February morning begins with a common occurrence: insurgents near the huge Taji airbase start lobbing rockets and mortar shells, in the hope of killing Americans. US troops return the shelling, and Crazyhorse 18 is dispatched on a mission to see whether the retaliation has had any effect. At 11.34am, three minutes after takeoff, the crew spot the insurgents fleeing their launch site with a mortar and tripod on the back of a Bongo – a light truck manufactured by Kia.
The crew confirm a “positive identification” of the enemy. But it is 13 minutes before the pilots are officially “cleared to engage” with automatic cannonfire by their headquarters.
The Apache opens fire, and two Iraqis fling themselves out of the Bongo as the heavy shells blast the truck and cause its stock of mortar ammunition to “cook off”.
The enemy gunners try to make their escape in a dumper truck, driving northwards. At 12.33pm, the Apache reports that it has fired on the truck, “and then they came out wanting to surrender”.
Two minutes later, “Crazyhorse 18 reports they got back into truck and are heading north”. Four minutes after that: “Crazyhorse 18 cleared to engage dumptruck. 1/227 [1st Battalion, 227th Aviation Regiment] lawyer states they cannot surrender to aircraft and are still valid targets.”
The two Iraqis try to take refuge in a shack. After a 13-minute delay, another instruction appears to come from a remarkably high level: the office of the commander [IH6] of the Ironhorse brigade at Camp Taji.
The signal reads: “IH6 approves Crazyhorse 18 to engage shack.”
After the killing, the helicopter pilots summarise what for them and their superiors has apparently been a successful chase: “Ix engagement with 30mm. 2x AIF killed in action. 1x mortar system destroyed. 1x Bongo truck destroyed with many secondary explosions. 1x dumptruck destroyed. 1x shack destroyed.”
At 1.25pm, their gunship heads home to Taji to refuel and reload with ammunition.
Submitted by dan fey
http://vidrebel.wordpress.com/
Iraq war logs: US Apache guns down surrendering insurgents
By Angus Stickler
| On February 22 2007, a US helicopter engaged a group of insurgents involved in a mortar attack upon coalition forces, near Baghdad.
After firing a series of 30mm rounds, the crew of the helicopter – callsign “Crazyhorse” – radioed to their command, stating the insurgents “wanted to surrender”. The response was blunt: “CRAZYHORSE cleared to engage … Lawyer stated they cannot surrender to aircraft.” The Apache crew killed the men.
It is one of the reports of most concern. According to Claude Bruderlein, director of Humanitarian Policy and Conflict Research at Harvard University, what is reported in the files about this incident would be a clear breach of international law. “This idea that you cannot surrender to a helicopter is ridiculous, absolutely unacceptable,” he told the Bureau. “Surrendering is a fundamental principle of the law of armed conflict and you can surrender to aircraft. You cannot attack those that surrender.”
Bruderlein, a former special adviser to the UN Secretary General, cites the allegations as being a clear breach of article three of the fourth Geneva Convention, drawn up in 1949 following the second World War. It states “that non combatants and members of the armed forces who have laid down their arms, shall in all circumstances be treated humanely” and prohibits “violence to life and person”. According to the files, despite knowing the insurgents wanted to surrender, the crew not only opened fire with a Hellfire missile, but when it missed they actively chased them down to a shack where they had taken refuge. With the approval of their command unit, they opened fire again , killing both.
According to Bruderlein, if the allegations are correct, both the crew of the helicopter and the officer who cleared them to engage, would be guilty of war crimes. The lawyer who offered the legal advice would, he believes, not be guilty. Graphic: Hellfire strikes on Iraq “Surrendering is a fundamental principle of the law of armed conflict and you can surrender to aircraft.” Claude Bruderlein, Harvard University “Those who use force have the responsibility of their use of force, and the chain of command is the one that’s responsible for the decision. It’s not the lawyer. However, to have a legal adviser expressing the view that the principle doesn’t apply to helicopters is ridiculous.” Other surrender kills
The video clearly shows the man leaving his car, his hands behind his head. No legal precedent “The protection of those who surrender is not linked to the capacity to capture. If you say “well I don’t have the capacity to capture, so you simply kill them all” – this is the end of the principle. As soon as they don’t represent a threat, they are protected.” Combatants cease to be subject to attack when they have individually laid down their arms to surrender. Geneva Conventions A trawl through thousands of files in the war logs has found evidence that other helicopter gunships had the ability to, and accepted, offers of surrender. In one incident, just over a month prior to the Crazyhorse episode, coalition forces were reported to have engaged a group of insurgents planting an IED:
In this case, there were troops on the ground who could detain the surrendering insurgents. But in other cases, when no troops were present, the helicopter crews stayed in position and waited until ground forces arrived. Another Apache helicopter caused controversy in spring 2010 when Wikileaks released video footage of a helicopter attack in Baghdad that killed a dozen civilians, including two Reuters journalists.
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