The UN has called on Barack Obama to order a full investigation of US forces' involvement in human rights abuses in Iraq after a massive leak of military documents that detail torture, summary executions and war crimes.
The call, by the UN's chief investigator on torture, Manfred Nowak, came as Phil Shiner, human rights specialist at Public Interest Lawyers in the UK, warned that some of the deaths documented in the Iraq war logs could have involved British forces and would be pursued through the UK courts. He demanded a public inquiry into allegations that British troops were responsible for civilian deaths during the conflict.
The Guardian has analysed the 400,000 documents, the biggest leak in US military history, and found 15,000 previously unreported civilian deaths. The logs show how US authorities failed to investigate hundreds of reports of abuse, torture, rape and murder by Iraqi police and soldiers whose conduct appears to be systematic and generally unpunished.
Nowak said that if the files released through WikiLeaks pointed to clear violations of the UN Convention Against Torture the Obama administration had an obligation to investigate them.
The logs paint a disturbing picture of the relationship between US and Iraqi forces. Nowak said that UN human rights agreements obliged states to criminalise every form of torture, whether directly or indirectly, and to investigate any allegations of abuse.
Speaking on the BBC's Today programme, Nowak, who has spent years investigating allegations of US participation in extraordinary rendition and the abuse of detainees held by coalition forces, said the Obama administration had a legal and moral obligation to fully investigate credible claims of US forces' complicity in torture.
A failure to investigate, Nowak suggested, would be a failure of the Obama government to recognise its obligations under international law. He said the principle of "non-refoulement" prohibited states from transferring detainees to other countries that could pose a risk to their personal safety.
The documents, which cover the period in Iraq from 2004 onwards, have prompted claims that this principle has not been observed. The files contain evidence that US forces were ordered to turn a blind eye to abuses committed by the Iraqi authorities.
Numerous reports of detainee abuse, often supported by medical evidence, describe prisoners shackled, blindfolded and hung by wrists or ankles and subjected to whipping, punching, kicking or electric shocks. Six reports end with a detainee's apparent death.
Nowak said the US had an obligation "whenever they expel, extradite or hand over any detainees to the authorities of another state to assess whether or not these individuals are under specific risk of torture. If this assessment is not done, or authorities hand over detainees knowing there is a serious risk of them being subjected to torture, they violate article 3 of the UN convention that precludes torture."
Nowak said it would be up to the Obama administration to launch an "independent and objective" investigation with a view not only to "bring the perpetrators to justice but also to provide the victims with adequate remedy and reparation".
He noted that neither the US nor Iraq had ratified the international criminal convention that would see officials from either country brought before the international courts for war crimes. It would be up to the US courts to determine whether US officials or soldiers had breached human rights laws. "If it is established that a particular individual is responsible for torture directly or by complicity, this person should be brought to justice in the domestic courts," Nowak said.
As recently as December, the Americans were passed a video apparently showing Iraqi army officers executing a prisoner in Tal Afar, northern Iraq. The log states: "The footage shows approximately 12 Iraqi army soldiers. Ten IA soldiers were talking to one another while two soldiers held the detainee. The detainee had his hands bound … The footage shows the IA soldiers moving the detainee into the street, pushing him to the ground, punching him and shooting him."
The report named at least one perpetrator and was passed to coalition forces. But the logs reveal that the coalition has a formal policy of ignoring such allegations. They record "no investigation is necessary" and simply pass reports to the same Iraqi units implicated in the violence. By contrast all allegations involving coalition forces are subject to formal inquiries. Some cases of alleged abuse by UK and US troops are detailed in the logs.
In two Iraqi cases postmortems revealed evidence of death by torture. On 27 August 2009 a US medical officer found "bruises and burns as well as visible injuries to the head, arm, torso, legs and neck" on the body of one man claimed by police to have killed himself. On 3 December 2008 another detainee, said by police to have died of "bad kidneys", was found to have "evidence of some type of unknown surgical procedure on [his] abdomen".
A Pentagon spokesman told the New York Times this week that under its procedure, when reports of Iraqi abuse were received the US military "notifies the responsible government of Iraq agency or ministry for investigation and follow-up".
In response to the revelations, the Iraqi government has vowed to probe the allegations made against its soldiers and police. "The government will show no leniency when it comes to the rights of its citizens," said a statement issued by prime minister Nouri al-Maliki's office.
Shiner told a press conference organised by WikiLeaks in London today that he plans to use material from the logs in court to try to force the UK to hold a public inquiry into the unlawful killing of Iraqi civilians.
Shiner warned that it would be wrong to assume the US military files "had nothing to do with the UK". He said: "Some have been killed by indiscriminate attacks on civilians or the unjustified use of lethal force. Others have been killed in custody by UK forces and no one knows how many Iraqis lost their lives while held in British detention facilities.
"If unjustified or unlawful force has been used, prosecutions for those responsible must follow, so we are bringing forward a new case seeking accountability for all unlawful deaths, and we argue that there must be a judicial inquiry to fully investigate UK responsibility for civilian deaths in Iraq."
He cited one case in which he claimed a British rifleman had shot dead an eight-year-old girl who was playing in the street in Basra. "For some reason the tank stopped at the end of the street, she's there in her yellow dress, a rifleman pops up and blows her away," he said.
A spokesman for the Ministry of Defence, which has set up the Iraq Historic Allegations Team to investigate allegations of abuse, said: "It would be inappropriate to speculate on the specific detail of these documents without further investigation while the Iraq Inquiry is ongoing. There is no place for mistreatment of detainees and we investigate any allegation made against our troops."
The WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, told the press conference that the disclosure of the secret files was about getting to the truth of the Iraq conflict.
"We hope to correct some of that attack on the truth that occurred before the war, during the war, and which has continued since the war officially concluded. While I am not sure we have achieved the maximum possible [political impact], I think we are getting pretty close."
Assange highlighted how the reports documented 109,000 deaths – including 66,000 civilians, of which 15,000 were previously undocumented. "That tremendous scale should not make us blind to the small human scale in this material. It is the deaths of one and two people per event that killed the overwhelming number of people in Iraq."
The electronic archive is believed to emanate from the same dissident US army intelligence analyst who earlier this year is alleged to have leaked a smaller tranche of 90,000 logs chronicling bloody encounters and civilian killings in the Afghan war.
Comments in chronological order (Total 381 comments)
23 October 2010 2:56PM
About time. Maybe arresting Bush and locking him up for war crimes will bizarrely and miraculously turn around Obama's ailing chances of being re-elected..
23 October 2010 2:59PM
You do know it's not illegal to kill civilians when waging war? The Geneva Conventions allow for Civilian Deaths in the course of military operations as long as they are reasonable, proportionate to military gain and necessary.
23 October 2010 3:02PM
Our noble armed forces eh? True 'Heroes', every one.
23 October 2010 3:02PM
Disgraceful - but what we already suspected. A British independant enquiry is esswential too.
23 October 2010 3:02PM
Saintslad
If the war was illegal then killing civilians is also illegal
23 October 2010 3:04PM
At least, these latest revelations should stop the Americans from preaching human rights etc. etc. to other countries. Their hands are dripping with Iraqi blood - why, on earth, can't they realise the nature of their appalling crimes ? Strwdle's suggestion may not be as outlandish as it may appear at first sight. The world, at large, should induce the present U.S. administration to take action against Bush and company.
23 October 2010 3:05PM
No wonder I went to great lengths to stop evidence of British complicity in war crimes - I hereby am making a citizen's arrest on myself.
23 October 2010 3:06PM
Shameful and disgusting
23 October 2010 3:07PM
I applaud Wikileaks and their heroic efforts at releasing these documents, even if these don't lead to the arrest and trial of the war criminals who launched this war.
23 October 2010 3:07PM
So does this mean the "Axis of Evil" now includes the US and UK along with other human rights abusers like North Korea and Iran?
Because it should. And, frankly, if a country wanted to invade the US or UK for human rights abuses like we claimed to be doing in Iraq, I think they'd be well within their right to do so.
23 October 2010 3:08PM
If only that were so strwdle... it would simply give the republicans more to spin and for the democrats to mess up.
In this world where everyone is equal yet some are clearly more equal than others, surely there must come a time when the western complicity in war crimes when it suits their own national interests come back to haunt them?
It is growing clearer every week, let alone every year, that there is one rule for those who are against us, and another for us. Look at West Papua, where we, the U.S. and the U.N shamefully sacraficed an entire people to 40 years of cultural genocide, even providing the weapons and diplomatic cover to Indonesia. And all for copper, gold and the pseudo-defence against a non-existent communism (read: peasants living on a goldmine)
Yet this is just one of hundreds of crimes commited in the name of neo-liberalism. Do our government not realise that the rest of the world know of these acts? Do they not realise that for us to live in a globalised world that we all have to be equally accountable?
When Kissinger, Bush, Blair and the rest are hauled before an international court and made to pay for their crimes it will be a significant landmark in the progress of humanity. Until the rest of the world are empowered to demand just that (and the West declined enough to not have the power to label them terrorists and continue to hold the media under their sway), they will continue to present themselves as holding the moral high ground.
They need to be made to realise that national security = nationalist and immoral justification based on a now irrelevent concept of the social contract. We need a new social contract that isn't innately nationalist if we are to have a world left for our grandchildren. It needs to incorporate both the environment and other nationalities as equal to the interests of the economic elite. Until that is done the sense of injustice will grow. It will soon become crunch time: evolve or be overthrown.
23 October 2010 3:10PM
At least we got the oil - actual objective complete.
23 October 2010 3:11PM
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23 October 2010 3:14PM
Thank-you, Wikileaks & Julian Assange, for exposing these crimes. Though no justice appropriate to these systematic atrocities can come to the true criminals in the higher eschalons, there is now no way for them to plausibly deny their responsibility. What is done in darkness will come to the light.
23 October 2010 3:15PM
There should be mass arrests and mass trials but I doubt it'll happen. That's not how the Obama brand "rolls", sadly. Also, the American progressives always fall asleep when a, so-called, Democrat takes office rather than keep the oxy acetylene torch up their rear end from the first day of power.
23 October 2010 3:18PM
VIVA VIVA VIVA VIVA WIKILEAKS!
LONG MAY THEY EXPOSE THE TRUE NATURE OF GOVERNMENTS AND BANKS AND THE TRUELY EVIL!!!
VIVA VIVA VIVA!!!
23 October 2010 3:18PM
UN ASKING OBAMA TO INVESTIGATE IS SILLY. AS THE COMMANDER IN CHIEF OF THE US ARMED FORCES WHO ARE ACCUSED OF THE WAR CRIMES HE WILL NOT BE IN A POSITION TO BE OBJECTIVE.
USA & UK INVADED IRAQ UNDER THE CLOAK OF UN MANDATE AND UNITED NATIONS CANNOT WASH OFF IT'S HANDS BY ASKING OBAMA TO INVESTIGATE THE WAR CRIMES. UN HAS THE RESPONSIBILITY TO INVESTIGATE THE WAR CRIMES AND BRING THE CRIMINALS TO JUSTICE.
MAY BE NEXT UN WILL WANT TO CONSTITUTE A TRIBUNAL CONSISTING OF BUSH, CHENNEY, BLAIR & RUMSFIELD TO PROBE IN TO THE ALLEGATIONS.
23 October 2010 3:19PM
Just watch the British government take a leaf out of the D Miliband book of covering up.
23 October 2010 3:23PM
Over/under before we hear Assange faces further charges of rape/burglary/shoplifting/murder/accounting irregularities etc etc?
23 October 2010 3:24PM
The UN and World Bank and IMF should be moved every 20 years to another continent. Giving others a chance to control the system.
Only this way will it break the cycle of the US led world bank and IMF bribery.
23 October 2010 3:25PM
The UN is a pathetic joke of an organisation.
It should be the job of the UN to investigate any war crimes and subsequently impose punishments/sanctions to the guilty party.
What does it think the USA is going to do? Put its hands up and admit its fault? The country that hid the report/information in the first place?!
What a joke. I grow increasingly frustrated after reading these types of articles.
23 October 2010 3:26PM
Great job Guardian. Wonderful presentation of the unwieldy data. Thankyou for making it somewhat accessible for lay people like me.
23 October 2010 3:26PM
Saintslad
23 October 2010 2:59PM
You do know it's not illegal to kill civilians when waging war? The Geneva Conventions allow for Civilian Deaths in the course of military operations as long as they are reasonable, proportionate to military gain and necessary.
________
Oh, phew! That's ok then.
23 October 2010 3:28PM
Curious that the appalling facts revealed here -which we all suspected, anyway - have elicited so few comments.
British foreign and military policy must have a more robust moral dimension. They must be separated from slavish following of the USA. Any British complicity in torture must be routed out and dealt with publicly. Agreed, surely?
Only the purblind would not see the link between the cruel folly of Iraq and Afghanistan and the existential threat which is supposed to face this country from extremists who are pretty angry at the "justice" dealt out by democratic humanitarians and their armed forces. Grief and anger at loss of life, torture, suffering and destruction is not exclusive to the people of Western democracies.
Given the absence of any moral high-ground, one also asks the rhetorical question whether, in a scenario of economic meltdown, anything but minimal defence (not offence) expenditure can be justified. Let's reduce the defence budget by 75% and spend it on social care which may then justify the remaining spend!. We might also want to apologise, formally, to the people if Iraq and Afghanistan.
23 October 2010 3:29PM
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23 October 2010 3:29PM
Am I missing the point here? We are talking about Iraqi on Iraqi torture and abuses - not that the US or the UK carried them out. The alleged complicity comes from evidence of turning a blind eye. Unfortunately - by 2004, the sectarian divide had become seemingly irreconcilable and the Iraqi security forces were a hodge podge of different sects, tribes and so on. Alot of settling of old scores, making new enemies - mass killings through suicide bombers as well as large US/UK military action. Given that situation, I think the US/UK forces would have been - through underresourcing - foolish to stretch themselves to take on the issue of HR with their Iraqi "allies". After all, they were undermanned and under resourced right from the beginning, when the mass looting happened. Pure folly...
23 October 2010 3:32PM
Everyone is forgetting the golden rule.
He who has the gold makes the rules.
23 October 2010 3:33PM
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23 October 2010 3:35PM
Its so heartening that leaks such as these have the potential to heap huge macropolitical pressure on governments. Widespread unfettered internet usage perhaps may be the best protection of abuse of power in the future? What I'd really like is a truly persuasive argument that institutionalised secrecy is ever in our best interest. History tells us that there is never justice without oversight. Corruption is not unique to the developing world.
After all, quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
If we survive the coming energy crush, maybe peace and economic stability will come from a technologically pervasive Gaia-like omniscience?
23 October 2010 3:36PM
you all know nothing will happen.
some guy will make a big investigation, it will drag on for years, it will be disputed, muddied, it will end as a particularly heated debate on a panel show that's rarely watched. No important person's head is gonna roll.
the only intolerable thing is that nothing is intolerable.
23 October 2010 3:38PM
Time for Tony Bliar to have his day in court.
23 October 2010 3:38PM
For all who have supported the leak of defense material, I suggest you do what you approve others of doing. Post all you private information online. Addresses, phone numbers, family address, kids schools, financial information, computer passwords, email passwords, what your real name is on this site. Tell the police, your military, your government, that you no longer need their services. Fair? You betcha! LOL hypocrites.
23 October 2010 3:40PM
Rendition flights landing on UK soil should also be investigated Jack Straw allowed this too!
Three reasons why I post on message boards.
1. Our war of aggression re Iraq.
2. Our abysmal State pension.
3. Our continuing membership of the EU.
Maybe someone could tell me if its true that invading forces have to in international law keep a tally of ALL civilian deaths?
23 October 2010 3:41PM
No, I'm trying to establish some ground truth here. People decry the Iraq War as "illegal", yet can provide no legal conclusions to support this; at the point that the UN issued a SCR* the presence of UK/US forces became "legal", regardless of your original thoughts on the invasion.
After the actions of 9/11, and the refusal of the then Government of Afghanistan to hand-over those responsible to an International Court, the subsequent UNSCR's** authorised the US, UK and others to enter Afghanistan.
Whilst the loss of human life is always terrible, it does not mean we cannot use lethal force to ensure a certain outcome. The Geneva Conventions, much vaunted on these pages, recognises this fact, as does the UN.
*UNSCR 1546 (2004)
**UNSCR 1373 (2001)
23 October 2010 3:46PM
Saintslad
as a couple of people have already pointed out, the waging of war in the first place was illegal, so we can actually regard the civilian deaths in iraq as murder, each and every one, illegal and immoral.
there's no transparency with u.s. military operations, we have to rely on these 'wikileaks' to make assessments about 'proportionate to military gain' and military necessity. the now infamous leaked video documenting the murder of reuters journalists and their iraqi civilian associates is a good example of how much regard their military practices had for proportionality in iraq.
the hell they unleashed on the civilians of iraq can never be justified.
23 October 2010 3:49PM
And you wonder why the USA has a bad reputation around the world? Now you can see why, thanks to Wikileaks, because everyone knows the US government will not come clean.
23 October 2010 3:51PM
Show me where it is illegal.
No blogs, opinions, countries with no jurisdiction over the UK.
Either a UK, EU or UN General/Security Council ruling.
23 October 2010 3:51PM
Saintslad 23 October 2010 2:59PM
Then thank fuck for that caveat!
These killing have been quite obviously disproportionate, utterly unreasonable, and will soon be seen to be massive military own goals.
As the Americans might say -- Struck Out.
23 October 2010 3:52PM
SaintsLad
unscr 1373 does not in itself provide the us and uk with legal grounds for war.
23 October 2010 3:52PM
2Saintslad
No, with hundreds of thousands dead, millions displaced and a country destroyed I think the onus is on all you warmongers and war supporters to explain exactly how it was legal to launch an unprovoked invasion of Iraq without the sanction of the UN, and without the justification of an imminent threat. Do please explain, in detail, the legality of the Iraq invasion, and the laws that make provision for such action.
23 October 2010 3:58PM
SaintsLad
International law is in constant flux, and unfortunately we often need to live through events like the iraq war to be able to crystallise and enshrine rigid law around the legal minutae of such events, legal minutae that allow people like you to squirm away from us using the loopholes and such.
leaving aside the legality issue for a moment.. the iraq war has been a wholly immoral venture, from start to present day. would you dispute this?
23 October 2010 3:59PM
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23 October 2010 4:01PM
I couldn't, in itself, care less about the legality, or otherwise, of the invasion. The moral status of our actions is utterly different, but that's not what you are arguing; the continued use of "illegal" acts as some kind of shibboleth. If you want to say it was morally wrong, based on international system that neither condemns or grants countries the right to act in situations that are obviously egregious, then I'll agree with you.
Moreover, you seem to forget that post UNSCR 1546(2004), the UK, US and other forces were there at the invitation of the Iraqi Government, and operated under a Status of Forces Agreement. At the moment that SOFA was agreed, any discussion of "illegality" becomes redundant.
23 October 2010 4:02PM
Julian Assange & friends. Thank you for all your hard work.
23 October 2010 4:03PM
Cocainemidget - the invasion was probably wrong. The fact that the Iraqi sailors and marines I worked with were able to operate under the rule of law, free from the fear of torture because the President's son dis-liked them and able to enjoy some of the fruits of democracy, cannot be described as morally wrong.
23 October 2010 4:03PM
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23 October 2010 4:08PM
Saintslad, the war was justified with lies - you and everybody else knows this. What you're asking for, in essence, is a legal ruling made by the same country which committed the illegal actions. It's pretty obvious that our country is never going to admit the war was illegal - it won't ever go down the avenues which would allow for the actualization of the rulings you believe we need to 'prove' the war was illegal. That doesn't mean that the iraq war was legal. In actuality, it is a fact that the iraq war was started by means of deceiving the general public. For instance, i may commit an illegal action, and never be caught for it - a court of law does not have to judge this action to be so before it becomes illegal.
23 October 2010 4:10PM
Isn't it hilarious how the generals and presidents all talk before the leaks, then jump into action afterwards? And isn't it even funnier how the actions they jump to are the ones demanded by the leaks exposure of gross injustice, not the ones they were threatening?
23 October 2010 4:10PM
While I agree with the concept that the Iraq war was illegal because the US and UK failed to get a second UN resolution, and I agree wholeheartedly with the Iraq war logs being available on Wiki Leaks, we still get the usual suspects lumping Iraq and Afghanistan together, hence:
There is nothing `illegal' about the Afgan war, it is, as far as I'm concerned, still a just war. Terrorism, the sort responsible for 9/11 and 7/7, was exported directly from this region and we have every right to hunt the bastards down and kill them where necessary.
23 October 2010 4:13PM
This legality argument is such bunkum. Why do so many people check their humanity at the door when discussing war? These civilians are real people with real lives. The collateral damage had hopes and dreams. The necessary "lethal force" may be justified in the Geneva Convention but does that make the killing right? Please, do not sweep this avalanche of misery away with your strawman comments. Read the reports. This is not an argument about right and wrong. Surely this amount of pain is never justified.
The US/UK government is appalled that the curtain has been raised on the sequelae to some terrible decision making. The reaction is predictable but still sad. I struggle to decide what horrifies me most but deep down I know. We give them the mandate and so there are those amongst us who are equally complicit in this: perpetuating these false arguments, sweeping away the pain with political grandstanding and creating sideshows on messageboards to smear the truth revealed here. Try empathy. Then start again.