US To Probe Rape Charges Against Soldier In Iraq - CNN


NEW YORK -(Dow Jones)- The Pentagon said Tuesday that the U.S. military is investigating allegations that a U.S. soldier raped a female Iraqi prisoner, the Cable News Network reported.

The army didn't disclose when the alleged incident took place, CNN said.

These developments come a week after Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was asked by U.S. lawmakers whether any Iraqi women had been abused or raped by U.S. military personnel. At the time, Rumsfeld told the Senate Appropriations Committee that he didn't know if a rape occurred, but added that he would get an answer, CNN said.

In response to a request from CNN, the Pentagon on Tuesday released brief descriptions of several cases involving alleged abuse of female detainees in Iraq. The Pentagon said that all of the sexual abuse allegations against female detainees are being fully investigated. Some of those allegations, CNN said, involve women being forced to expose themselves to U.S. military personnel.

Separately, the U.S. Justice Department is investigating allegations of a homosexual rape of an Iraqi by a U.S. contractor, CNN said.

CNN also reported that the Pentagon said a second investigation of a rape charge involving U.S. military personnel was closed due to insufficient evidence.

Meanwhile, the Pentagon says that photos circulating on the Internet that purport to show U.S. soldiers raping women are fake, the report said.




www.nasdaq.com/asp/quotes_news.asp?cpath=20050222\ACQDJON200502221837DOWJONESDJONLINE000860.htm

Pattern Emerges of Sexual Assault Against Women Held by U.S. Forces
by Chris Shumway (bio)


Human Rights groups report that US troops are committing systemic acts of sexual abuse and humiliation against Iraqi women held in facilities throughout Iraq. For many rape survivors, the violence only begins there...

Jun 6, 2004 - Well publicized images of US soldiers torturing and humiliating male Iraqi prisoners may be overshadowing evidence gathered by several human rights groups and Pentagon investigators indicating US military personnel have raped and sexually abused Iraqi women held at Abu Ghraib prison and other detention facilities.

Amal Kadham Swadi, an Iraqi attorney representing women detainees, told The Guardian she believes that sexualized violence and abuse committed by US soldiers against female prisoners goes far beyond a few isolated cases. It’s "happening all across Iraq," she said.

Women make up a small minority of the total number of Iraqis held by Coalition forces. The US military says 78 women are currently detained by occupation militaries throughout Iraq.

It is not clear, however, exactly how many women the US and its allies have detained since the invasion last year. According to the International Committee of the Red Cross, 30 Iraqi women were housed in Abu Ghraib last October. That number was reduced to five last month, and finally to zero as of May 29, according to the military.

Like the majority of male prisoners, many of the women detained by Coalition forces have not been charged with any crime. Iraqi human rights groups say they are likely being used as "bargaining chips" against family members wanted by Coalition forces, Newsday reports.

Swadi and six other female Iraqi lawyers began investigating claims of sexual assault late last year after a note reportedly written by a prisoner named Noor was smuggled out of Abu Ghraib. The note claimed that US soldiers were raping female detainees, and in some cases, such as that of Noor herself, getting them pregnant. Swadi then began interviewing detainees who said they too had been assaulted or had witnessed assaults, The Guardian reports.

During a visit to Abu Ghraib in March, Swadi said, one of the prisoners told her US soldiers had forced her to undress in front of them, an act that would be seen as particularly demeaning in conservative Muslim culture. At another detention facility in Baghdad, Swadi encountered a woman who said soldiers raped her. "She was the only woman who would talk about her case," Swadi told The Guardian. "She was crying. She told us she had been raped," Swadi said. "Several American soldiers had raped her. She had tried to fight them off and they had hurt her arm. She showed us the stitches."

Iman Khamas, head of the International Occupation Watch Center, an organization investigating human rights abuses under the US-led occupation, said a former detainee told her about the rape of a cellmate at Abu Ghraib, according to Middle East Online. On another occasion, a woman whispered cautiously to Khamas -- even though no one else was in the room -- intimating that soldiers had raped her at Abu Ghraib. A day later, Khamas said, the woman returned and asked her to tear up the statement.

According to Khamas, Swadi and others who are investigating assault cases, few women in Muslim cultures will come forward since they know rape survivors are often treated with shame and are sometimes killed as a means of preserving family honor.

Khamas and two other human rights workers have all said separately that three young rural women from the Sunni Muslim region of Al-Anbar, west of Baghdad, had been killed by their families after coming out of Abu Ghraib pregnant, Middle East Online reported.

The Pentagon has acknowledged, in an internal report by Army Major General Antonio Taguba, that US soldiers videotaped and photographed naked female detainees at Abu Ghraib. Photographs taken by US soldiers and shown to members of Congress, but not yet made public, reportedly depict at least one Iraqi woman being forced at gunpoint to show her breasts.

The Taguba report also cites a case of rape at Abu Ghraib, although Taguba described the incident as a male prison guard "having sex" with a female detainee.

Referring to rapes at that very prison, the military’s chief spokesperson in Iraq, Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt, told Agence France Presse that the department running prisons was "unaware of any such reports at Abu Ghraib."

The military has not yet charged any soldiers for a specific case of assault or abuse involving a female detainee.

Another Pentagon report indicates that three soldiers from military intelligence were alleged to have sexually assaulted a female detainee at Abu Ghraib last October. Army investigators did not confirm the assault. The three soldiers were reportedly fined several hundred dollars each and demoted for having been in the prison’s female wing without permission, according to the Washington Post.



newstandardnews.net/content/?action=show_item&itemid=478

ofcourse.bagdad is not saigon to have a lot of whores..
so whats left?raping and raping.....

Isn't it in the Koran that when an Islamic army conquered some infidel lands Mohammed told his troops to rape away?



St. James the Moorslayer

Well if they can each bring 4 men who can attest to the fact that they were raped then and only then there is a islamic case of rape. Till then no rape carry away.

"kill a mullah a day keeps uncle away"
new motto for peace in pakistan.

Resistance is futile...pakistan will be assimilated

"Isn't it in the Koran that when an Islamic army conquered some infidel lands Mohammed told his troops to rape away?"

So what u suggest, US is turning Islamic? Grow up dude, rape is not a joke.

Isn't it in the Koran that when an Islamic army conquered some infidel lands Mohammed told his troops to rape away?

the litteral, decontextualized content of religious books, has no relevance at all to the topic at hand. for instance, it is like saying, "isn't it in the Bible that God eliminated a whole peoples at once"? this however doesn't imply anything regarding the crimes of the (presumably christian) US troops that is being discussed here.

back on topic, it is the actions of people that counts, not the content of religious texts (which is btw extremely similar in the major religions).


So what u suggest, US is turning Islamic? Grow up dude, rape is not a joke.

well said... i sure hope nobody would joke about these war crimes, because that would imply banalizing or legitimizing them.

in the case at hand, the suspected rapists happen to be of American citizenship, and the victims happen to be Iraqi moslems (most probably). saying that this has anything to do with "islam", is like accusing the victim for the crime (that being said, it doesn't have anything to do with authentic christianity either, but with the colonialist and fascist ideology of the neocons that govern in Washington).

So what u suggest, US is turning Islamic? Grow up dude, rape is not a joke.

exactly... i cannot imagine how one could joke about these war crimes, meaning one would find these crimes "acceptable" and "legitimate"; and then accusing others of that crime, adds to the absurdity of such observations.

in the case at hand, the suspected rapists happen to be of American citizenship, and the victims happen to be Iraqi moslems. saying that this has anything to do with "islam", is like accusing a rape victim.