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The next month, the ICRC gave Bush administration officials a confidential report which found that U.S. occupation forces in Iraq often arrested Iraqis without good reason and subjected them to abuse and humiliation that sometimes was “tantamount to torture” in violation of the Geneva Conventions.
Some excessive violence, including the use of live ammunition against detainees, had led to seven deaths, the ICRC report said.
“According to the allegations collected by the ICRC, ill-treatment during interrogation was not systematic, except with regard to persons arrested in connection with suspected security offences or deemed to have an ‘intelligence’ value,” the report said.
“In these cases, persons deprived of their liberty under supervision of the Military Intelligence were at high risk of being subjected to a variety of harsh treatments ranging from insults, threats and humiliations to both physical and psychological coercion, which in some cases was tantamount to torture, in order to force cooperation with their interrogators.”
Trickle-Down Torture
One of the recipients of the ICRC confidential report was Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the senior U.S. military officer in Iraq, an ICRC official said later. Sanchez had instituted a “dozen interrogation methods beyond” the Army’s standard interrogation techniques that comply with the Geneva Conventions, according to a 2004 report by a panel headed by former Defense Secretary James Schlesinger.
Sanchez said he based his decision on “the President's Memorandum” justifying "additional, tougher measures" against detainees, the Schlesigner report said. The memorandum Sanchez was referring to was an order that Bush signed on Feb. 7, 2002, excluding “war on terror” suspects from Geneva Convention protections.
As the ICRC gathered more information about the Bush administration’s detention policies, it began to make some of its concerns public. On March 1, 2004, for instance, Gabor Rona, the ICRC’s legal adviser, wrote an op-ed also in the Financial Times that took issue with the Bush administration’s posture on the Geneva Conventions.
“The US is proceeding with plans to subject prisoners to military commission trials, citing the Geneva Convention provision that prisoners of war be tried by military courts. How can it do so while maintaining that no detainees are entitled to PoW status?” Rona wrote.
“That aside, the US risks throwing into the military-trial pot people whose alleged crimes have no connection with armed conflict, as understood in international humanitarian law. Such people can and should face trial, but not by military courts.”
Taft responded with an angry letter to Kellenberger on March 16, 2004.
“Your staff states categorically that detainees are entitled to an individualized procedure to challenge the basis of their detention,” Taft wrote. “No citation or support is provided for this assertion. There is, in fact, no such entitlement in the 1949 Geneva Conventions.
“However, the implication in the article is that the Geneva Conventions do provide such entitlement. This again has the unfortunate effect of misleading the public.”
The Abu Ghraib Scandal
The behind-the-scenes dispute over detainee treatment went public in another way in April 2004 when photos were leaked showing U.S. prison guards at Abu Ghraib forcing naked Iraqi detainees into fake sexual positions, intimidating detainees with attacks dogs, committing other abuses, and posing with the corpse of an Iraqi who had died in custody.
