Post by Moses on Mar 27, 2005 14:25:08 GMT -5
Iraqi Legal Calls for Trying Bush, Blair[/size]
Samir Haddad, IOL Correspondent
BAGHDAD, March 23, 2005 (IslamOnline.net) – US President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair should be tried as war criminals for their role in the heinous crimes and abuses, from the use of banned weapons, raping of Iraqi women to the stealing of the body parts of Iraqi resistance fighters, according to Iraqi legal experts.
During a conference held in the Iraqi capital Baghdad Tuesday, March 22, the legal activists broadcast a video tape showing the scale of destruction caused by US occupation forces during its massive offensive on the western Iraqi city of Fallujah.
Titled “War Crimes in Fallujah”, hundreds of photos were shown, revealing Iraqi resistance fighters being killed and abused by US occupation soldiers.
The photos also showed that bodies of the slain Iraqi fighters underwent brutal surgeries by US soldiers to snatch their body parts.
Some 10,000 US marines and army forces, alongside some 2,000 Iraqi national guardsmen unleashed a long-expected onslaught on the resistance hub November 8, capping long nights of massive US raids.
The successive air strikes have caused huge damage in the western Baghdad city, with dead bodies littering the streets.
Blatant Violation
Head of the conference’s preparatory committee Sabah Nagy Al-Elwani and Kamal Hamdoun, chairman of the Fallujah bar association, accused US occupation forces of using banned weapons during its massive onslaught on the city.
“Practices of US occupation forces in Fallujah are blatant violation of the Geneva Conventions and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which ban the killing of the wounded, captives and civilians,” Hamdoun said.
“The American thugs and their collaborators, chiefly Bush and Blair, must be tried before the International Criminal Court for their grisly crimes in Iraq.”<br>
An eyewitness, who escaped Fallujah, had told IslamOnline.net Saturday, November 13, that bodies of children and injured in the western Iraqi city were “deliberately” crushed by US tanks < www.islamonline.net/English/News/2004-11/15/article03
.shtml >.
The conferees pressed in the final communiqué for setting up a fact-finding commission to investigate the US crimes in the war-torn country.
They also demanded abolishing the immunity granted to US occupation forces for their practices and violations of human rights.
Sexual Abuses
In a related development, the human rights department of the Association of Muslim Scholars (AMS) had earlier held a conference in Baghdad to unveil US abuses against Iraqi civilians in Fallujah and other parts in the war-torn country.
As a case in point, an Iraqi female in the western Iraqi city was sexually abused by US occupation soldiers while being held in a US-administrated jail in Iraq, according to AMS sources.
“As soon as I returned to my home following the massive US offensive on the city last November, US soldiers stormed the house and arrested me after failing to capture my husband,” the Iraqi woman told the AMS conference.
“Only Allah knows what they (Americans) have done to me. I was praying for death to escape their abuses.”<br>
The Iraqi female was later released only after her husband gave himself up to the US occupation forces.
According to Iraqi sources, there are at least 15 Iraqi woman detainees still in US-run detention camps across Iraq.
A freed detainee told the Arabic-language Al-Wasat, a weekly supplement of the respectable London-based Al-Hayat newspaper, about her ordeal inside a US prison and how she had been gang-raped by US forces < islamonline.net/English/News/2004-07/21/article06.sht
ml >.
Beheaded
The conference also included testimonies of several Iraqi citizens on the usage of poisonous gases by US occupation forces during attacks in the US-occupied country.
“During a US attack on the Taremiah neighborhood in the Iraqi capital, I was captured along with another Iraqi citizen called Ahmed who was beheaded by the US occupation soldiers. They tried to kill me too but I miraculously escaped death after they thought I was dead,” said Mohamed Najam Al-Meshhedani.
A US shot dead an unarmed Iraqi prisoner <http://www.islamonline.net/English/News/2004-11/16/article01
.shtml > while he laid prone against a mosque wall in Fallujah.
US NBC pool correspondent Kevin Sites, who filmed the grisly scene, said three other wounded Iraqi prisoners, who did not appear to be armed or threatening in any way, were killed in the mosque < www.islamonline.net/English/News/2004-11/17/article01
.shtml >.
The New York-based Human Rights Watch condemned the mosque killing, saying it was tantamount to a “war crime.”<br>
Two US human rights groups filed a lawsuit against US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld for his “direct responsibility” in the illegal torture and prisoners' abuses.
Documentation
“Such abuses were documented after many Iraqi citizens complained,” AMS spokesman Mothana Harith al-Dari told the conference, which was attended by representatives of several human rights groups.
He stressed that AMS surveyed several areas in the Iraqi capital to register names of Iraqis killed by US occupation forces during attacks on these areas.
In June, the HRW issued a report entitled “The Road To Abu Ghraib” < www.islamonline.net/English/News/2004-06/10/article02
.shtml >linking the abuse of detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo to policies adopted by US President George W. Bush in his “war on terror”.
The Iraqi abuse scandal in Abu Ghraib exploded onto the world stage on April 29 after the CBS news network published several graphic photos < www.islamonline.net/English/News/2004-04/30/article04
.shtml > of Iraqi detainees tortured and sexually abused by American soldiers at the infamous Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad.
Samir Haddad, IOL Correspondent
BAGHDAD, March 23, 2005 (IslamOnline.net) – US President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair should be tried as war criminals for their role in the heinous crimes and abuses, from the use of banned weapons, raping of Iraqi women to the stealing of the body parts of Iraqi resistance fighters, according to Iraqi legal experts.
During a conference held in the Iraqi capital Baghdad Tuesday, March 22, the legal activists broadcast a video tape showing the scale of destruction caused by US occupation forces during its massive offensive on the western Iraqi city of Fallujah.
Titled “War Crimes in Fallujah”, hundreds of photos were shown, revealing Iraqi resistance fighters being killed and abused by US occupation soldiers.
The photos also showed that bodies of the slain Iraqi fighters underwent brutal surgeries by US soldiers to snatch their body parts.
Some 10,000 US marines and army forces, alongside some 2,000 Iraqi national guardsmen unleashed a long-expected onslaught on the resistance hub November 8, capping long nights of massive US raids.
The successive air strikes have caused huge damage in the western Baghdad city, with dead bodies littering the streets.
Blatant Violation
Head of the conference’s preparatory committee Sabah Nagy Al-Elwani and Kamal Hamdoun, chairman of the Fallujah bar association, accused US occupation forces of using banned weapons during its massive onslaught on the city.
“Practices of US occupation forces in Fallujah are blatant violation of the Geneva Conventions and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which ban the killing of the wounded, captives and civilians,” Hamdoun said.
“The American thugs and their collaborators, chiefly Bush and Blair, must be tried before the International Criminal Court for their grisly crimes in Iraq.”<br>
An eyewitness, who escaped Fallujah, had told IslamOnline.net Saturday, November 13, that bodies of children and injured in the western Iraqi city were “deliberately” crushed by US tanks < www.islamonline.net/English/News/2004-11/15/article03
.shtml >.
The conferees pressed in the final communiqué for setting up a fact-finding commission to investigate the US crimes in the war-torn country.
They also demanded abolishing the immunity granted to US occupation forces for their practices and violations of human rights.
Sexual Abuses
In a related development, the human rights department of the Association of Muslim Scholars (AMS) had earlier held a conference in Baghdad to unveil US abuses against Iraqi civilians in Fallujah and other parts in the war-torn country.
As a case in point, an Iraqi female in the western Iraqi city was sexually abused by US occupation soldiers while being held in a US-administrated jail in Iraq, according to AMS sources.
“As soon as I returned to my home following the massive US offensive on the city last November, US soldiers stormed the house and arrested me after failing to capture my husband,” the Iraqi woman told the AMS conference.
“Only Allah knows what they (Americans) have done to me. I was praying for death to escape their abuses.”<br>
The Iraqi female was later released only after her husband gave himself up to the US occupation forces.
According to Iraqi sources, there are at least 15 Iraqi woman detainees still in US-run detention camps across Iraq.
A freed detainee told the Arabic-language Al-Wasat, a weekly supplement of the respectable London-based Al-Hayat newspaper, about her ordeal inside a US prison and how she had been gang-raped by US forces < islamonline.net/English/News/2004-07/21/article06.sht
ml >.
Beheaded
The conference also included testimonies of several Iraqi citizens on the usage of poisonous gases by US occupation forces during attacks in the US-occupied country.
“During a US attack on the Taremiah neighborhood in the Iraqi capital, I was captured along with another Iraqi citizen called Ahmed who was beheaded by the US occupation soldiers. They tried to kill me too but I miraculously escaped death after they thought I was dead,” said Mohamed Najam Al-Meshhedani.
A US shot dead an unarmed Iraqi prisoner <http://www.islamonline.net/English/News/2004-11/16/article01
.shtml > while he laid prone against a mosque wall in Fallujah.
US NBC pool correspondent Kevin Sites, who filmed the grisly scene, said three other wounded Iraqi prisoners, who did not appear to be armed or threatening in any way, were killed in the mosque < www.islamonline.net/English/News/2004-11/17/article01
.shtml >.
The New York-based Human Rights Watch condemned the mosque killing, saying it was tantamount to a “war crime.”<br>
Two US human rights groups filed a lawsuit against US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld for his “direct responsibility” in the illegal torture and prisoners' abuses.
Documentation
“Such abuses were documented after many Iraqi citizens complained,” AMS spokesman Mothana Harith al-Dari told the conference, which was attended by representatives of several human rights groups.
He stressed that AMS surveyed several areas in the Iraqi capital to register names of Iraqis killed by US occupation forces during attacks on these areas.
In June, the HRW issued a report entitled “The Road To Abu Ghraib” < www.islamonline.net/English/News/2004-06/10/article02
.shtml >linking the abuse of detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo to policies adopted by US President George W. Bush in his “war on terror”.
The Iraqi abuse scandal in Abu Ghraib exploded onto the world stage on April 29 after the CBS news network published several graphic photos < www.islamonline.net/English/News/2004-04/30/article04
.shtml > of Iraqi detainees tortured and sexually abused by American soldiers at the infamous Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad.