WASHINGTON, 30 January 2006 — Since the war in Iraq began, there have been questions about US troops’ sensitivities to Islamic culture, especially when dealing with women.
The US detention of female prisoners is a sensitive issue for Iraqis, who consider the mistreatment of a woman a dishonor to her family. Iraqis find it particularly offensive that foreign male officers are holding female prisoners, as many Iraqis fear that US soldiers will treat them disrespectfully.
Now specific questions are emerging over a tactic the military calls “leveraging,” after news that the US Army detained Iraqi women to help track down husbands or fathers who are suspected insurgents.
Hundred of documents were obtained in response to a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union on Friday from the government under court order through the Freedom of Information Act, including a series of e-mails written by US soldiers and an internal army memo.
“If they’re being taken solely for the purpose of drawing their men out of hiding, it can even appear to look like hostage-taking,” Jumana Musa of Amnesty International told reporters.
“This is not an acceptable tactic,” ACLU lawyer Amrit Singh said Friday, referring to seizing a wife to try to catch a husband, “nor are any of the other abusive techniques acceptable. We know that abusive techniques were employed in a systemic manner across Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay.”
In response, Paul Boyce, an army spokesman at the Pentagon, told reporters: “It’s very hard, obviously, from some of these documents to determine what, if anything, actually happened… When you see an individual e-mail note, it’s often very confusing to figure out how that particular case fits into an overall, larger puzzle.”
Boyce also said the military has thoroughly looked at “any allegation against soldiers of misconduct or abuse of detainees.”
The ACLU has made public a June 10, 2004 memo written by a Defense Intelligence Agency employee, labeled as “secret,” that referred to “violations of the Geneva Convention” relating to detainee abuse and illegal detention of noncombatants.
The memo describes the actions of Task Force 6-26, a secretive military unit formed to handle high-profile targets, and stated that on May 9, 2004, a Task Force personnel detained the wife of “a suspected terrorist” in Tarmiya, Iraq.
“During the pre-operational brief, it was recommended by TF (task force) personnel that if the wife were present, she be detained and held in order to leverage the primary target’s surrender,” the memo said.
“I determined that the wife could provide no actionable intelligence leading to the arrest of her husband. I objected to the detainment of the young mother to the raid team leader” and “believed it was a dead issue,” wrote the 14-year veteran DIA officer.
He said he objected, but when they raided the house the team leader, a senior sergeant, seized her anyway.
“The 28-year-old woman had three young children at the house, one being as young as six months and still nursing,” the intelligence officer wrote. “Her husband was the primary target of the raid, with other suspect personnel subject to detainment as well.”
Like most names in the released documents, the officer’s signature is blacked out on this for-the-record memorandum about his complaint.
The memo said the wife was released two days later to the custody of a tribal sheikh.
In the other case, a US lieutenant colonel e-mailed, “What are you guys doing to try to get the husband — have you tacked a note on the door and challenged him to come get his wife?”
Lt. Col. Barry Johnson, an army spokesman in Baghdad, told reporters Friday that the US military held only people who were considered threats. “We recognize insurgents don’t work alone. They work in groups. Questioning certainly focuses on who they are associated with,” Johnson said.
