Reply #6: read this interview with the Red Cross from 5/4/04

[maddezmom]

RN: "One of the persons involved in the present controversy, Brigadier-General Janis Karpinski, the former head of the military police in the prison, has stated that there were efforts by military intelligence officers to try and prevent the ICRC from visiting a specific part of the prison, known as cellblock 1A. What did you notice of such efforts?"

"There may have been such efforts but if there were, they did not succeed. We are convinced that we were able to see all the prisoners, the whole facility of Abu Ghraib, to speak to any prisoner of our choice."

"It's very important to underline that these private talks with the prisoners are one important source of information for the delegates to know how the prisoners are being treated, what problems they encounter, and to compare from the various testimonies these prisoners give us if there is in fact a problem in the prison that concerns either their treatment or the conditions of detention, or any other aspects, their relations with guards, etc. This information from prisoners and other information that we get through our own observations in the prison <…> help us to compile the reports that we submit to the authorities."

RN: "How would you qualify the treatment of prisoners in the Abu Ghraib prison?"

"I should say first of all that these pictures that have now appeared in the public domain concerning the abuse against prisoners are of course deeply shocking and revolting. They are degrading, in particular also for the people who committed such abuses - if they did, and it appears that it is being taken very seriously and it appears there is something behind it. We, on our side, don't report publicly on our findings, we report directly to the detaining authorities. So we will not be able to testify to the veracity of these reports or not."

~snip~

RN: "But if the ICRC did inspect the Abu Ghraib prison right from the beginning, why have abuses of the kind that are now being published never been reported by the ICRC?"

"As I said, they have been reported, but not publicly. We don't say that that our visits immediately have an effect, they don't always change the reality for the prisoner immediately, but we do think they have an effect. You have to consider that these photos have come out now, but what they portray is something that has happened months ago and that there are already measures being taken on the American side - we hope also on the British side, for other places of detention in Iraq <...>"

~snip~

http://www.rnw.nl/hotspots/html/irq040504.html


They knew, and they made sure the US knew, too.