Ethics Newsline®

WASHINGTON
As the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. forces continues to dominate headlines, the military announced that the first court-martial to address the situation would take place this week.

Army Spc. Jeremy Sivits, who took some of the photos now circulating widely, is scheduled to face a military tribunal on Wednesday in Baghdad. Among other charges, he is accused of dereliction of duty for failing to stop the abuse.

While Sivits faces up to a year in prison and various other penalties, stiffer sentences may await six other soldiers charged with more serious crimes, reported the New York Times.

Sivit’s trial, which will be open to the media, was not the only news last week to spark scrutiny and continued debate over the ethics of the military and those involved. Among the developments:

• The International Committee of the Red Cross released its confidential report into the abuse, chronicling its findings from 29 visits to 14 detention sites before the end of October 2003. Contradicting some testimony by U.S. officials, the Red Cross said it told the government of serious abuse long before the government took action. “We were dealing here with a broad pattern, not individual acts,” Red Cross operations director Pierre Kraehenbuel told the Associated Press. “There was a pattern and a system.”
• While the Red Cross was not involved in the abuse, some observers last week questioned whether the organization should have done more to publicize its confidential findings and stop the abuse earlier. The Red Cross, noted the Washington Post, is allowed access to monitor detention facilities under an agreement that calls on it to keep its findings private and work for change through official channels rather than public pressure.
• The Post also reported that eight military legal officers, uncomfortable with U.S. rules for interrogations in Iraq, appealed last year to a high-ranking representative of the New York State Bar Association for help in trying to get the Pentagon to change its practices. The military lawyers “said this was a disaster waiting to happen and that they felt shut out” of the rules-drafting process, Scott Horton, then head of the bar association’s committee on international law, told the Post. Some of those U.S. interrogation rules now appear to violate the Geneva Conventions on humane treatment of prisoners, according to the Post report.
• A U.S. Army general under investigation for making speeches implying that the war on terrorism is a religious battle against Satan was among those briefing the Pentagon on how to interrogate Iraqi prisoners. The involvement of Lt. Gen. William Boykin, whose evangelical Christian beliefs and pronouncements last October sparked a controversy and a pending investigation, could heighten tensions by implying that the abuse was sanctioned as part of a cultural battle with Muslims, reported the Reuters news agency. The fact that Boykin, who was not sanctioned for his remarks, was apparently involved in planning the interrogation “creates a climate in which … the perpetrators believe they’re carrying out the policies of those above them, whether those policies are explicit or not,” Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council on American Islamic Relations, told Reuters.
• Following an alarming number of alleged sexual assaults by U.S. military personnel against their colleagues in the Middle East, the Defense Department last week released a report calling for immediate reform. The report, ordered in February after more than 100 allegation of sexual assault and misconduct over the past 18 months, proposes immediate awareness training for servicemembers and an advisory council on sexual assault, reported the New York Times.
• The Daily Mirror tabloid in Britain last week fired its editor, Piers Morgan, and issued an apology for publishing faked photos of British soldiers abusing Iraqi prisoners. Despite mounting criticism that the photos were bogus, Morgan continued to stand by the images, which have been condemned for wrongly imperiling British soldiers serving in Iraq. The tabloid’s board last week broke ranks with the editor, firing him and publishing an apology. While the board said the photographs were published “in good faith,” it said “there is now sufficient evidence to suggest that these pictures are fakes and that the Daily Mirror has been the subject of a calculated and malicious hoax,” reported Reuters.