Home > Iraq, torture? Not if cheerleaders do it, lawyer claims

Iraq, torture? Not if cheerleaders do it, lawyer claims

by Open-Publishing - Wednesday 12 January 2005
7 comments

Edito Wars and conflicts Justice International USA

By Jenny Booth

Forcing naked Iraqi prisoners to pile themselves in human pyramids was not torture, because American cheerleaders do it every year, a court was told today.

A lawyer defending Specialist Charles Graner, who is accused of being a ringleader in the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal, argued that piling naked prisoners in pyramids was a valid form of prisoner control.

"Don’t cheerleaders all over America form pyramids six to eight times a year. Is that torture?" said Guy Womack, Sergeant Graner’s lawyer, in opening arguments to the ten-member military jury at the reservist’s court martial.

Sergeant Graner and Private Lynndie England, with whom he fathered a child and who is also facing a court-martial, became the faces of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal after they appeared in photographs that showed degraded, naked prisoners.

The prosecution showed some of those pictures in their opening argument, including one of naked Iraqi men piled on each other and another of Ms England holding a crawling naked Iraqi man on a leash.

Mr Womack said that using a tether was a valid method of controlling detainees. "You’re keeping control of them. A tether is a valid control to be used in corrections," he said.

Pictures of the humiliating treatment of the prisoners at the prison outside Baghdad prompted outrage around the world, and further eroded the credibility of the United States, already damaged in many countries by the 2003 Iraq invasion.

Apart from arguing that the methods were not illegal, Graner’s defence is that he was following orders from superiors. Mr Womack said: "He was doing his job. Following orders and being praised for it."

The chief prosecutor, Major Michael Holley, asked rhetorically,"Did the accused honestly believe that was a lawful order?"

The Bush Administration has said that the actions were those of a small group and were not part of a policy or condoned by senior officers.

But investigations have shown that many prisoners in Iraq, Afghanistan and at the US Navy base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba also suffered abusive treatment after the Government considered ways to obtain information in the war against terrorism.

The trial of Sergeant Graner, a 36-year-old former Pennsylvania civilian prison guard who chatted and joked with his defence team before the hearing opened, was expected to last at least a week.

He faces up to 17 years in prison on charges that include mistreating detainees, dereliction of duty and assault. He has pleaded not guilty.

Four of seven accused members of Sergeant Graner’s unit have already pleaded guilty to abuse charges and three have been sentenced to prison.

Meanwhile the first court martial of a British soldier accused of mistreating Iraqi prisoners was getting under way today at a military base in western Germany.

Fusilier Gary Bartlam, 20, who serves with the 1st Battalion of the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers, is accused of the ill-treatment of Iraqis detained by British forces in May, 2003.

Evidence about the alleged assaults and indecent assaults of the Iraqis were heard at a court martial taking place at a British Army base in Hohne, Germany.

Judge Advocate Michael Hunter banned any further reporting of the details of the hearing for legal reasons.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,7374-1434680,00.html

Forum posts

  • Chenny, Bush and Rumsfeld should be charged! Instead the predator George Murder Bush is
    celebrating his second term dictatorship!

  • "The Bush Administration has said that the actions were those of a small group and were not part of a policy or condoned by senior officers."

    The military must stop allowing this immoral administration make them take the fall for their war crimes.

    We need a military whistle blower to tell the whole truth about Abu Ghraib and who is really responsible. Send your information here:

    We have to call on the international community to hold them accountable, our Congress is obviously not going to do it.

    Po Box 19519 2500 CM, The Hague The Netherlands

    Tel: + 31 (0)70 515 8515 Fax: +31 (0)70 515 8555

    pio@icc-cpi.int

    http://www.icc-cpi.int/about/ICC_co...

  • Didn’t Ollie North say he was just following orders too? These are just another bunch of republican scapegoats. It’s amazing they still get people stupid enough to be the fall-guy.

  • "How do you tell when a lawyer is lying?"
    "His lips are moving,"...

    The men below were arrested in fascisti America for telling this truth! No justice No peace.

    Dr. T.

    http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/WeirdNews/2005/01/12/896478-ap.html

    Activists arrested for making jokes about lawyers outside U.S. courthouse

    HEMPSTEAD, N.Y. (AP) - Did you hear the one about the two guys arrested
    for telling lawyer jokes?

    It happened this week to the founders of a group called Americans for
    Legal Reform, who were waiting in line to enter a Long Island. N.Y.,
    courthouse. "How do you tell when a lawyer is lying?" Harvey Kash asked
    Carl Lanzisera. "His lips are moving," they said in unison. While some
    waiting to enter the courthouse giggled, a lawyer farther up the line
    Monday was not laughing.

    He told them to pipe down and when they did not, the lawyer reported the
    pair to court personnel, who charged them with disorderly conduct, a
    misdemeanour.

    "They just can’t take it," Kash said of lawyers in general.

    "This violates our First Amendment rights."

    Dan Bagnuola, a spokesman for the Nassau County courts, said the men
    were "being abusive and they were causing a disturbance."

    He said he did not have the name of the lawyer who complained.

    Americans for Legal Reform monitors the courts and uses confrontational
    tactics to push for greater access for the public. The pair said for
    years they have stood outside courthouses on Long Island and mocked lawyers.

    On Monday, however, Kash said he was due in court to answer a
    drunken-driving charge from a year and a half ago. The men are due back
    in court on the disorderly conduct charge next month.

    • Although you can’t compare cheerleaders pyramids with the appalling scenes in Abu Ghraib, they are defending a smaller obscenity. Barbie type girls, short skirts, shaking their tits and asses in a sordid sexist titillating display for the middle aged white American perverts. A sexist relic from the 1950’s best consigned to the sewer.

    • Did they get the information they needed? If so, who cares what they do to these scumbags. Line them all up and shoot them one by one. Call me hearless but I dont give a !@#$ about them at all. Lucky we didnt just level their whole country (which I think we should have). Most people crying out for these scumbags for what reason?

  • I just cannot believe what a number of US soldiers did on Iraq’s streets. The situation exceeds what happened in Abu Ghraib to a number of prisoners by a number of US soldiers. I can’t believe how low the American soldiers can reach and why the media did not adequately make a huge bomb out of this terrible story.

    Recent reports coming from Iraq indicate that US soldiers lured Iraqi girls as young as 12 years old into having sex with them. They manipulated those kids by offering them American made cookies and single dollar bills. Several preteen girls reported how they were forced to have sex with the soldiers in exchange for those goodies. It is a shame that the worldwide media is not exploding these stories into the face of the Pentagon. For how long will America be shielded from the holy watchful eyes of the mass media.

    What happened was so appalling and…………………………what? What? I can hear someone telling me that I’m not reporting the true story. Oh I am sorry friends. The location of the scandal is not Iraq but Congo, and the perpetrators were not US soldiers but UN peacekeepers.

    I apologize for the misinformation. However, I did mention one correct thing which was that the media treated this sex for food scandal as if it was reporting a car accident that an 80 years old Indian man had in Calcutta India. Well, I shouldn’t be that harsh on the media, after all, the UN has “moral authority” remember!

    http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2005-01-08-congo-un-girls_x.htm

    http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/WO0501/S00065.htm