US bans human rights monitors

2004-05-19 07:48

Washington - Human rights monitors complained on Tuesday that they will not be allowed to observe, in Baghdad, the first court-martial of a US soldier accused of abusing inmates at Abu Ghraib prison.

"Barring human rights monitors from the court-martial is a bad decision in its own right," said Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of Human Rights Watch's Middle East and North Africa division.

"It also sends a terrible signal to Iraqis and others deeply concerned about what transpired in Abu Ghraib."

The New York-based rights watchdog said other, Iraq-based groups were also denied access.

"It's positive that US military authorities are allowing the media to attend tomorrow's hearing," said Whitson.

"But it is unreasonable to exclude Human Rights Watch and other rights monitors who have expertise in the abuses at the heart of the court-martial."

Jeremy Sivits, 24, faces the court-martial on Wednesday on accusations he took the now notorious photographs of naked Iraqi detainees forced to form a human pyramid.

A single judge, who has not yet been named, will preside over Wednesday's main hearing, to be held in a stark, modern courtroom on the first floor of the convention centre inside the compound headquarters of the US-led coalition.

Agency staff beaten

Meanwhile, Reuters said on Tuesday that three Iraqis working for the news agency were beaten, taunted and forced to put shoes in their mouths during their detention at a military camp near Fallujah in January.

Reuters quoted all three men as saying they were beaten and forced to make demeaning gestures as soldiers laughed, taunted them and took photographs.

Two told the news agency they also were degraded by being forced to insert fingers into their anuses and then lick them, and to put shoes into their mouths.

Fake pic arrests

At least one British soldier has been arrested over the fake Iraqi abuse photographs published in the Daily Mirror newspaper, Britain's Ministry of Defence said on Tuesday.

The Daily Mirror on Friday issued a humbling apology for running the pictures and sacked its editor, Piers Morgan.

First printed on May 1, the photographs appeared to show British troops from the Queen's Lancashire Regiment beating and urinating on an Iraqi.

On Saturday, the Daily Mirror published a front page declaring: "Sorry ... We Were Hoaxed".

- AFP