|
US prison boss apologises
05/05/2004 14:34 - (SA)
Abu Ghraib, Iraq - The commander of US-run prisons in Iraq apologised on Wednesday in the name of the United States and the American people for the "illegal or unauthorised acts" committed by a "small number of our soldiers" at the Abu Ghraib prison.
"I would like to apologise for our nation and for our military for the small number of soldiers who committed illegal or unauthorised acts here at Abu Ghraib," Major General Geoffrey Miller told a group of Arab and western reporters taken by the military on a tour of the prison.
"These are violations not only of our national policy but of how we conduct ourselves as members of the international community," Miller added. "It has brought a cloud over all the efforts of all of our soldiers and we will work our hardest to re-establish the trust that Iraqis feel for the coalition and the confidence people in American have in their military."
Miller repeated that some interrogation techniques would be halted as a result of the scandal and others would be toned down.
As Miller spoke to reporters in cellblock 1A, where photos showing prisoner abuse were taken, five women inmates screamed, shouted and waved their arms through the iron bars.
'I have children at home'
"I've been here five months," one of the women shouted in Arabic. "I don't belong to the resistance. I have children at home."
Outside the prison, located on the western edge of Baghdad, about two thousand Iraqis demonstrated on Wednesday to protest against the US treatment of prisoners there.
The protesters, enraged about pictures of Iraqi prisoners being abused by smiling American guards, gathered outside the main gate, with some chanting "democracy doesn't mean killing innocent people." They also hoisted a banner which said: "Free women or we will launch jihad."
President George W Bush was to conduct brief interviews with the US-sponsored Al-Hurra television network and the Arab network Al Arabiya on Wednesday to address Iraqi and Arab outrage at the photographs.
- AP
|
News
