ICRC Refuses To Publish Iraq Abuse Report

"We don’t intend to publish, not this one, not any report," Antonella Notari, ICRC chief spokeswoman, told Agence France-Presse (AFP).

"It is public," she said, in reference to the confidential report published by The Wall Street Journal on Monday, May10 , and reported by other sources on the Internet.

"We’re getting private e-mails. We’re getting comment from journalists. We’re seeing reports in media around the world," Notari said of the response to the publication of the report.

The document indicated the abuse went on for more than a year during which the ICRC repeatedly complained to the U.S. authorities in private, raising the question of whether the agency could have been more effective had it gone public with its findings.

The ICRC has emphasized that the report was only a summary of its repeated attempts in person and in writing from March to November 2003 to get U.S. officials to stop abuses.

Those earlier interventions far preceded the Pentagon’s decision to investigate after a low-ranking U.S. soldier stepped forward in January.

It said it wanted to keep the report confidential because it saw U.S. officials "making progress" in responding to their complaints.

Still, the American reaction was far slower than that of British officials, according to the report.

The Iraqi abuse scandal exploded unto onto the world stage after the publication of disturbing photographs from Abu Ghraib prison.

Public Criticism Failed

Notari said making violations of international humanitarian law public doesn’t necessarily change the situation on the ground.

She recalled that public criticism failed to halt atrocities during the Balkan wars of the1990 s or to prevent the Rwandan genocide in1994 .

"One organization — and that is us — must be able to continue working to address the issues on the spot with the people who are directly affected and with the people who are in charge of their situation and try to work on it in a pragmatic way there and then," she said.

"Our way of working does have an effect, but it doesn’t always immediately have an effect," Notari added.

The ICRC is still disturbed that the report had reached the public, she said, asserting the leak had nothing to do with the agency or its staff.

"We are visiting in 70 countries in a lot of places where, if authorities had any indication the report would be published, they would be extremely reluctant for us to have access."

‘Part of the Process’

Among the abuses, the ICRC teams saw U.S.troops keeping Iraqi prisoners naked for days in darkness at the Abu Ghraib jail last October, according to the leaked report.

During a visit to Abu Ghraib in October, they witnessed "the practice of keeping persons deprived of their liberty completely naked in totally empty concrete cells and in total darkness," the report said.

"Upon witnessing such cases, the ICRC interrupted its visits and requested an explanation from the authorities. The military intelligence officer in charge of the interrogation explained that this practice was ‘part of the process’."

The 24 -page report described Iraqi prisoners by U.S. soldiers was broad and "not individual acts," contrary to President Bush’s contention that the mistreatment "was the wrongdoing of a few."

It maintained that mistreatment of prisoners "went beyond exceptional cases and might be considered as a practice tolerated by the CF (Coalition Forces)."

Arrested By Mistake
The report said the U.S-led military intelligence officers told the ICRC that in their estimate "between 70 percent and 90 percent of the persons deprived of their liberty in Iraq had been arrested by mistake."

Among "serious violations of international humanitarian law" the report listed a failure to set up a system to notify family members of arrests, resulting "in the de facto ‘disappearance’ of the arrestee for weeks or months."

The document stressed that the "uncaring behavior of the CF and their inability to quickly provide accurate information on persons deprived of their liberty for the families concerned also seriously affects the image of the Occupying Powers among the Iraqi population."

It report said prison guards often opened fire with live ammunition on detainees who "were unarmed and did not appear to pose any serious threat to anyone’s life."

Although most of the ICRC’s observations concerned U.S. forces, it also cited incidents in which British troops forced Iraqi detainees to kneel and stomped on their necks.

It also described the death of an Iraqi prisoner in custody in the British-controlled Basra last September.

Americans Knew

Meanwhile, another ICRC spokeswoman told German television that the agency president told top U.S. officials of abuses in Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison during a visit to Washington in January.

Nada Doumani was quoted by Spiegel TV as saying that Jakob Kellenberger met U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice during his visit.

"We went to the top," she told the television, adding Kellenberger"told them of our concerns over the prisons in Iraq."

The Red Cross, which usually keeps strict confidentiality over reports it makes into prison conditions, says it had made many representations to U.S. authorities and urged them to take "corrective action" at Abu Ghraib.

Last week, the agency made public parts of a report it had given to U.S. authorities in February after uncovering abuses in prisons where Iraqis were subjected to degrading treatment, sometimes "tantamount to torture."

Both President George W. Bush and Rumsfeld have apologized for the abuse but that has not stilled the outrage the acts have caused in the Middle East and around the world.