ID:

488

Date:

2006-07-14

Headline:

U.S. accused of kidnappings in Iraq

Reporter's name:

Mark Benjamin

Delay/denial:

No

Lawsuit:

No

Fees:

No

Media outlet:

Salon.com

City:

Washington, DC

Summary:

A 2004 memorandum titled "Report of Violations of the Geneva Convention," written by a fourteen-year veteran intelligence officer of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), was made public in response to a FOIA request from the American Civil Liberties Union. The memo described plans by a group of elite American troops to kidnap the wife of a suspect in order to persuade the suspect to turn himself in - a violation of the Geneva Convention - and notes that they did, in fact, detain and hold her for two days.

Notes:

See also FOIA Files #418: "In Secret Unit's 'Black Room,' a Grim Portrait of U.S. Abuse" (March 19, 2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/19/international/middleeast/19abuse.html), in which the New York Times offers what it calls "the first detailed description of how the military's most highly trained counterterrorism unit committed serious abuses" and notes "For an elite unit with roughly 1,000 people at any given time, Task Force 6-26 seems to have had a large number of troops punished for detainee abuse." The story also noted that there had been, at the time of the story, no "paper trail that shows that kidnapping or abusing the family of suspects might have been official Department of Justice or Pentagon policy."

Keywords:

Iraq, kidnap, kidnapping, Geneva Convention, violation, Abu Ghraib, Donald Rumsfeld, military, investigation, detainee, detainee abuse, whistleblower, Samuel Provance, retaliation, Army, Task Force 6-26, Defense Intelligence Agency, congress, congressional subpoena

URL:

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2006/07/14/kidnap/index.html

Agencies:

CIA
DIA
DOD

States:

DC
US Terr./Other

Districts:

Categories:

intelligence
Iraq
military