WikiLeaks: Iraqi children handcuffed, executed by US Forces. Airstrike to cover evidence

[Senoska]

WikiLeaks: Iraqi children in U.S. raid shot in head, airstrike to cover evidence

A U.S. diplomatic cable made public by WikiLeaks provides evidence that U.S. troops executed at least 10 Iraqi civilians, including a woman in her 70s and a 5-month-old infant, then called in an airstrike to destroy the evidence, during a controversial 2006 incident in the central Iraqi town of Ishaqi.

The unclassified cable, which was posted on WikiLeaks' website last week, contained questions from a United Nations investigator about the incident, which had angered local Iraqi officials, who demanded some kind of action from their government. U.S. officials denied at the time that anything inappropriate had occurred.
But Philip Alston, the U.N.'s special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, said in a communication to American officials dated 12 days after the March 15, 2006, incident that autopsies performed in the Iraqi city of Tikrit showed that all the dead had been handcuffed and shot in the head. Among the dead were four women and five children. The children were all 5 years old or younger.

Reached by email Wednesday, Alston said that as of 2010 — the most recent data he had — U.S. officials hadn't responded to his request for information and that Iraq's government also hadn't been forthcoming. He said the lack of response from the United States "was the case with most of the letters to the U.S. in the 2006-2007 period," when fighting in Iraq peaked.

Alston said he could provide no further information on the incident. "The tragedy," he said, "is that this elaborate system of communications is in place but the (U.N.) Human Rights Council does nothing to follow up when states ignore issues raised with them."
The Pentagon didn't respond to a request for comment. At the time, American military officials in Iraq said the accounts of townspeople who witnessed the events were highly unlikely to be true, and they later said the incident didn't warrant further investigation. Military officials also refused to reveal which units might have been involved in the incident.



Iraq was fast descending into chaos in early 2006. An explosion that ripped through the Golden Dome Mosque that February had set off an orgy of violence between rival Sunni and Shiite Muslims, and Sunni insurgents, many aligned with al Qaida in Iraq, controlled large tracts of the countryside.

Ishaqi, about 80 miles northwest of Baghdad, not far from Saddam Hussein's hometown, Tikrit, was considered so dangerous at the time that U.S. military officials had classified all roads in the area as "black," meaning they were likely to be booby-trapped with roadside bombs.
The Ishaqi incident was unusual because it was brought to the world's attention by the Joint Coordination Center in Tikrit, a regional security center set up with American military assistance and staffed by U.S.-trained Iraqi police officers.

The original incident report was signed by an Iraqi police colonel and made even more noteworthy because U.S.-trained Iraqi police, including Brig. Gen. Issa al Juboori, who led the coordination center, were willing to speak about the investigation on the record even though it was critical of American forces.

Throughout the early investigation, U.S. military spokesmen said that an al Qaida in Iraq suspect had been seized from a first-floor room after a fierce fight that had left the house he was hiding in a pile of rubble.
But the diplomatic cable provides a different sequence of events and lends credence to townspeople's claims that American forces destroyed the house after its residents had been shot.
Alston initially posed his questions to the U.S. Embassy in Geneva, which passed them to Washington in the cable.
According to Alston's version of events, American troops approached a house in Ishaqi, which Alston refers to as "Al-Iss Haqi," that belonged to Faiz Harrat Al-Majma'ee, whom Alston identified as a farmer. The U.S. troops were met with gunfire, Alston said, that lasted about 25 minutes.
After the firefight ended, Alston wrote, the "troops entered the house, handcuffed all residents and executed all of them. After the initial MNF intervention, a U.S. air raid ensued that destroyed the house." The initials refer to the official name of the military coalition, the Multi-National Force.
Alston said "Iraqi TV stations broadcast from the scene and showed bodies of the victims (i.e. five children and four women) in the morgue of Tikrit. Autopsies carries (sic) out at the Tikrit Hospital's morgue revealed that all corpses were shot in the head and handcuffed."

The cable makes no mention any of the alleged shooting suspects being found or arrested at or near the house.

The cable closely tracks what neighbors told reporters for Knight Ridder at the time. (McClatchy purchased Knight Ridder in spring 2006.) Those neighbors said the U.S. troops had approached the house at 2:30 a.m. and a firefight ensued. In addition to exchanging gunfire with someone in the house, the American troops were supported by helicopter gunships, which fired on the house.

The cable also backs the original report from the Joint Coordination Center, which said U.S. forces entered the house while it was still standing. That first report noted: "The American forces gathered the family members in one room and executed 11 persons, including five children, four women and two men. Then they bombed the house, burned three vehicles and killed their animals."

The report was signed by Col. Fadhil Muhammed Khalaf, who was described in the document as the assistant chief of the Joint Coordination Center.
The cable also backs up the claims of the doctor who performed the autopsies, who told Knight Ridder "that all the victims had bullet shots in the head and all bodies were handcuffed."

The cable notes that "at least 10 persons, namely Mr. Faiz Hratt Khalaf, (aged 28), his wife Sumay'ya Abdul Razzaq Khuther (aged 24), their three children Hawra'a (aged 5) Aisha (aged 3) and Husam (5 months old), Faiz's mother Ms. Turkiya Majeed Ali (aged 74), Faiz's sister (name unknown), Faiz's nieces Asma'a Yousif Ma'arouf (aged 5 years old), and Usama Yousif Ma'arouf (aged 3 years), and a visiting relative Ms. Iqtisad Hameed Mehdi (aged 23) were killed during the raid."

(Schofield, an editorial writer at The Kansas City Star, was Berlin bureau chief and was on temporary assignment in Iraq at the time of the Ishaqi incident.)

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/08/3...ren-in-us.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/0..._n_945279.html

[tyven]

Kuya is gonna be PISSED

[solanis]

Kuya is gonna be PISSED

lol mte

[thetruepandagod]

I just can't feel the proper amount of outrage in regards to this without it being posted by kuya.

[Seanr]

damn... wtf.

[SephYuyX]

Does anyone really care anymore about anything that happens over there?

[Xno Kappa]

Kuya is gonna be PISSED

lol

[Mertron]

thats what they get for being children in a war zone

[Dimmauk]

Does anyone really care anymore about anything that happens over there?

"The American forces gathered the family members in one room and executed 11 persons, including five children, four women and two men. Then they bombed the house, burned three vehicles and killed their animals.

Could have been Iraqi troops dressed up as American soldiers?

Who the fuck knows was really went on over there?

[Guitarman]

inc "everyone in america is evil and everything american is wrong because of a few people" tirades. I look forward to the next 10 pages of strawman arguements, pissing contests, baseless arguements, and armchair theorizing by people with zero knowledge of what they're talking about.

Pretty awful if the story is true, though.

[Gadritan]

Meh. Sounds like a lot of bullshit on both sides, which doesn't help.

[Kuya]

Does anyone really care anymore about anything that happens over there?

Could have been Iraqi troops dressed up as American soldiers?

inc "everyone in america is evil and everything american is wrong because of a few people" tirades.

Meh. Sounds like a lot of bullshit on both sides

Off-topic but did anyone hear about that iraqui family that was executed and the evidence was covered up? That sounds awful doesn't it?

[Salodin]

HE APPEARS!!!

[Rhinox]

Unfortunately if there is no face to it Americans don't give a shit. Especially if they look nothing like us.

[Mazmaz]

America is like the worst country in the world how do you guys stand it?

[Dimmauk]

America is like the worst country in the world how do you guys stand it?

Maybe we should move to Canada?

[Fitch.]

No sales tax here in NH. Fuck yeah.

[shepardG]

According to Alston's version of events, American troops approached a house in Ishaqi, which Alston refers to as "Al-Iss Haqi," that belonged to Faiz Harrat Al-Majma'ee, whom Alston identified as a farmer. The U.S. troops were met with gunfire, Alston said, that lasted about 25 minutes.
After the firefight ended, Alston wrote, the "troops entered the house, handcuffed all residents and executed all of them. After the initial MNF intervention, a U.S. air raid ensued that destroyed the house." The initials refer to the official name of the military coalition, the Multi-National Force.
Alston said "Iraqi TV stations broadcast from the scene and showed bodies of the victims (i.e. five children and four women) in the morgue of Tikrit. Autopsies carries (sic) out at the Tikrit Hospital's morgue revealed that all corpses were shot in the head and handcuffed."

lol.... alright, having been in gun battles in iraq and in afghanistan, i'll go ahead and let you THE READER, see how you can identify bullshit attention whores, like this ashton guy.

1. U.S. troops got shot at for 25 fucking minutes.... 25 minutes.... let that sink in.... imagine an entire episode of Tosh.0 with a house shooting bullets at you.
2. Sooooo the fire fight "ENDS"..... JUST ENDS.... i guess everyone ran out of ammo eh? hit that faithful "25min" mark, and both sides were like WELL I GUESS WERE DONE.... either one side killed the other or both sides broke contact and dis-engaged, which leads to my next point.
3. old people and children don't shoot at people. FAM (fighting age male) which wasn't reported anywhere in this incident, are the ones who do the shooting, AND consequently probably did the execution style murders as i'm about to portray... i'll get to some more evidence that this situation is bullshit in a bit, but here's what I personally think happened.

I think a patrol was rolling through this village area, and was engaged by insurgents. I think that for whatever reason (out manuevered, re-inforcments,etc.) they insurgents took shelter in a strange building. The people in that building probably tried to stop them or fight them, and were shot for their troubles.
The insurgents were either killed or escaped (not likely if "we" had 25 minutes to shoot at this house they were holed up in) and then we proceeded to enter and execution style kill these folks? AFTER WE HAND CUFF THEM?

and then we drop a mk 82 bomb on the place? cause if your calling in an airstrike that's the smallest ordanance that get's dropped. let's say they dropped 1 bomb... mk 82 500lb bomb. has 192lbs. of tritonal (i.e. strong explosive) inside it. looks alot like this:
http://youtu.be/SOjJrpGMpdI

Now that explosion in the video is 1.25lbs of C-4 (standard block of c4) on top of a mk 82 series bomb. If this bomb were to detonate in your house made of mud walls, there is not going to be a "body" to take back to the tikrit coroners office.

There's just to much bullshit in this ashtons story. If he's telling the truth, he's telling a half assed version of it, with alot of asumptions about parts he dosen't truthfully know.

[Day]

Hmm I don't know about all that, I think it was Colonel Mustard, in the library, with a candlestick.

[shepardG]

I can't wait to come home to roanoke ^^