tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8605176.post109892345780724160..comments2023-08-21T18:00:34.044+09:00Comments on Asian Gazette Blog ✍ Joël Legendre-Koizumi: Iraq: a young Japanese traveller taken hostageAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17323738274259327790noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8605176.post-1108342380694652382005-02-14T09:53:00.000+09:002005-02-14T09:53:00.000+09:00Former spy claims Australian government
covered up...Former spy claims Australian government<br />covered up Iraq prisoner abuse<br /><br />A former Australian spy contradicted<br />government claims that no Australian was<br />involved in interrogating Iraqi prisoners,<br />saying he himself witnessed and reported<br />the alleged abuse of Iraqis by their US<br />captors.<br /><br />Rod Barton, a former senior analyst for the<br />Defense Intelligence Organisation (DIO) and<br />a long-time Iraq weapons inspector, said he<br />personally interrogated an Iraqi detainee<br />at Camp Cropper, a US center which held<br />so-called "high value" prisoners.<br /><br />"Someone was brought to me in an orange<br />jumpsuit with a guard with a gun standing<br />behind him," Barton told Four Corners, a<br />news program to be broadcast later Monday<br />on Australian Broadcasting Corporation<br />television.<br /><br />"Of course I didn't pull any fingernails<br />out but I think it's misleading to say no<br />Australians were involved, I was involved,"<br />he said.<br /><br />Last year after revelations that US<br />soldiers were abusing Iraqis in Baghdad's<br />Abu Ghraib prison, the Australian<br />government steadfastly denied that any<br />Australians were involved in the<br />interrogation of Iraqi detainees.<br /><br />Defense Minister Robert Hill testified in<br />Parliament that "Australia did not<br />interrogate prisoners".<br /><br />Barton said he raised concerns with an<br />Australian defense official about the abuse<br />of inmates at Camp Cropper before the<br />mistreatment at Abu Ghraib became public,<br />but no action was taken.<br /><br />He said he had seen prisoners with hessian<br />bags over their heads in solitary<br />confinement in tiny cells, some with<br />abrasions to their faces which US officials<br />said were the result of suspects resisting<br />arrest.<br /><br />Barton said in one case he suspected a<br />prisoner was beaten to death.<br /><br />Barton's claims came a day after an<br />Australian who was recently released after<br />three years detention by the US military as<br />a terrorist suspect said an Australia<br />diplomat watched him being tortured by US<br />soldiers.<br /><br />Mamdouh Habib said in a television<br />interview Sunday that an Australian<br />consular official, who he named, stood by<br />while 15 US and Pakistan soldiers<br />mistreated him at an airport after his<br />arrest in Pakistan in October 2001.<br /><br />Australian Attorney-General Philip Ruddock<br />denied this Monday.<br /><br />During Monday's program, Barton also said<br />that the United States censored<br />intelligence reports about Iraq's<br />possession of weapons of mass destruction<br />(WMD).<br /><br />Barton was seconded by the DIO to UNSCOM,<br />the UN organisation sent to Iraq after the<br />1991 Gulf War to verify the destruction of<br />Iraq's nuclear, chemical and biological<br />weapons, and then served last year with the<br />US Iraq Survey Group tasked with finding<br />WMD after the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq.<br /><br />"I knew that there would be some indicators<br />if they really had a program and there were<br />no indicators whatsoever," Barton said. <br />"So I knew there were no weapons."<br /><br />Barton said the head of the survey group,<br />Charles Duelfer, told him to make his<br />report more vague.<br /><br />"Both Washington and London wanted other<br />things put in and to make it -- I can only<br />use these words -- to make it sexier," he<br />said.<br /><br />Barton said in one instance he inspected<br />two trailers that the CIA believed had been<br />involved in WMD production and concluded<br />they had nothing to do with biological<br />arms.<br /><br />Barton said he resigned after the final<br />version of the Survey Group report left the<br />impression there were still weapons to be<br />found.<br /><br />"We left the impression that maybe there<br />... was WMD out there -- I thought it was<br />dishonest," he said.<br /><br />"I wanted to make it clear to them that I<br />had left because I thought the process was<br />dishonest. I wasn't the popular person<br />when I got back," he said.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17323738274259327790noreply@blogger.com