Ordered to Just Walk Away

Ordered to Just Walk Away
By Mike Francis
The Oregonian.  August 7, 2004.

    When members of the Oregon National Guard attempted to stop the new Iraqi
    government from abusing civilian prisoners, they were told to back off by
    their own generals

The national guardsman peering through the long-range scope of his rifle was 
startled by what he saw unfolding in the walled compound below.

 From his post several stories above ground level, he watched as men in 
plainclothes beat blindfolded and bound prisoners in the enclosed grounds of 
the Iraqi Interior Ministry.

He immediately radioed for help. Soon after, a team of Oregon Army National 
Guard soldiers swept into the yard and found dozens of Iraqi detainees who 
said they had been beaten, starved and deprived of water for three days.

In a nearby building, the soldiers counted dozens more prisoners and what 
appeared to be torture devices – metal rods, rubber hoses, electrical wires 
and bottles of chemicals. Many of the Iraqis, including one identified as a 
14-year-old boy, had fresh welts and bruises across their back and legs.

The soldiers disarmed the Iraqi jailers, moved the prisoners into the shade, 
released their handcuffs and administered first aid. Lt. Col. Daniel 
Hendrickson of Albany, Ore., the highest ranking American at the scene, 
radioed for instructions.

But in a move that frustrated and infuriated the guardsmen, Hendrickson's 
superior officers told him to return the prisoners to their abusers and 
immediately withdraw. It was June 29 – Iraq's first official day as a 
sovereign country since the U.S.-led invasion.

The incident, the first known case of human rights abuses in newly sovereign 
Iraq, is at the heart of the American dilemma here.

In handing over power, U.S. officials gave Iraqis authority to run their own 
institutions – even if they made mistakes. But officials understand that the 
United States will be held responsible when the new Iraqi authorities stumble.

"Iraqis want us to respect their sovereignty, but the problem is we will be 
blamed for leaving the fox in charge of the henhouse," said Michael Rubin, a 
former adviser to the interim Iraqi government who is now a scholar at the 
American Enterprise Institute. "We did not generally put good people in."

An Oregon guardsman who witnessed the day's events, Capt. Jarrell Southall, 
provided The Oregonian with a written account of the incident. Other guardsmen 
interviewed in Iraq corroborated Southall's account on the condition that 
their names not be used.

The U.S. Embassy in Iraq confirmed the incident occurred and disclosed for the 
first time that the United States raised questions about the June 29 
"brutality" with Iraq's interior minister.

The embassy declined to say what response was received in the meeting between 
the minister and James Jeffrey, the second-ranking U.S. diplomat in Iraq, 
saying it would be "inappropriate" to discuss "details of those diplomatic and 
confidential conversations."

The embassy, in a written statement, said U.S. soldiers are "compelled by the 
law of land warfare and core values to stop willful and unnecessary use of 
physical violence on prisoners." The U.S. soldiers involved in the incident, 
it said, "acted professionally and calmly to ease tensions and defend 
prisoners who needed help."

The June 29 confrontation between U.S. troops and Iraqi officials at the 
Interior Ministry has been mentioned in news accounts in the United States and 
Britain. But details about the prisoners' injuries, the actions of the Oregon 
Guard and the high-level American decision to leave the injured detainees in 
the hands of Iraqis has not been previously reported.

For their part, the Oregon guardsmen of the 2nd Battalion, 162nd Infantry left 
the Interior Ministry confused over their roles in the murky job of nation 
building. Hendrickson, a Corvallis police officer, refused to discuss details 
of the incident but said:

"Oregonians should be proud of the actions taken by the 2/162 on June 29."

The Oregonians intervene

When U.S.-led forces drove Saddam Hussein from power in April 2003, the Iraqi 
army was disbanded, and the country's social order collapsed. Looting was 
common and petty crime skyrocketed. Local thugs settled scores and exacted 
bribes with impunity. The rise in crime, coupled with the wave of car bombings 
and kidnappings, undermined the legitimacy of the provisional government.

In late June, on the eve of the transition of power, Iraq's prime minister in 
waiting, Ayad Allawi, announced a crackdown on crime. Police and security 
forces rounded up about 150 people in a seedy east Baghdad neighborhood. Many 
Iraqis cheered the action, which netted a collection of immigrants and poor 
Iraqis.

The Iraqi police took those arrested to a compound on the grounds of the 
Interior Ministry.

On the morning of June 29, Oregon guardsmen set off from their base near the 
Interior Ministry on routine neighborhood patrols.

Lookouts climbed towers ringing the base, and scouts took their usual 
positions in hidden vantage points around the neighborhoods of east Baghdad, 
looking for threats and signs of trouble.

One of the scouts posted in a tall building squinted through his rifle scope 
at the courtyard adjoining the Interior Ministry. He saw a man in plainclothes 
standing over a handcuffed and blindfolded prisoner. The guardsman watched 
through his rifle scope as the man reared back and brought what appeared to be 
a stick or metal rod down on the prisoner, who was lying on the ground.

The scout took pictures through his scope and considered his options.

The Oregon guardsman did not speak for this story. But others who spoke with 
the soldier said he radioed battalion headquarters to report the beating. 
According to one soldier, he said he would begin shooting the Iraqi guards if 
someone didn't intervene.

That message was passed to Lt. Col. Hendrickson, the battalion's commander, 
who gathered soldiers from the unit's headquarters company and a translator. 
Soon after, Hendrickson led a procession of Humvees from the guards' Patrol 
Base Volunteer to the Iraqi compound.

The squad of armed and armored Oregon guardsmen pushed into the detention yard 
"basically unchallenged," according to the written account by Southall, a 
Newark, Calif., middle school teacher who serves with the Oregon Guard.

Southall said he was speaking as an individual and not as a military officer. 
Senior Army officers have instructed soldiers not to discuss the incident.

According to Southall and other soldiers, the guardsmen began by separating 
the prisoners from the Iraqi policemen.

Some of the detainees said they had been held for three days with little water 
and no food. "Many of these prisoners had bruises and cuts and belt or hose 
marks all over," Southall said. At least one had a gunshot wound to the knee.

"I witnessed prisoners who were barely able to walk," Southall said.

The Oregon soldiers moved the prisoners into the shade of a nearby wall, cut 
them loose and handed out water bottles. They administered first aid when 
necessary and gave intravenous fluids to at least one dehydrated prisoner.

At about that time, U.S. military police arrived on the scene and began 
disarming the Iraqi policemen and moving them farther away from the prisoners, 
according to Southall.

Hendrickson demanded through the interpreter to speak with someone in charge 
of the Iraqi policemen. Two men came forward.

"One was a well-dressed obese man who told LTC Hendrickson that there was no 
prisoner abuse and that everything was under control and they were trying to 
conduct about 150 investigations as soon as possible," Southall said. The 
other, smaller man, who Southall said identified himself as "Maj. Ahmed," 
claimed he was responsible for outside security only and that those 
responsible for any prisoner abuse were inside the building.

Hendrickson then led some of the Oregon guardsmen inside to investigate further.

"There were several rooms within the building," Southall said. "One room, 
about 20 by 20 feet squared, contained even more prisoners, all in the same 
sad shape as the prisoners found in the outer area. There were about 78 
prisoners crowded in this little room with no available furniture, no air 
conditioner, no water or food or restrooms available."

Southall said one prisoner claimed the Iraqi police arrested him at a market 
and confiscated his passport even though he had "paid a tremendous bribe" to 
the arresting officer. Others, many of whom appeared to be non-Arab 
shopkeepers and workers, said they had been detained for lack of proper 
identification.

The Oregon guardsmen walked into the adjoining office, where they saw several 
Iraqis sitting around a table smoking cigarettes.

"There was a tightly bound and gagged prisoner crumpled at the feet of these 
men," Southall said. "There was a recently eaten tray of food . . . and a nice 
water cooler that was standing upright in good order. This room was heavily 
air conditioned, which was a stark contrast to the rooms that contained 
prisoners."

The men in the room said they had not beaten anyone. They asserted, however, 
"that these prisoners were all dangerous criminals and most were thieves, 
users of marijuana and other types of bad people," according to Southall's 
account.

As U.S. soldiers continued to fan out in the building, they found more 
bound-and-gagged prisoners, and "hoses, broken lamps and chemicals of some 
variety," which could have been used as torture devices, Southall said.

Hendrickson radioed up the chain of command in the Army's 1st Cavalry 
Division, relaying what he had seen and asking for instructions. As the 
soldiers waited, Southall said, the Iraqi policemen began to get "defiant and 
hostile" toward the Americans.

It wasn't long before the order came: Stand down. Return the prisoners to the 
Iraqi authorities and leave the detention yard.

That order infuriated the Oregon guardsmen, who viewed themselves as 
protectors of the abused prisoners. Nonetheless, the soldiers obeyed. None of 
the soldiers interviewed for this story said which U.S. general gave the order.

In the preceding weeks, the guardsmen had been bombarded with images of 
Americans abusing Iraqi prisoners at the Abu Ghraib detention center. Those 
images, which continue to reverberate through the Arab world, had been 
replayed frequently on the televisions at Patrol Base Volunteer.

The guardsmen who later gave their account of that day said they wanted 
Americans to know about the actions they took to protect unresisting prisoners 
– and that they were ordered by U.S. military officials to walk away.

"The guys were really upset," said one soldier. Said another who talked to 
them immediately afterward, "They were really moved by what they'd seen."

Hendrickson referred questions about the episode to Brig. Gen. Jeffrey Hammond 
of the 1st Cavalry. The story of what happened June 29 "needs to be told," 
Hammond acknowledged when interviewed by The Oregonian. But he said that, 
"because of the nature of this issue, it's being handled at a higher level 
than me."

What happened to the prisoners after the Americans departed is not clear. 
Guardsmen interviewed for this story said they've watched the detention 
facility closely since then, and that many of the prisoners were released soon 
after the raid on the detention facility.

The soldiers said they have not seen any further prisoner abuse occur there.

On July 12, Iraqi Prime Minister Allawi ordered another sweep of poor, 
crime-ridden east Baghdad neighborhoods. Afterward, Iraq said Allawi's 
crackdown had netted more than 500 "killers, robbers, car thieves and kidnappers."

U.S. officials say how Iraq handles the complaints about the roundups will be 
a test of the country's fragile institutions. The new Iraqi constitution bans 
"torture in all its forms, physical or mental," as well as "cruel, inhuman, or 
degrading treatment."

The country now has a minister of human rights. Government ministries have 
also assigned inspectors general to examine allegations of wrongdoing.

The U.S. Embassy's statement cast the United States as a supporting player in 
building a government that is accountable. "The role of the United States," it 
said, "is to assist the sovereign Iraqi government as it continues on its path 
toward providing its citizens the opportunities and protections available 
through a free and representative society."

But Robert Kagan, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for 
International Peace in Washington, said the United States gave the Iraqis 
sovereignty over a country that lacked functioning institutions and faced 
daunting security problems.

"We didn't want to put in enough forces to defeat the insurgency," Kagan said. 
"Now we hand it to the Iraqis, and we're surprised at how they do it?"

Stephen Engelberg of The Oregonian contributed to this report.


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