impunity

In March 2004, the press reported that the UK had signed a new bilateral extradition treaty [with the US], and given the US an undertaking that any person extradited from the US to the UK would not be surrendered to the ICC.

A letter from David Blunkett, the British Home Secretary, to John Ashcroft, the US Attorney General, states: 'the UK would contest any request from the ICC for each surrender, as being incompatible with Article 98 (2) of the Statute of the ICC'.

During the April offensive of 2004 in which attacks erupted all over Anbar province, my unit was involved in a two-day firefight. Shortly after the firefight was underway, the same commander who had given us the mission issued an order that everyone wearing a black dishdasha and a red headscarf was automatically displaying hostile intent and a hostile action and was to be shot. An hour or two later, he gave another order, this time that everyone on the streets was considered an enemy combatant. I can remember one instance after the order was given that afternoon when we came around a corner, and an unarmed Iraqi man stepped out of a doorway. I remember the Marine directly in front of me raising his rifle and aiming at the unarmed man, and then I think just for some psychological reason my brain blocked out the actual shots, because the next thing I remember is stepping over the dead man’s body to clear the room that he came out of.

There were a lot of times where we would be out on foot patrols, and, you know, we were ordered to not allow people to pass through our patrol formation. And unsuspecting villagers would try to pass through or cut through the formation, and we would butt-stroke them, jab them with the muzzle, you know, kick them or whatever, you know, just get them out of the formation. And one time, there was a guy on a bicycle with a basket full of groceries, and he tried to, you know, just roll through. And, you know, we clotheslined him and smashed up his bicycle. For what? You know, passing through the formation. And—but this is like what we were expected to do.

On April 18, 2006, I had my first confirmed killed. This man was innocent. I don’t know his name. I called him “the fat man.” He was walking back to his house, and I shot him in front of his friend and his father...

We were all congratulated after we had our first kills, and that happened to have been mine. My company commander personally congratulated me, as he did everyone else in our company. This is the same individual who had stated that whoever gets their first kill by stabbing them to death will get a four-day pass when we return from Iraq.

On December 9, 2003, according to Army criminal investigation documents, a detainee named Abu Malik Kenami died while in custody at Mosul Airport, after undergoing interrogation tactics... Army personnel told investigators that Kenami, who was arrested a few days before his death, was repeatedly punished “for talking” by being forced to do exhaustive exercises while he had a sandbag hood on his head. On the night of his death, he had his hands zip-tied behind his back and was placed with other detainees in a holding cell and told to sleep. Kenami was found dead the next morning. No autopsy was ever conducted and no official cause of death was determined.

Typical first time interrogation consisted of some kind of heavy metal music really loud, strobe light, lot of yelled questions and stuff like that, until they finally would break down and cry and say “I don’t know anything, I don’t know anything!” If [the detainee] was a particular target of interest that they thought knew something, you know, they’d grab him, punch him—stomach, neck, arms—you know, right in here [indicating the back of the arm, above the elbow], you’d punch them in the back of the elbows—hold your arms up—you’d punch them in the back of the elbow, I guess, so not to leave a mark. . .. Particularly people of interest, they really want to talk to, they would use everything.