Courtesy Of: Scotsman.com
Original Source: Reuters
By Rob Taylor
Last updated: 01-Feb-07
07:13 GMT
Scotsman.com
CANBERRA (Reuters) - Guantanamo Bay prison inmates were shown photographs of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein hanging from a rope following his execution, lawyers for Australia's only Guantanamo inmate said on Thursday.
In an attempt to intimidate inmates, the lead American lawyer for Australian detainee David Hicks said, pictures of Saddam's trial were also shown to detainees, along with articles about executions carried out by extremists.
"Displaying photos of condemned men to those who may be facing capital charges can only be interpreted as an attempt to intimidate and compel submission under a threat of death and mentally torture an already abused detainee population," Joshua Dratel said in a statement to media in Australia.
...Dratel said photos of Saddam's 2006 trial were on an exercise yard poster, which also read: "Because Saddam chose not to co-operate and not tell the truth, because he thought by lying he would get released, for that reason he was executed".
Speaking after visiting Hicks at Guantanamo Bay ahead of charges to be laid against the Australian before a late-February deadline demanded by Canberra, Dratel said the photos and articles breached Geneva Conventions protecting prisoners of war.
One of the articles centred on the accidental decapitation of a prisoner while being hanged -- possibly Saddam's half-brother Barzan Ibrahim who was executed in Baghdad last month.
"This display is another vivid example of the coercive and dehumanising environment that exists at (Guantanamo)," Dratel and Hicks's Australian lawyer Michael Griffin said.
"Unfortunately it demonstrates that the lessons of Abu Ghraib and the humane treatment of detainees have not been learnt."
(c) Reuters 2007. All rights reserved.
This article:
http://news.scotsman.com/latest_international.cfm?id=168082007
Original Source: Reuters
By Rob Taylor
Last updated: 01-Feb-07
07:13 GMT
Scotsman.com
CANBERRA (Reuters) - Guantanamo Bay prison inmates were shown photographs of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein hanging from a rope following his execution, lawyers for Australia's only Guantanamo inmate said on Thursday.
In an attempt to intimidate inmates, the lead American lawyer for Australian detainee David Hicks said, pictures of Saddam's trial were also shown to detainees, along with articles about executions carried out by extremists.
"Displaying photos of condemned men to those who may be facing capital charges can only be interpreted as an attempt to intimidate and compel submission under a threat of death and mentally torture an already abused detainee population," Joshua Dratel said in a statement to media in Australia.
...Dratel said photos of Saddam's 2006 trial were on an exercise yard poster, which also read: "Because Saddam chose not to co-operate and not tell the truth, because he thought by lying he would get released, for that reason he was executed".
Speaking after visiting Hicks at Guantanamo Bay ahead of charges to be laid against the Australian before a late-February deadline demanded by Canberra, Dratel said the photos and articles breached Geneva Conventions protecting prisoners of war.
One of the articles centred on the accidental decapitation of a prisoner while being hanged -- possibly Saddam's half-brother Barzan Ibrahim who was executed in Baghdad last month.
"This display is another vivid example of the coercive and dehumanising environment that exists at (Guantanamo)," Dratel and Hicks's Australian lawyer Michael Griffin said.
"Unfortunately it demonstrates that the lessons of Abu Ghraib and the humane treatment of detainees have not been learnt."
(c) Reuters 2007. All rights reserved.
This article:
http://news.scotsman.com/latest_international.cfm?id=168082007
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