Iraq Violence

Army Reservist Pleads Guilty To Iraqi Prisoner Abuse

October 20, 2004
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- U.S. Army reservist Staff Sgt. Ivan "Chip" Frederick pleaded guilty Wednesday to five charges of abusing Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib prison as a two-day court-martial opened at a U.S. base in Baghdad.
Frederick, 38, of Buckingham, Va., admitted to allegations of conspiracy, dereliction of duty, maltreatment of detainees, assault, and committing an indecent act. He was expected to be sentenced Thursday.
Frederick, a military policeman and a corrections officer in civilian life, is the highest-ranking soldier charged in connection with the Abu Ghraib prisoner scandal, which broke in April with the worldwide publication of photos and videos showing American soldiers abusing and humiliating naked Iraqi detainees.
Under a plea bargain deal, several other charges against Frederick were dropped, according to his attorney Gary Myers.
Frederick is the highest-ranking member of the 372nd Military Police Company charged in the scandal. Six others from the Cresaptown, Md.-based unit also were charged; one, Spc. Jeremy C. Sivits, of Hyndman, Penn., is serving a one-year prison sentence after pleading guilty in May to three counts.
Frederick is alleged to have watched as a group of detainees were made to masturbate while other soldiers photographed them. He also is accused of jumping on a pile of detainees, stomping on detainees' hands and bare feet, and punching one in the chest so hard he needed medical attention.
In addition, Frederick allegedly helped place wires in a detainees' hands and told him he would be electrocuted if he fell off a box.
The proceeding includes witness testimony and other evidence but almost all the witnesses will participate by video teleconference from outside Iraq, Frederick's lawyer said.
Several of the defense witnesses will be in Washington or Europe. One of the government's two witnesses also will testify remotely, from Mannheim, Germany.
The unusual arrangement ensured better cooperation from witnesses who were afraid to visit a war zone after a military appellate court refused to move the proceeding out of Iraq, according to Myers.
Frederick's wife, Martha, is on Myers' witness list. "I don't think anybody in their right mind would be willing to go to Iraq," she said.




British aid official kidnapped in Iraq
Baghdad, October 20

The kidnapping of an Irish-British relief worker sparked international outrage and fears for her safety early on Wednesday, as four Iraqi National Guard troops were killed and scores wounded in a mortar attack on their base.
The latest unrest on Tuesday, which also included twin attacks on northern oil pipelines, came as Britain hinted it would agree to a US request to send some of its troops away from its relatively peaceful centre of operations in the south to more unstable areas.
The move would free up US forces to crack down on insurgents in their stronghold of Fallujah, where US warplanes struck suspected hideouts of wanted Islamist militant Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi.
The international aid group CARE said that it has suspended its operations in Iraq in the wake of Tuesday's kidnapping of Margaret Hassan, head of its Baghdad office.
Hassan, who was born in Ireland and has lived in Iraq for 30 years, has both British and — through her husband — Iraqi citizenship.
Neighbours of Baghdad's CARE office said that the kidnappers could be criminals seeking a ransom or militants trying to pressure London, which is considering the US troop redeployment request.
"As of now, we are unaware of the motive for the abduction," CARE said in a statement. "As far as we know, Margaret is unharmed."
Britain, Ireland and the United States condemned the kidnapping and said they would work for Hassan's release.
"This is someone who has lived in Iraq for 30 years, someone who is immensely respected, someone who is doing their level best to help the country," British Prime Minister Tony Blair said.
Hassan's abduction was a further sign of the insurgents' willingness to strike at workers from foreign aid agencies, following the kidnapping of two Italian aid workers in early September, who were released after a three-week ordeal.
Hostage-takings and attacks against the US-led military and Iraq's fledgling security forces are the trademarks of a bloody insurgency bent on preventing the country from holding national elections by January.
Iraqi national guard troops bore the brunt of the latest onslaught as three mortar rounds exploded on a base in the town of Mashahda north of Baghdad, killing four and wounding 82 other people.
In the capital, one US contractor died and seven other people were wounded, including a US soldier, in a separate mortar and grenade attack on a US army compound.
Kellogg Brown and Root, a subsidiary of the US oil services giant Halliburton, confirmed its employee was killed, bringing to 54 the number of deaths suffered by Halliburton and its subcontractors in Iraq.





Kidnappers Seize a Relief Official Working in Iraq
October 20. 2004

BAGHDAD- The British-Iraqi director of CARE International in Iraq was kidnapped Tuesday as she rode in a car to her office, the latest in a string of Westerners abducted here, and hours later appeared in a televised videotape made by her abductors.
Margaret Hassan, a longtime advocate for Iraq and its people, was pulled from her car by a group of men, who beat her driver and guard with their rifle butts, one of her colleagues said.
Hours later, Al Jazeera, the Arabic-language television network, broadcast a video it had received showing Ms. Hassan seated in a room, looking distraught, as well as close-ups of her identification cards. Unlike previous videos released to television networks, no militants or banners were shown.
The station said that the video was accompanied by a claim of responsibility from an unidentified group and that it had not made any demands.
Ms. Hassan is married to an Iraqi, has lived in Iraq for 30 years and maintains dual nationality. Her husband, Tahseen Ali Hassan, told Al Jazeera from Baghdad, "We haven't heard anything about the group and no one has contacted us," Reuters reported.
The kidnapping comes less than two weeks after a British hostage, Kenneth Bigley, was beheaded by his abductors and is the latest in a wave of kidnappings of foreign nationals, including aid workers, contractors and journalists. Some appear to have been carried out by people whose primary goal is to expel American and British forces from the country, while others appear to be largely motivated by money. It was not immediately clear into which of those categories Ms. Hassan's abductors fell.
Ms. Hassan, 52, was one of the few Western nationals still working for a relief agency in Iraq. All but a handful left the country after the bombing of the United Nations headquarters here in August 2003, and nearly all the rest left last month, after the abduction of two Italian relief workers.
Ms. Hassan is widely respected in Baghdad and speaks fluent Arabic. The BBC reported that she was born in Dublin.
"She has been there three decades, over half her life, and considered herself to be more of an Iraqi national," said Kate Bulbulian, a spokesman for CARE International in London. "That is what her life is."
The British prime minister, Tony Blair, told reporters that he would do whatever he could to free her. But he said the government did not know who had abducted her.
"This is someone who has lived in Iraq for 30 years, someone who is immensely respected, someone who is doing their level best to help the country," he said. "I think it shows you the type of people we are up against."
Mr. Bigley's videotaped decapitation, which was preceded by two videos showing him pleading for Mr. Blair to help spare his life, caused considerable public trauma in Britain.
Ms. Hassan began working for CARE after the Persian Gulf war in 1991, but she has been involved in relief work for at least 25 years.
In Iraq, she heads a 60-member operation that has been working to rebuild health centers and labs, provide medical supplies to hospitals and restore access to clean water, Ms. Bulbulian said.
In 2003, shortly before the war, Ms. Hassan warned members of the BritishParliament that war would exact a huge toll on the country.
"The things that are most important about her is that she is such a huge advocate for Iraq and the Iraqi people and has been for years," said Donna Derr, associate director of emergency response at Church World Service, a relief group. "She always spoke out with great energy about how sanctions had impacted Iraqi citizens and just was a huge advocate. She was someone that did that consistently."
Also in Iraq on Tuesday, at least four Iraqis were killed and 80 were wounded in a mortar attack on an Iraqi National Guard base north of Baghdad. The soldiers had gathered for a head count when the first of seven mortar shells landed in the compound, witnesses said. Only three shells exploded.
Such attacks are aimed at punishing Iraqis who cooperate with the government and demoralizing the survivors. On the grounds of the base, in Mashahidan, about 25 miles north of Baghdad, the prevailing sentiment was not apathy but anger. Such attitudes may explain why, in part, despite the unrelenting attacks by the insurgents, recruits still line up to join the national guard.
"I will not kneel before these terrorists," said Qusay Hassan, a national guard recruit. "If I don't join the army, who is going to defend the country from the terrorists?"
Maj. Walid al-Mashadani, an Iraqi commander, spoke in a similarly defiant tone. "I will keep sacrificing myself for the sake of my country, and I will not give up my work," he said.
In a briefing on Tuesday, the commanders of the army unit in charge of Sadr City, the vast, poor neighborhood in northeast Baghdad, reported progress in disarming the Shiite militia there, saying the weapons buyout program had in some cases collected more of certain types of weapons than American commanders thought the militia had.
"We've had a lot of heavy weapons turned in, and in some categories we've had more than I thought they had," said Col. Abe Abrams, the commander of the First Brigade of the First Cavalry Division, which oversees Sadr City. He cited mortar tubes as an example.
The weapons buyout program was part of a larger agreement earlier this month with Moktada al-Sadr, the rebel Shiite cleric, to disarm his militia and coax him toward the democratic political arena.
But Colonel Abrams said he was not ready to declare victory. "We're not there yet," he said. "The burden of proof remains on the militia."
He said he hoped the exchange would succeed but said he was still wary, given Mr. Sadr's record of broken promises. Of particular concern are the homemade bombs buried around Sadr City, most of them in the roads where they can hit American vehicles.
Maj. Gen. Peter Chiarelli, the commander of the First Cavalry Division, said aides to Mr. Sadr told military officials in the past week that at least 1,000 bombs were still buried in Sadr City.
In London, discussions continued about the American military request that the British government move some of its troops to areas around Baghdad to free American forces for combat missions.
Mr. Blair said he would only agree to deploy troops in areas near Baghdad if it made good military sense. "No decision will be taken to redeploy British troops unless it is clear militarily that that should and can happen," Mr. Blair said after a meeting with the United Nations secretary general, Kofi Annan.
The possibility that Britain may station troops in volatile areas, away from Basra, the British stronghold in the south, has raised concerns among lawmakers in Britain and led to charges that Mr. Blair was seeking to boost President Bush's re-election bid.



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