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Bush
and Blair are the main responsible for heinous atrocities against
the Iraqi people. (Reuters)
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By
Samir Haddad, IOL Correspondent
BAGHDAD,
March 23, 2005 (IslamOnline.net) – US President George W. Bush and
British Prime Minister Tony Blair should be tried as war criminals for
their role in the heinous crimes and abuses, from the use of banned
weapons, raping of Iraqi women to the stealing of the body parts of
Iraqi resistance fighters, according to Iraqi legal experts.
During
a conference held in the Iraqi capital Baghdad Tuesday, March 22, the
legal activists broadcast a video tape showing the scale of
destruction caused by US occupation forces during its massive
offensive on the western Iraqi city of Fallujah.
Titled
“War Crimes in Fallujah”, hundreds of photos were shown, revealing
Iraqi resistance fighters being killed and abused by US occupation
soldiers.
The
photos also showed that bodies of the slain Iraqi fighters underwent
brutal surgeries by US soldiers to snatch their body parts.
Some
10,000 US marines and army forces, alongside some 2,000 Iraqi national
guardsmen unleashed a long-expected onslaught on the resistance hub
November 8, capping long nights of massive US raids.
The
successive air strikes have caused huge damage in the western Baghdad
city, with dead bodies littering the streets.
Blatant
Violation
Head
of the conference’s preparatory committee Sabah Nagy Al-Elwani and
Kamal Hamdoun, chairman of the Fallujah bar association, accused US
occupation forces of using banned weapons during its massive onslaught
on the city.
“Practices
of US occupation forces in Fallujah are blatant violation of the
Geneva Conventions and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which
ban the killing of the wounded, captives and civilians,” Hamdoun
said.
“The
American thugs and their collaborators, chiefly Bush and Blair, must
be tried before the International Criminal Court for their grisly
crimes in Iraq.”
An
eyewitness, who escaped Fallujah, had told IslamOnline.net Saturday,
November 13, that bodies of children and injured in the western Iraqi
city were
“deliberately”
crushed by
US tanks.
The
conferees pressed in the final communiqué for setting up a
fact-finding commission to investigate the US crimes in the war-torn
country.
They
also demanded abolishing the immunity granted to US occupation forces
for their practices and violations of human rights.
Sexual
Abuses
In
a related development, the human rights department of the Association
of Muslim Scholars (AMS) had earlier held a conference in Baghdad to
unveil US abuses against Iraqi civilians in Fallujah and other parts
in the war-torn country.
As
a case in point, an Iraqi female in the western Iraqi city was
sexually abused by US occupation soldiers while being held in a
US-administrated jail in Iraq, according to AMS sources.
“As
soon as I returned to my home following the massive US offensive on
the city last November, US soldiers stormed the house and arrested me
after failing to capture my husband,” the Iraqi woman told the AMS
conference.
“Only
Allah knows what they (Americans) have done to me. I was praying for
death to escape their abuses.”
The
Iraqi female was later released only after her husband gave himself up
to the US occupation forces.
According
to Iraqi sources, there are at least 15 Iraqi woman detainees still in
US-run detention camps across Iraq.
A
freed detainee told the Arabic-language Al-Wasat, a weekly
supplement of the respectable London-based Al-Hayat newspaper,
about her ordeal inside a US prison and how she had been
gang-raped
by US forces.
Beheaded
The
conference also included testimonies of several Iraqi citizens on the
usage of poisonous gases by US occupation forces during attacks in the
US-occupied country.
“During
a US attack on the Taremiah neighborhood in the Iraqi capital, I was
captured along with another Iraqi citizen called Ahmed who was
beheaded by the US occupation soldiers. They tried to kill me too but
I miraculously escaped death after they thought I was dead,” said
Mohamed Najam Al-Meshhedani.
A
US shot dead an
unarmed
Iraqi prisoner
while he laid prone against a mosque wall in Fallujah.
US
NBC pool correspondent Kevin Sites, who filmed the grisly scene, said
three
other
wounded Iraqi prisoners, who did not appear to be armed or threatening
in any way, were killed in the mosque.
The
New York-based Human Rights Watch condemned the mosque killing, saying
it was tantamount to a “war crime.”
Two
US human rights groups filed a lawsuit against US Secretary of Defense
Donald Rumsfeld for his “direct responsibility” in the illegal
torture and prisoners' abuses.
Documentation
“Such
abuses were documented after many Iraqi citizens complained,” AMS
spokesman Mothana Harith al-Dari told the conference, which was
attended by representatives of several human rights groups.
He
stressed that AMS surveyed several areas in the Iraqi capital to
register names of Iraqis killed by US occupation forces during attacks
on these areas.
In
June, the HRW issued a report entitled
“The
Road To Abu Ghraib”
linking the abuse of detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo to
policies adopted by US President George W. Bush in his “war on
terror”.
The
Iraqi abuse scandal in Abu Ghraib exploded onto the world stage on
April 29 after the CBS news network published several
graphic
photos of
Iraqi detainees tortured and sexually abused by American soldiers at
the infamous Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad.
