tinyurl.com/2sdf9 -> www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-iraq-raids.html
Iraqis Say US Soldiers Steal During House Raids By REUTERS Published: May 25, 2004 Filed at 10:17 am ET BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Besides the prisoner-abuse scandal, there is another, more pervasive problem Iraqis say they suffer daily at the hands of US troops -- theft of money and other property during aggressive American raids.
But Iraqis say the raids often target the wrong people, are carried out in an aggressive, even destructive manner and complain that lifetime savings, precious jewelry and family heirlooms are regularly stolen in the process. Adel Alami, a lawyer with Iraq's Human Rights Organization, says the majority of the cases his group deals with involve Iraqis seeking compensation for lost property and cash. It's a huge problem, almost everyone has something to say about gold, money and other valuables going missing and they don't believe they'll ever get them back,'' he told Reuters. Last year, Wajiha Daoud, an 80-year-old widow, had her house in a middle-class neighborhood of old Baghdad raided by US troops who said they had high-level intelligence'' that the home was a safe house for Saddam Hussein loyalists. During the raid, which lasted around 30 minutes, the woman and her family, who live across the street, were kept outside. When we went back in, the house was half-destroyed,'' said her son Musadaq Younis, an English-speaking computer technician. All the furniture was slashed with knives, tables and chairs were broken and the windows smashed. When Younis' sister arrived she immediately rushed upstairs to a small cabinet and found it empty -- $5,000 in cash, gold and other jewelry, including her wedding ring, were missing. The family filed a claim against the US military -- a complex process that took nearly three months to get a reply. In response, the military said the raid was justified and no compensation was owed. Confiscation and theft during raids is rampant,'' said Stewart Vriesinga, a coordinator for Christian Peacemaker Teams, a non-profit group that documents abuses in Iraq. Soldiers don't seem to understand the Iraqi custom of not using banks -- a lot of people keep fairly substantial sums of money at home. A soldier from Kentucky or wherever sees that and thinks the person must be up to no good, so he takes it. but it's enough to have serious socio-economic consequences,'' he told Reuters. But there's also the possibility of Iraqis making malicious claims,'' said Captain Mark Doggett. Doggett said when are items are confiscated, a receipt is always given. If the owner is eventually found to be innocent, items can be recovered, he said. But many people who have had property confiscated say no receipts were written. Vriesinga estimates that in nine out of 10 raids, the home owners raided are innocent, but suffer huge consequences. If the husband is hauled off as a suspect, the family has lost its breadwinner and often lost its savings and cash as well,'' he said, citing a recent Red Cross report which referred to up to 90 percent of Iraqi detainees being innocent. If Iraqis file complaints, it comes down to a case of the Iraqi suspect's word against the American soldier's, he said.
|
http://csua.com/feed/