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Photographs showing British soldiers beating and urinating on an Iraqi prisoner were published … [they are] beating the man with their rifle butts. He was reportedly arrested for theft. Their victim is said to have been left bleeding and vomiting, with a broken jaw and smashed teeth, after an eight-hour ordeal. During it, he was apparently threatened with summary execution … serving soldiers [said] the unnamed captive, against whom no charges were brought, was dumped from the back of a moving vehicle at the end of his torture. It is not known whether he survived.

The human rights charity Amnesty International said it had warned U.S. and British authorities in Iraq that captives were being abused. “We have talked to ex-prisoners, who say when they were taken into custody they were hooded and beaten, sometimes numerous times and subjected on some occasions to psychological torture and acts of sexual humiliation … [the provisional authority] simply have not acted on these reports. There is on the face of it a pattern.”

The six U.S. soldiers facing courts-martial in connection with mistreatment of detainees at an Iraqi prison did not receive in-depth training on the Geneva Conventions … Those soldiers have been reassigned to other duties in Iraq … No courts-martial proceedings against them have taken place.

Earlier here.

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