UK Soldiers Trained to Humiliate, Strip and Threaten Iraqis

Condensed from “Humiliate, Strip, Threaten: UK Interrogation Manuals Discovered,” copyright Ian Cobain of the Guardian, published in the Cambodia Daily, Oct. 27, 2010.  All text below is copyright Cobain/the Guardian.

LONDON – The British military has been training interrogators in techniques that include threats, sensory deprivation and enforced nakedness in an apparent breach of the Geneva Conventions.
One PowerPoint training aid created in September 2005 tells trainee military interrogators that prisoners should be stripped before they are questioned.  “Get them naked,” it says.  “Keep them naked if they do not follow commands.”
     A manual prepared in April 2008 suggests that “Cpers” – captured personnel – be kept in conditions of physical discomfort and intimidated.  It also urges enforced nakedness.
More recent training material . . . suggests that interrogators tell prisoners they will be held incommunicado unless they answer questions.
     The 1949 Geneva Conventions prohibit any “physical or moral coercion,” in particular coercion employed to obtain information.
     This material was created for the instruction of “tactical questioners,” who conduct initial interrogations of prisoners of war, as well as for the instruction of servicemen and women from all three branches of the armed forces.
     Next month, at the high court in London, lawyers representing more than 100 Iraqis who were held and interrogated by British forces . . . will argue that there is compelling evidence that they were tortured in a systematic manner.
     The abuse . . . includes 59 allegations of detainees being hooded, 11 of electric shocks . . . 52 of sleep deprivation, 131 of sight deprivation using blackened goggles, 39 of enforced nakedness and 18 allegations that detainees were kept awake by pornographic DVDs played on laptops.