NightBlogger

Dan Froomkin
washingtonpost.com
The two-star general who led an Army investigation into the horrific detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib has accused the Bush administration of war crimes and is calling for accountability. In his 2004 report on Abu Ghraib, then-Major General Anthony Taguba concluded that “numerous incidents of sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses were inflicted on several detainees.” He called the abuse “systemic and illegal.” And, as Seymour M. Hersh reported in the New Yorker, he was rewarded for his honesty by being forced into retirement.

Now, in a preface to a Physicians for Human Rights report based on medical examinations of former detainees, Taguba adds an epilogue to his own investigation. The new report, he writes, “tells the largely untold human story of what happened to detainees in our custody when the Commander-in-Chief and those under him authorized a systematic regime of torture. This story is not only written in words: It is scrawled for the rest of these individual’s lives on their bodies and minds. Our national honor is stained by the indignity and inhumane treatment these men received from their captors. More

aljazeera.net
A Croatian court has sentenced Mirko Norac to seven years in jail over his role in the killing of Serb civilians and prisoners of war. Another former general and co-defendant, Rahim Ademi, was acquitted of all charges. The case was the first to be transferred to Croatia by the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague. Norac, 40, and Ademi, 54, had both been charged with allowing troops under their control to kill 23 civilians and five prisoners of war during the Serbo-Croatian war in 1993.

Marin Mrcela, the court judge, said: “Although he [Norac] knew… that during the action persons who were subordinated to him were setting on fire and destroying houses, destroying property and that civilians were being killed, he did not do anything.” As a commander Norac “should have reacted adequately, but he failed to do so,” he said. More