[Tezcatlipoca]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story...432691,00.html

Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington
Tuesday March 8, 2005
The Guardian

Soldiers from the 3rd Infantry Brigade - the same military unit whose troops fired on the car carrying the freed Italian hostage Giuliana Sgrena - were under investigation last year for raping Iraqi women, US army documents reveal.

Four soldiers were alleged to have raped the two women while on guard duty in a Baghdad shopping precinct. A US army investigator interviewed several soldiers from the military unit, the 1-15th battalion of the 3rd Infantry Brigade - but did not locate or interview the Iraqi women involved - before shutting down the inquiry for lack of evidence.

Transcripts of the investigation, obtained by the Guardian from the American Civil Liberties Union, show only the most cursory attempts by the investigator to establish whether the women were raped.

The soldiers claimed the women were prostitutes, or denied any knowledge of any one in their unit having sex while deployed in Iraq. The statements went largely unchallenged. "I know the women were Iraqi. I however don't know if they were raped, or were prostitutes, or just wanted sex," one soldier told investigators.

(snip)

Oh, & more prisoner abuse allegations too....this time a home-made DVD, rather than photos...

The documents also provide further evidence that US troops have destroyed evidence of abuse, in order to avoid a repetition of last year's Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal.

In the latest such episode, an officer is believed to have destroyed a home-made DVD showing members of the Florida National Guard abusing Iraqi detainees, and manipulating the hand of a dead Iraqi to wave at the camera. Another scene shows a soldier hitting a bound prisoner on the head with a rifle butt.

At least one of the soldiers - a sergeant - was identified from the DVD. However, no criminal charges were brought in that investigation after military lawyers concluded that the DVD showed "inappropriate rather than criminal behaviour".

The DVD, which the soldiers called Ramadi Madness, was discovered by a civilian public affairs employee at the unit's headquarters in West Palm Beach, Florida. The DVD was later destroyed by an officer who had learned the case was under investigation.