Bill's Comment Page

Abu Ghraib - more inconvenient details begin to emerge

It seems that the US military authorities may have tried to impose conditions on visits by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to particular cell-blocks at Abu Ghraib, by suggesting that the ICRC schedule its visits, rather than make them unannounced, according to this report in The New York Times.

It is not entirely clear what the reaction of the ICRC was to this suggestion; that organisation traditionally maintains great discretion in disseminating what it reports to detaining powers, as it rightly considers that continuing access to detainees is vital. One wonders whether the military authorities have attempted to exploit this discretion for their own ends. I expect more sordid details will drip-feed into the public domain in coming weeks as those directly implicated seek to mitigate their situations.