ACLU Makes Navy Documents On Iraqi Civilian Deaths Public
Thursday, July 3rd,
2008
This week, the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) released thousands of pages of
Navy documents detailing investigations into the deaths of Iraqi civilians killed by Coalition
Forces in Iraq - one of whom was Mohammed al-Sumaidaie, the cousin of the Iraqi ambassador
to the U.S., Samir al-Sumaidaie.
The docs were released due to a June 2006 filing by the
ACLU of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). The ACLU said that the accounts in the
file are a reminder that "many charges of war crimes in Iraq have not seen the light of day."
In addition, the ACLU charges that the Defense Department's policies are "designed to control information
about the human costs of war," including: banning photographers on US military bases from
covering the arrival of caskets containing the remains of US soldiers killed overseas; paying
Iraqi journalists to write positive accounts of the U.S. war effort; inviting U.S. journalists to
embed with military units but requiring them to submit their stories for pre-publication review;
erasing journalists' footage of civilian deaths in Afghanistan; and refusing to disclose statistics
on civilian casualties.
The documentation has been made public and is posted
here. Additionally, as part of the ACLU's lawsuit, more than 100,000 pages are posted here
detailing prisoner abuse in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo Bay. Probably not something to read
right before bedtime.
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