Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, March 20, 1993 TAG: 9303200186
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: The Washington Post
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
REPORT DETAILING IRAQI WAR CRIMES IS RELEASED
The Clinton administration Friday released a grisly catalog of Iraqi war crimes during the occupation of Kuwait, accusing Iraqi troops of systematically torturing Kuwaiti civilians by penetrating body parts with electric drills, soaking people in acid and suspending them from ceilings for beatings or dismemberment.Much of the torture was carried out at two dozen organized "torture sites" in police stations and sports facilities in Kuwait City, according to the report. The document was completed last year by U.S. Army investigators at the behest of the State Department and provided Friday to the United Nations Security Council.
The Bush administration had refused to declassify the document out of concern that it would damage President George Bush's re-election bid by underscoring his administration's failure to drive Iraqi President Saddam Hussein from power, according to a former senior administration official who was privy to the decision to withhold the document.
The Clinton administration, meanwhile, has just completed a review of policy toward Iraq and has decided to keep up the pressure on Baghdad. Administration officials are eager to dispel suggestions by the new president shortly before his inauguration that he might consider a softer line toward Saddam, who clearly had been hoping for a rapprochement. Since Inauguration Day, Saddam has avoided provocations with U.S. military aircraft enforcing "no-fly zones" over northern and southern Iraq.
The general scope of atrocities committed by Iraqi forces in Kuwait has been reported widely and, last year, in the Bush administration's formal "lessons learned" report on the 1991 Persian Gulf War. But the document released Friday represents the most comprehensive U.S. government account so far, drawing on hundreds of interviews with rape and torture victims, photographic evidence and videotapes of grave sites and instruments of torture.
The report concluded that in Kuwait City alone, "a total of 1,082 Kuwaiti civilian deaths could be directly attributed to Iraqi criminal conduct. The deaths include 120 babies left to die after being removed from incubators that were taken to Iraq, 153 children between the ages of 1 and 13 killed for various reasons and 57 mentally ill individuals killed. . . ."
In theory, the submission of the report to the Security Council could lead to convening of a formal U.N. war crimes tribunal against Iraq, but it was not clear Friday whether the Clinton administration intends to urge that step.