- WASHINGTON (AFP) -- Amnesty
International said today US forces appeared to be destroying houses in
Iraq as a form of collective punishment for attacks on US troops and warned
that that would violate the Geneva Convention.
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- A Pentagon spokesman emphatically denied it.
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- The human rights group said it had sent a letter to US
Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld demanding clarification whether the demolitions
as a form of collective punishment or deterrence was officially permitted.
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- "If such proved to be the case, it would constitute
a clear violation of international humanitarian law," the group said
in the letter.
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- A Pentagon spokesman acknowledged that US forces had
destroyed "facilities", including houses, in the course of recent
military operations but emphatically denied they were intended as a form
of collective punishment or retaliation for attacks.
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- "We have destroyed facilities that were being used
by former regime loyalists or terrorists either as a place from which to
stage attacks, or as a safe house to avoid capture, or as a facility from
which to construct improvised explosive devices," said Lieutenant
Colonel Jim Cassella.
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- "The idea that this is some type of collective punishment
is just absolutely without merit," he said.
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- "In some cases there have been incidents where these
thugs have been using homes to do this, and in all cases where that happened
the people who lived there were evacuated and then afterwards were relocated,"
he said.
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- "But what we are doing here is attacking the terrorist
infrastructure to deny them the ability to plan, organise and initiate
attacks," he said.
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- Amnesty International said it had learned that 15 houses
were destroyed in the Tikrit area since November 16 in military operations.
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- It said in one case a family in the village of al-Haweda
was reportedly given five minutes to evacuate their house before it was
razed by tank and helicopter fire.
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- The organisation said it received reports of a November
10 incident in which soldiers gave people living in a farmhouse near the
town of al-Mamudiya south of Baghdad 30 minutes to leave. The farmhouse
was bombed and destroyed later in the day by F-16 fighters, it said.
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- It said the bombing appeared to have been carried out
in retaliation for an attack several days earlier on a convoy in which
a US officer was killed.
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- Six people were arrested at the farmhouse a day after
the convoy attack when weapons were found in a truck outside. More weapons
and ammunition were said to have been found in a search of the house, Amnesty
said.
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- "It seems that the destruction of the Najim family
house was carried out as collective punishment and not for 'absolute military
necessity'," Amnesty said.
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- The organisation noted that Article 33 of the fourth
Geneva Convention states: "Reprisals against protected persons and
their property are prohibited."
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- Article 53 states: "Any destruction by the occupying
power of real or personal property belonging individually or collectively
to private persons, or to the State, or to other public authorities, or
to social or cooperative organisations, is prohibited, except where such
destruction is rendered absolutely necessary by military operations."
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- Copyright 2003 News Limited.
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- http://www.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,7942137%255E1702,00.html
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