RAED JARRAR, jarrar.raed at gmail.com
An Iraqi-American blogger and political analyst based in Washington D.C., Jarrar was in recently in Iraq. He said today: “This week, a U.S. diplomatic cable that was made public by WikiLeaks confirmed the news that in March 2006 U.S. troops handcuffed then executed eleven Iraqi civilians in Al-Ishaqi, north of Baghdad, then called in an airstrike to destroy the evidence. The eleven victims were Mr. Faiz Khratt Khalaf (age 28), his wife Sumay’ya Abdul Razzaq Khuther (22), their three children Hawra’a (5) Aisha (3) and Husam (5 months old), Faiz’s mother Ms. Turkiya Majeed Ali (75), Faiz’s sister Ms. Faiza Kharrat Khalaf (30) and her two children Asma’a Yousif Ma’arouf (5) and Usama Yousif Ma’arouf (3), a visiting relative Ms. Iqtisad Hameed Mehdi (24) and Faiz’s friend Aziz Khalil Jarmout (22).
“Three months after the massacre, the U.S. military dismissed the news of this crime as ‘absolutely false.’ The military’s own investigation concluded that troops had been fired on and they returned fire and called in air support, which destroyed the house, killing one militant and ‘up to nine collateral deaths.’
“This massacre was covered by the Iraqi media five years ago and, like many other incidents, was ignored in the U.S. mainstream media. From an Iraqi perspective, this incident is not exceptional: this is the reality of Iraq under U.S. military occupation. It is estimated than more than one million Iraqi civilians have been killed in the last eight years as a direct and indirect result of the U.S. military intervention.
“The leaked cable also shows that the UN is appallingly delicate with the U.S. government. Rather than condemning the attack and calling for an immediate independent inquiry at a time that the U.S. was operating in Iraq under a UN mandate, the Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary and Arbitrary Executions’ letter to the U.S. mission practically apologizes to U.S. officials for raising the issue. The UN’s refusal to fulfill its mission of investigating such crimes, as well as the U.S. military’s cover-up of the incident, underscores the need for independent inquiries into this and all other crimes committed during the eight-year U.S. occupation.
“As the December 31 deadline for the withdrawal of all U.S. troops draws near, President Obama must stand by his promise to end this war and the atrocities it has brought to both nations.”
See McClatchy’s report “WikiLeaks: Iraqi Children in U.S. Raid Shot in Head, U.N. Says.“
