Grim Details Emerge in New Detainee Abuse Scandal

Posted on Mar 19, 2006

From the NY Times

A placard from Camp Nama in Iraq, where some detainees were used as paintball targets.

Truthdig says:

The New York Times uncovers the story of a top-secret detention center in Baghdad where American jailers “used detainees for target practice in a game of jailer paintball.”

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N.Y. Times:

As the Iraqi insurgency intensified in early 2004, an elite Special Operations forces unit converted one of Saddam Hussein’s former military bases near Baghdad into a top-secret detention center. There, American soldiers made one of the former Iraqi government’s torture chambers into their own interrogation cell. They named it the Black Room.

In the windowless, jet-black garage-size room, some soldiers beat prisoners with rifle butts, yelled and spit in their faces and, in a nearby area, used detainees for target practice in a game of jailer paintball. Their intention was to extract information to help hunt down Iraq’s most-wanted terrorist, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, according to Defense Department personnel who served with the unit or were briefed on its operations.

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