Top U.S. General: Iraq Executed POWs
Wednesday, March 26, 2003
WASHINGTON Iraq has executed prisoners of war, the Pentagon's No.
2 general said Wednesday night as he listed a series of what he
called unprecedented Iraqi violations of the laws of war.
Marine Gen. Peter Pace, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,
apparently was referring to some of the U.S. Army troops captured
Sunday by Iraqi forces in the city of An Nasiriyah. Iraqi state
television later showed video footage of five living POWs and the
bodies of at least five U.S. soldiers.
Defense officials who have viewed the tape have said privately that
several of the bodies had execution-style gunshot wounds to their
heads.
Intelligence officials have received one uncorroborated report
indicating that at least some of the dead soldiers had been
captured alive and executed in public, a senior Pentagon official
said Wednesday on condition of anonymity. The information -- which
did not come from an intercepted communication, as the New York
Times reported Wednesday -- is of undetermined reliablility, the
official said.
Pace, in a televised interview, said Iraqis had engaged in many
atrocities in the six days since the war began.
"They have executed prisoners of war. ... They have used women and
children as human shields and they have pretended to surrender and
then opened fire," Pace said. "I've never seen anything like this.
It's disgusting."
Pentagon officials said Wednesday the International Committee of
the Red Cross still had not been granted access to the five Army
soldiers captured Sunday and the two Army helicopter pilots
captured a day later. All seven were questioned in front of Iraqi
video cameras and the tapes were later played on Iraqi television
-- which U.S. officials say violated Geneva Convention prohibitions
on subjecting POWs to public humiliation.
The first group of Army soldiers captured were part of a
maintenance convoy which made a wrong turn in the south-central
Iraqi town of An Nasiriyah on Sunday and was attacked by Iraqi
forces. Of that unit, the Army says, two soldiers are confirmed
dead, five are confirmed as prisoners of war and eight are
missing.
Pentagon officials say the prisoners thought to have been executed
are among the eight formally listed as missing. Final
determinations that they are dead and how they were killed can only
happen once the bodies are located, officials said.
