Don’t Mistreat Prisoners, U.S. Warns Baghdad

The Bush Administration, acting on increasing fears that Iraq may have captured downed U.S. airmen, warned the Baghdad government Saturday that it will be held responsible for treating any prisoners of war humanely.

The United States does not know whether Iraq has captured any of the 16 allied airmen, including nine Americans, listed as missing in action, a senior Administration official said. But he added, “We clearly have that possibility in mind.”

Iraq has said that its forces have captured several airmen, but it has provided no clear evidence to support the claim. Two Jordanians who traveled from Iraq to neighboring Jordan on Saturday told the Baltimore Sun that they saw two men identified as American prisoners displayed on Iraqi television Friday evening. However, their report could not be immediately confirmed.

The capture by Iraq of American or other allied troops would inject an explosive new issue into the war, including the potential use of prisoners of war as “human shields” around military facilities--much as Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein sought to use foreign civilians detained in Iraq last fall.

The Administration is especially concerned about the issue because Iraq was repeatedly charged with mistreating prisoners of war by the United Nations and the International Red Cross during its eight-year war with Iran, one official said.

In the first direct U.S.-Iraqi diplomatic conflict since the war began last week, the State Department summoned the senior diplomat at the Iraqi Embassy in Washington and handed him an official letter demanding decent treatment for any prisoners.

“The United States and Iraq are parties to the 1949 Geneva Convention relative to the protection of prisoners of war,” State Department spokeswoman Margaret Tutwiler said in a written statement about the exchange. “As such, both nations are obligated to provide humane treatment of POWs.”

She described the letter as “informing Iraq that the United States will abide by its obligations under the Geneva Convention and that it expects Iraq to do the same.”

The letter was handed to the Iraqi diplomat after U.S. and Kuwaiti forces captured 12 Iraqi soldiers on oil platforms in the northern Persian Gulf--the first Iraqi prisoners taken in the war. That incident provided the Administration an opportunity to raise the issue of POWs with Hussein’s government, another official said.

The Iraqi diplomat who received the letter, Khalid Shewayish, said he assured the State Department that his government “will do its best to abide by the international conventions.”

“The American prisoners will be offered the best treatment Iraq can offer,” he said in a telephone interview.

But when he was asked whether his government would pledge not to use any POWs as human shields, Shewayish replied: “I can’t tell you that.

“If the U.S. Administration is concerned about the safety of its pilots, they should also be concerned about civilians in Iraq,” he added. “We are concerned about the safety of our people, civilian people.

“We know there are prisoners, but we don’t have names or numbers,” he said.

Baghdad’s government-run radio reported Saturday that Iraqi forces have shot down more than 100 allied aircraft, a figure considerably higher than the 10 reported by U.S. and allied forces. The radio also said Iraqi military authorities have offered rewards to people who capture downed allied pilots. The rewards were $20,000 for non-Iraqis who capture pilots and 10,000 dinars for Iraqis ($32,000 at the official rate).

Refugees leaving Iraq have reported that Iraqi army patrols are scouring the desert in search of allied airmen. Allied forces have also mounted search-and-rescue missions.

Iraq took about 39,000 prisoners during its long war with Iran--and released most of them only this year, almost two years after the end of the war. (Iran took even more Iraqis--as many as 70,000, according to some estimates.)

In 1983, the International Committee of the Red Cross condemned both countries for “grave and repeated violations of international humanitarian law” in their treatment of POWs. It accused Iraq of violating international norms by not repatriating most of its severely ill and wounded Iranian prisoners.

In 1985, a U.N. study group again reported that both Iraq and Iran were mistreating POWs, and cited Iraq for subjecting prisoners to whippings, beatings with riot sticks and electric shocks. And in 1988, the U.N. team reported that conditions in Iraqi POW camps were “generally acceptable” except for “ill treatment as a consequence of guard violence.”

Article 13 of the Third Geneva Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War says: “Prisoners of war must at all times be humanely treated. Any unlawful act or omission by the Detaining Power causing death or seriously endangering the health of a prisoner of war in its custody is prohibited. . . . Prisoners of war must at all times be protected particularly against acts of violence or intimidation and against insults and public curiosity.”

U.S. military officers say the rule in American wartime practice has been that prisoners should be given a level of food, shelter and medical care at least equal to that provided to U.S. troops in the field.

Salah Mohammed Saleh, one of the two Jordanians who reported seeing on Iraqi television two men identified as captured American pilots, said the men made brief statements saying that “they (the Iraqis) treat them well, that they give them their dinner.”

“They look pretty good,” Saleh said of the Americans.

The two Jordanians, interviewed separately by the Baltimore Sun after they arrived in the same caravan of cars at a desert checkpoint along the Iraqi border, said the interview on Baghdad television took place Friday night. They said the men appeared together. Neither recalled the men’s names.

The State Department letter was handed to Iraq’s Shewayish by Edmund Hall, a relatively low-ranking officer in the Bureau of Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs.

Hall also gave Shewayish a letter formally notifying Iraq that two U.S. Navy hospital ships, the Comfort and the Mercy, are in the Persian Gulf. Under international law, hospital ships, like hospitals on land, are immune from attack.

Shewayish has been acting as the chief of Iraq’s mission here since Ambassador Mohammed Mashat was recalled to Baghdad on Tuesday, the day of the U.N. deadline for Iraq’s withdrawal from Kuwait.

He said he seized the opportunity of his meeting at the State Department--his first substantive exchange with U.S. officials since the war began--to complain that U.S. bombing raids were hitting Iraqi civilians.

“We will prevail,” he declared, “because right is on our side.”