I wonder why we are not winning hearts and minds in the middle east in spite of Geroge Bush and Karen Hughes’ best efforts.
U.S. accused of jailing women to find relatives
Their husbands and fathers were sought as terrorist suspects
By NANCY A. YOUSSEF
Knight Ridder Tribune News
BAGHDAD, IRAQ – The U.S. Army has been detaining Iraqi women to help track down husbands or fathers who are suspected terrorists, according to documents released Friday and an interview with a female detainee who was released Thursday after four months in prison.
A series of e-mails written by U.S. soldiers and an internal Army memo, which were released Friday in response to a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union, describe two cases of women who were imprisoned because U.S. officials wanted information about their husbands.
The Iraqi woman said Friday that she and eight other female detainees in her cell had often talked among themselves. She discovered that all of them were being held because U.S. officials had suspected their male relatives of having ties to terrorism. In some cases, men in their families were killed during U.S. raids, the woman alleged.
The woman, whose voice trembled as she told her story, said she didn’t want to be named because she feared that she or a member of her family would be arrested.
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