{"id":2342,"date":"2008-01-31T21:35:29","date_gmt":"2008-01-31T21:35:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/war-terrorism\/surge-in-war-crimes\/2342\/"},"modified":"2008-01-31T21:35:29","modified_gmt":"2008-01-31T21:35:29","slug":"surge-in-war-crimes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/war-terrorism\/surge-in-war-crimes\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;Surge&#8221; in War Crimes?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>U.S. Army unit Probed for killing Iraqi prisoners<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The US Army has opened a criminal investigation into an allegation of &#8220;battlefield deaths&#8221; of detainees captured by a US brigade that operated last year in southwest Baghdad, an army spokesman said.<\/p>\n<p>The allegation involved the 2nd Combat Brigade of the 1st Infantry Division, which returned to its home base in Schweinfurt, Germany in November after a 15-month tour in Iraq, said Paul Boyce, an army spokesman.<\/p>\n<p>Boyce said the investigation was triggered by &#8220;what appears to be an allegation of at least one, and likely more battlefield deaths involving captured detainees.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The allegation is that this may in fact be some sort of a battlefield crime and we are pursuing this to determine the facts, the circumstances and further investigative leads,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>Boyce said the 1st Infantry Division&#8217;s 2nd Combat Brigade operated in the Rashid district of southwest Baghdad during its tour.<\/p>\n<p>He said the alleged deaths did not occur in a detention facility but rather at what the military calls &#8220;the point of capture.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The deaths are alleged to have occurred at least six months ago, he said.<\/p>\n<p>He provided no other details on the specifics of the allegation, which came to the army&#8217;s attention last week.<\/p>\n<p>The Army&#8217;s Criminal Investigation Command is conducting the investigation, he said, adding that the probe was still in its initial stages and no charges have been brought.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Usually, these things come to light when somebody talks about it, a soldier in the unit, that sort of thing,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t want to rule out the scope and the extent of the situation quite yet, until we better understand what we are dealing with,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>Stars and Stripes, a military newspaper that first reported on the investigation, said the Schweinfurt-based unit saw heavy fighting in Iraq, suffering 59 deaths.<\/p>\n<p><!-- extra digg icon --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>U.S. Army unit Probed for killing Iraqi prisoners The US Army has opened a criminal investigation into an allegation of &#8220;battlefield deaths&#8221; of detainees captured by a US brigade that operated last year in southwest Baghdad, an army spokesman said. The allegation involved the 2nd Combat Brigade of the 1st Infantry Division, which returned to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[81],"class_list":{"0":"post-2342","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-war-terrorism","7":"tag-law"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2342","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2342"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2342\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2342"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2342"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2342"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}