Polish officials on Friday strongly denied the possibility their troops mistreated Iraqi prisoners, saying there was no substance to the claim that surfaced in the US investigation of abuse at Abu Ghraib prison.
Major General Mieczyslaw Bieniek, the commander of the Polish-led multinational force in Iraq, said there was no truth to the allegation that Polish troops had injured two Iraqi prisoners, stressing that conditions at a Polish-run detention center were both legal and humane.
Charges of abuse are "total garbage," Bieniek said in an interview from Iraq on TVN24, an all-news station. "I am deeply outraged."
Still, he said, the allegations would not produce a rift in the coalition, and Poland would continue its command of the 6,200-soldier force as usual.
Bieniek stressed that an internal army investigation had turned up no cases of abuse. That investigation was launched as a precaution after the reports of US abuse at Abu Ghraib surfaced.
Records of interviews by Army Criminal Investigation Division agents from the Abu Ghraib investigation include new allegations that coalition forces had beaten prisoners before turning them over to US forces.
Sergeant Antonio Monserrate, an Army interrogator, told investigators that two captives had been "injured by the Polish Army." Monserrate referred to the inmates by their prison identification numbers but did not provide any further details.
That report sparked anger in military circles and among regular Poles -- both against the Associated Press (AP) for reporting the allegations and against the US more generally.
Retired soldier Kazimierz Nagorka, for example, called the AP to express his outrage.
"My whole life I have been very pro-American, but now I doubt my feelings," the 50-year-old said. "How can you say such things? Now the world falsely believes that we Poles do the same horrible things that Americans and others do."
Polish Prime Minister Marek Belka, who worked for six months in Iraq under US administrator Paul Bremer to revive the nation's economy, said he never saw any signs of prisoner mistreatment by Polish troops.
"This could not have happened," Belka said.
Bieniek described the Polish-run detention center in Iraq -- located in an air-conditioned tent in Hillah -- as an unlikely site for abuse. The center only holds Iraqi prisoners for up to 72 hours before they are either released or handed over to Iraqi police or US authorities -- and Bieniek stressed that Polish troops never carry out interrogations.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
RSS