How many kuwaiti pows

Publication Date:. Tue, The ousted Baghdad regime had also claimed 1, Iraqis had been missing since the Gulf War. Main category:. Old Categories:. Search form Search. Print Edition Read pdf version Subscribe now. Today, Mr. Attar would be 38 years old and would have spent one-third of his life in an Iraqi prison. I hope that all of them are still alive," says Abdul Hamid al-Attar, Jamal's father.

I am not that much optimistic. As the United States continues to celebrate the quick and safe return of eight American prisoners of war from Iraq, the families of some Kuwaiti POWs taken by Iraqi troops in are still awaiting even a tidbit of information about the condition of their loved ones. And a team of Kuwaiti investigators is working closely with US and British forces in Iraq to locate them. The reward money has generated hundreds of potential leads, but none so far has proved accurate or useful.

Although it is unclear whether any of the missing Kuwaitis are still alive, most of the family members and a significant number of other Kuwaitis believe they are. ONE major concern of family members is that the quick demise of Saddam Hussein's regime may have put their loved ones in even greater danger.

If the Kuwaiti POWs were being held in secret, underground prisons, and the guards ran away to escape US troops, the prisoners may have been left in cells without food and water. As if that isn't upsetting enough, family members must also face inaccurate and speculative press reports. The news swept across Kuwait like a violent sandstorm. Family members rushed to Kuwait's National Committee for the Missing and POWs, and hundreds of others jammed the phone lines - only to learn that the revelations were false.

Such reports are unlikely to stop any time soon. On Monday, an Arabic newspaper in Kuwait published a photograph of a man discovered in an Iraqi psychiatric hospital. He is said to be a Kuwaiti soldier, one of the prisoners. But some of his relatives aren't sure.

Many of the Kuwaiti family members were eagerly expecting that as soon as Hussein's regime collapsed, the Kuwaiti POWs would be on their way home. That didn't happen. It is the Iraqis who know where Iraq's secrets are hidden and who are in the best position to help disclose those secrets.

With regard to military detainees, the Iraqi position violates Article 4 of the Third Geneva Convention, which counts as prisoners of war "members of regular armed forces who profess allegiance to a government or an authority not recognized by the Detaining Power. Kuwaiti detainees who are not affiliated with the armed forces are civilians, protected under the Fourth Geneva Convention. The Occupying Power may intern them only as an exceptional measure, "for imperative reasons of security.

Civilians who are interned must not be transferred outside the occupied State. Iraq has subjected Kuwaitis in their custody to widespread torture and ill-treatment, Middle East Watch concluded from interviews with former detainees and relatives of Kuwaitis who have been killed or detained.

Scores of detainees were summarily executed. Neutral humanitarian organizations, including the ICRC, were denied access to them. Families were usually not notified of arrests; many families recounted to Middle East Watch their arduous, and in many cases fruitless, efforts to obtain information about the status and whereabouts of their relatives. The coalition forces' plan for transferring all POWs, after processing, to Saudi custody, does not alleviate the Detaining Power from responsibility for their treatment.

The Detaining Power -- the country that initially took custody which means the United States in most cases -- remains jointly responsible for the transferred POWs. US officials told Middle East Watch that the US had received Saudi assurances that it would apply the Geneva Conventions, and that an agreement to that effect was concluded between the two governments.

This agreement, however, is classified and these officials declined to comment on its specific provisions. Despite Saudi assurances about respecting the Geneva Conventions, there are grounds for concern about the treatment of Iraqi POWs based on Saudi Arabia's treatment of those Iraqis it captured prior to the opening of hostilities on January 17, as well as its treatment of internal detainees and POWs during earlier wars.

Some appeared on Saudi television, denounced their own governments and praised the Saudi government. Such incidents, if coerced, would stand in violation of the Third Geneva Convention, and might also jeopardize the lives of POWs upon repatriation and the welfare of their families. In some of the publicized internal-security cases, the Saudi government also displayed suspects on television, including foreign nationals, to denounce themselves and their comrades and praise the government, before they were executed.

Ill-treatment of security prisoners is routine and torture is common in Saudi jails as methods of extracting information. More recently, Saudi Arabia reported holding in detention several hundred Iraqi defectors between August 2 and January During that period, the Saudis did not confirm that they considered these Iraqis to be entitled to the rights of POWs or of civilian internees. If the government intended to reject these designations on the grounds that Saudi Arabia and Iraq were not yet in a state of war, it did not articulate this argument.

Instead, officials referred to these Iraqi "defectors" as "military refugees," a term that is not found in the laws of war. The government did not specify the rights to which these interned "refugees" were entitled, and to this date has not provided the ICRC with specific information about whom it was holding, or access to any of them.

Authorities have given out few details about how they were being treated, their precise numbers or whereabouts. The Saudis began to disclose information about the Iraqi prisoners they were holding only after the war started. Saudi authorities persisted in calling this group of prisoners "military refugees" even after the outbreak of hostilities.

For example, on January 19, Brigadier al-Jarbou said, "We will not treat these defecting military men, who before their arrival in the Kingdom got rid of their weapons, as war prisoners but we will treat them as military refugees, providing them with food, lodging and care and otherwise taking care of them as though they were pilgrims in our country".

The Third and Fourth Geneva Conventions set forth minimum conditions of treatment of prisoners of war and civilians in time of war, respectively. A detaining power may provide persons it is holding with better conditions, provided all of the stipulations of the applicable convention are met.

While the ICRC held that before the outbreak of war there was some ambiguity about what humanitarian law was applicable to Iraqi defectors who came into Saudi custody, it maintains that after January 17, these defectors, if interned, should have been accorded the protections of the Fourth Convention, including visits by the ICRC.

The initial Saudi position with regard to Iraqis who defected after Saudi Arabia entered the war. The Third Geneva Convention makes clear that voluntary defection does not absolve the detaining power from its obligations toward POWs. Article 7 states, "Prisoners of war may in no circumstances renounce in part or in entirety the rights secured to them by the present Convention There is also a potential for retaliation against the POWs themselves upon repatriation.

The US makes no such distinctions between deserters, defectors and other prisoners. State and Defense Department officials interviewed by Middle East Watch stated that all Iraqi military personnel who fall into the power of [19] the Allies are treated as enemy prisoners of war EPWs , including defecting or deserting military personnel and "accompanying civilians" as defined by Article 4 of the Third Geneva Convention.

Iraq's Treatment of Allied Prisoners of War. Some 26 Americans and one Saudi are still listed as missing in action. Iraq never allowed the ICRC to visit the prisoners.