The US military gave a secret order not to investigate torture by Iraqi authorities, Pentagon logs on the Iraq War leaked by the whistle-blowing website Wikileaks have disclosed. The disclosure was included in almost 400,000 US military files leaked by Wikileaks to The Guardian, New York Times, Der Spiegel and Al-Jazeera.
It reveals that Frago 242 - an abbreviated order - instructed troops not to investigate any breach of the laws of armed conflict, such as the abuse of detainees, unless it directly involves members of the coalition.
Included in the documents are several incidents where allegations of torture were made but no investigation took place. The files describe Iraqis torturing Iraqi detainees, sometimes using electric drills.
The documents also show that 109,000 Iraqis were killed from 2003 to 2009 – 60,000 of those were civilians. More than 15,000 deaths had previously gone unrecorded.
The files also detail how US Apache helicopters killed insurgents who were trying to surrender.
An American military legal adviser told helicopter crew that Iraqi men were valid targets as they could not surrender to aircraft, the logs disclose.
Amid ongoing disruptions to maritime shipping in the Middle East due to the closure of the...
