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By RAPHAEL G. SATTER and MICHAEL WEISSENSTEIN, 
Associated Press Writers


      LONDON (AP) - U.S. forces often failed to follow up on credible
evidence that Iraqi forces mistreated, tortured and killed their
captives in the battle against a violent insurgency, according to
accounts contained in what was purportedly the largest leak of
secret information in U.S. history.


      The documents are among nearly 400,000 released Friday by the
WikiLeaks website in defiance of Pentagon insistence that the
action puts the lives of U.S. troops and their coalition partners
at risk.


      Although the documents appear to be authentic, their origin
could not be independently confirmed, and WikiLeaks declined to
offer any details about them. 


The Pentagon has previously declined
to confirm the authenticity of WikiLeaks-released records, but it
has employed more than 100 U.S. analysts to review what was
previously released and has never indicated that any past WikiLeaks
releases were inaccurate.


      The 391,831 documents date from the start of 2004 to Jan. 1,
2010, mostly by low-ranking officers in the field. In terse, dry
language, they catalog thousands of battles with insurgents and
roadside bomb attacks, along with equipment failures and shootings
by civilian contractors.


      The documents describe a full gamut of a country at war:
shootings at military checkpoints, contractors firing on Iraqis and
savage acts committed on prisoners using boiling water, metal rods,
electric shocks and rubber hoses. A group that counts casualties
from the war said the files also document 15,000 previously
unreported deaths.


      The United States went to war in part to end the brutality of
Saddam Hussein's regime, but the WikiLeaks material depicts
American officers caught in a complicated and chaotic conflict in
which they often did little but report to their superiors when they
found evidence that their Iraqi allies were committing their own
abuses.


      In some cases, the reports show the U.S. military intervening to
protect detainees, but in many others officers did not act on what
their troops described as clear evidence of abuse.


      Allegations of torture and brutality by Shiite-dominated
security forces - mostly against Sunni prisoners - were widely
reported during the most violent years of the war when the rival
Islamic sects turned on one another in Baghdad and other cities.

The leaked documents provide a ground's eye view of abuses as
reported by U.S. military personnel to their superiors, and appear
to corroborate much of the past reporting.


      WikiLeaks said it provided unredacted versions of the reports
weeks ahead of time to several news organizations, including the
New York Times, Le Monde, The Guardian and Der Spiegel. It gave The
Associated Press and several other news organizations access to a
searchable, redacted database hours before its general release
Friday.


      WikiLeaks was criticized for not redacting the names of
informants in a July release of almost 77,000 documents from the
Afghan conflict. This time, it appears to have removed the names of
people, countries and groups from the searchable database.


      WikiLeaks declined to make unredacted files available to the AP,
saying journalists wanting such a copy would have to lodge a
request with the organization, which would respond within a
"couple of days."


      The group describes itself as a public service organization
whose mission is to "protect whistle-blowers, journalists and
activists who have sensitive materials to communicate to the
public."


      WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Julian Assange did not respond to an
e-mail from the AP seeking comment but told CNN that the documents
show "compelling evidence of war crimes," both by the U.S.-led
coalition and the Iraqi government. Such comments from Assange have
drawn controversy in the past.


      Assange rejected claims that his work was endangering anyone.


      The military has a continuing investigation into how the
documents were leaked. An Army intelligence analyst stationed in
Iraq, Spc. Bradley Manning, was arrested in connection with the
leaking other classified material to WikiLeaks.


      Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell called the release
"shameful" and said it "could potentially undermine our nation's
security."


      He said about 300 Iraqis mentioned in the documents are
"particularly vulnerable to reprisal attacks" and that U.S.
forces in Iraq are trying to protect them.


      The documents appeared to be mostly contemporaneous - routine
field accounts that junior officers in units deployed across Iraq
sent to headquarters within Iraq during the course of the war.


      The leaked documents include hundreds of reports from across
Iraq with allegations of abuse. In a typical case from August 2006,
filed by the 101st Airborne, U.S. forces discovered a murder
suspect who claimed that Iraqi police hung him from the ceiling by
handcuffs, tortured him with boiling water and beat him with rods.


      The suspect, detained at the Diyala provincial jail, showed
evidence of abuse, including bruises on his wrists, back, and
knees. The 101st notified the office of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri
al-Maliki, and the case was closed, according to the documents.


      In another case, U.S. soldiers inspecting an Iraq army base
quizzed their Iraqi counterparts about a scab-covered detainee with
two black eyes and a neck which had turned, in the words of the
report, "red/yellow." The prisoner said he had been electrocuted.
Iraqi officials claimed the man received the injuries while trying
to escape, according to the report.


      In many cases, U.S. forces did not appear to pursue the matter
because there was no allegation that coalition forces were
involved. Many reports signed off with: "As coalition forces were
not involved in the alleged abuse, no further investigation is
necessary."


      Other reports describe American attempts to halt abuse by Iraqi
officers.


      In one case, a U.S. State Department employee prevented a
prisoner from being beaten, the documents show.


      One report describes U.S. troops finding evidence of torture at
a police station in Husaybah, including large amounts of blood, a
wire used for electric shocks and a rubber hose. It describes
ensuing visits by the Americans, checking of detention cells and
demands for records on every prisoner.


      "The detention cell officers have been counseled on the severe
negative ramifications to relations with the coalition forces if
human rights are not respected," it reads.


      As a general policy, U.S. forces in Iraq were supposed to take
reasonable action to stop or prevent abuse. Morrell said U.S.
troops are required to report any abuses they witness to their
superiors and that U.S. policy has been to share that information
with the Iraqi government "at the appropriate level."


      U.S. diplomats and military commanders in Iraq have said that
U.S. and allied military forces in Iraq tried to deter abuse,
although U.S. officials do not deny that torture or mistreatment
has occurred.


      Amnesty International called on the U.S. to investigate how much
its officials knew about torture when they handed over thousands of
detainees to Iraqi security forces.


      Some of the reports released Friday are laconic, barely a line
long: "Individual stated she was beaten and raped for not
cooperating with IP (Iraqi police) investigator," one November
2007 report filed from Tikrit said.


      Others offer more a more detailed description of the abuse - and
evidence.


      U.S. Marines patrolling Husaybah found a man in the custody of
Iraqi forces who said he was pulled out of a taxi, blindfolded,
beaten and kept in a room for three days, one of the reports says.
It cites medical documents and pictures of the man's injuries as
evidence that his allegation of abuse is substantiated. "No
further investigation is warranted," it reads.


      A "serious incident report" filed in December 2009 in Tal Afar
said U.S. forces had obtained footage of about a dozen Iraqi army
soldiers - including a major - executing a detainee. 


The video
showed the bound prisoner being pushed into the street and shot,
the Americans said. There was no indication of what happened to the
video, or to the Iraqi major or his soldiers. The incident is
marked "closed."

      The release of the documents comes at a pivotal time for the
U.S. in Iraq as the military prepares to withdraw all 50,000
remaining troops from the country by the end of next year. The U.S.
military had as many as 170,000 troops in Iraq in 2007.


      Violence has declined sharply over the past two years, but
near-daily bombings and shootings continue.


      The situation has been exacerbated by growing frustration among
the public over the failure of Iraqi politicians to form a new
government. Al-Maliki is struggling to remain in power since his
Shiite alliance narrowly lost the March 7 vote to a Sunni-backed
bloc led by rival Ayad Allawi.


      Some of the documents focus on the actions of coalition troops.
A report from February 2007 describes a combat helicopter being
dispatched to destroy a truck carrying a mortar tube that had just
been used in an attack. Two insurgents get into another truck and
drive away, then attempt to surrender after they are fired on. When
they attempt to drive away a second time, a military lawyer advises
the helicopter that "They can not surrender to aircraft and are
still valid targets." The helicopter opens fire, with a missile,
driving the insurgents into a shack before opening fire again and
killing them.


      The reports also document civilian contractors working for the
military firing on cars that drove too close to their convoys,
fearing the vehicles might be driven by suicide bombers.


      The documents also provided new details about one of the most
contentious issues of the war - civilian casualties.


      The U.S. military has recorded just over 66,000 civilian deaths,
according to the documents posted by WikiLeaks. Iraq Body Count, a
private, British-based group that has tracked the number of Iraqi
civilians killed since the war began, said in a press release that
it had analyzed the information and found 15,000 previously
unreported deaths, which would raise its total from as many as
107,369 civilians to more than 122,000 civilians.


      The Iraqi government has issued a tally claiming at least 85,694
deaths of civilians and security officials were killed between
January 2004 to Oct. 31, 2008.


      Associated Press writers contributing to this report included
Fisnik Abrashi in London; Sagar Meghani, Anne Flaherty, Robert
Burns, Pauline Jelinek and Anne Gearan in Washington and Kim Gamel
in Cairo.

Gallery

Military report: Hikers were in Iraq, not Iran, when they were arrested

Pentagon scrambles to assess Wikileaks damage

The documents are among nearly 400,000 released Friday by the
WikiLeaks website in defiance of Pentagon insistence that the
action puts the lives of U.S. troops and their coalition partners
at risk.

Iraq war leaks: No US investigation of many abuses

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