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The June 29 confrontation between U.S. troops and Iraqi officials at the Interior Ministry has been mentioned in news accounts in the United States and Britain. But details about the prisoners' injuries, the actions of the Oregon Guard and the high-level American decision to leave the injured detainees in the hands of Iraqis has not been previously reported.
For their part, the Oregon guardsmen of the 2nd Battalion, 162nd Infantry left the Interior Ministry confused over their roles in the murky job of nation building. Hendrickson, a Corvallis police officer, refused to discuss details of the incident but said:
"Oregonians should be proud of the actions taken by the 2/162 on June 29."
The Oregonians intervene
When U.S.-led forces drove Saddam Hussein from power in April 2003, the Iraqi army was disbanded, and the country's social order collapsed. Looting was common and petty crime skyrocketed. Local thugs settled scores and exacted bribes with impunity. The rise in crime, coupled with the wave of car bombings and kidnappings, undermined the legitimacy of the provisional government.
In late June, on the eve of the transition of power, Iraq's prime minister in waiting, Ayad Allawi, announced a crackdown on crime. Police and security forces rounded up about 150 people in a seedy east Baghdad neighborhood. Many Iraqis cheered the action, which netted a collection of immigrants and poor Iraqis.
The Iraqi police took those arrested to a compound on the grounds of the Interior Ministry.
On the morning of June 29, Oregon guardsmen set off from their base near the Interior Ministry on routine neighborhood patrols.
Lookouts climbed towers ringing the base, and scouts took their usual positions in hidden vantage points around the neighborhoods of east Baghdad, looking for threats and signs of trouble.
One of the scouts posted in a tall building squinted through his rifle scope at the courtyard adjoining the Interior Ministry. He saw a man in plainclothes standing over a handcuffed and blindfolded prisoner. The guardsman watched through his rifle scope as the man reared back and brought what appeared to be a stick or metal rod down on the prisoner, who was lying on the ground.
The scout took pictures through his scope and considered his options.
The Oregon guardsman did not speak for this story. But others who spoke with the soldier said he radioed battalion headquarters to report the beating. According to one soldier, he said he would begin shooting the Iraqi guards if someone didn't intervene.
That message was passed to Lt. Col. Hendrickson, the battalion's commander, who gathered soldiers from the unit's headquarters company and a translator. Soon after, Hendrickson led a procession of Humvees from the guards' Patrol Base Volunteer to the Iraqi compound.
The squad of armed and armored Oregon guardsmen pushed into the detention yard "basically unchallenged," according to the written account by Southall, a Newark, Calif., middle school teacher who serves with the Oregon Guard.
Southall said he was speaking as an individual and not as a military officer. Senior Army officers have instructed soldiers not to discuss the incident.
According to Southall and other soldiers, the guardsmen began by separating the prisoners from the Iraqi policemen.
Some of the detainees said they had been held for three days with little water and no food. "Many of these prisoners had bruises and cuts and belt or hose marks all over," Southall said. At least one had a gunshot wound to the knee.
"I witnessed prisoners who were barely able to walk," Southall said.
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