We Demand Accountability

The Australian government was alerted to the mistreatment of prisoners in Iraq last October and made a conscious decision to ignore it. An army officer, Major George O'Kane, who served at a military headquarters in Baghdad, drafted a response to the Red Cross concerns in which he said "some prisoners would not get full Geneva conventions protections" and "unannounced Red Cross visits to jails would no longer be allowed".

The opposition is now calling Major O'Kane to appear before a Senate committee next week. Labor says Major George O'Kane could clarify exactly when Australian authorities knew about prisoner abuse in Iraq.

The Sydney Morning Herald says that "the Defence Minister, Robert Hill, appears to have misled Parliament over the Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal after the Prime Minister contradicted his account of when Australians first knew of the mistreatment."



PM Johnny "Rotten" Howard appears to be in a bit of a panic. After screaming in parliament that no Australian soldiers "have been involved in any way in the abuse of Iraqi prisoners" (but that's not the question, is it?), Howard told press conference about how important it was for the government to outlaw gay marriages.

As the Herald says, "To leave questions hanging over what the military knew is damaging. In the national interest, the Prime Minister has an obligation to get to the bottom of who knew what, and when."