U.S. Army Interpreter Who Witnessed Torture in Iraq Shot Herself with Service Rifle
April 26th, 2009Via: Independent:
It is possible that one of the victims of the United States’ torture policy is a young, devout Mormon woman from Arizona called Alyssa Peterson. She was a soldier who not only saw the rough interrogation methods that the US military used on Iraqi prisoners, but was deeply troubled by them. Some weeks after formally protesting about them to her superiors, and asking to be reassigned, she took her gun and killed herself. The cause of her death was kept secret for two years, and the mystery of what Peterson witnessed, and the content of the notes she made, still goes on.
It was in September 2003 at Tal-Afar air base, northern Iraq, that Specialist Peterson, serving with a military intelligence section of the 101st Airborne, came across interrogation methods very different from the ones she had known in training. An Arab-speaker, Peterson was assigned to work as an interpreter at interrogation sessions in a unit known as “The Cage”. After only two nights, she refused to take further part in the sessions and was reassigned. Then, on 15 September, she shot herself with her service rifle. A notebook recording her thoughts was found by her body. Its contents were blanked out in the subsequent official report.
Her family, in Flagstaff, Arizona, were told she had died from a “non-hostile weapons discharge”. It was only after an Arizona reporter, Kevin Elston, investigated, that the army revealed Peterson had killed herself. They refused to say what interrogation she objected to, and maintain that all documents relating to methods used at Tal-Afar have been destroyed.
Because obviously a young, female, devout mormon SOLDIER is going to kill herself for merely witnessing, not perpetrating, something that goes against her conscience strongly enough to make her directly request reassignment. Makes perfect sense, which is also why the records had to be destroyed.