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William "Bill" Barloon (born 1956) is an American who was arrested in 1995, during President of Iraq Saddam Hussein's rule, along with his friend David Daliberti and fellow Americans Chad Hall and Kenneth Beaty, accused of illegally entering Iraq. [1]
Bill Barloon is from New Hampton, Iowa. [2] He married Linda Barloon,a businesswoman. [3] As of 1995, the couple had three children.
William Barloon and David Daliberti were working as civilian contractors for the United States Navy as aircraft mechanics in Kuwait when they were arrested on March 13, 1995, after they crossed the Kuwaiti-Iraqi border, allegedly without knowing it. [4] They were held at Abu Ghraib prison. While at Abu Ghraib, they were visited by their wives, who tried unsuccessfully to get their husbands freed. [5]
On March 25, Barloon and Daliberti were sentenced to 8 years in prison. Soon afterwards, such political persons as Polish diplomat Ryszard Krystosik, and future New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson visited them in prison to try to put international pressure into their case and have them released. Krystosik reported them to look good health-wise but in difficult conditions. He also said that Barloon and Daliberti were living in a cell with 200 other prisoners and only 3 holes to be used as toilets. [6]
According to Barloon and Daliberti, both men had heart trouble, and were treated fairly by doctors at a medical facility during their imprisonment. [7]
On Sunday, July 16, 1995, Barloon and Daliberti were released after Bill Richardson had met with Hussein for one hour. They were released on humanitarian grounds, but American officials speculated that Hussein was trying to make the United Nations relent on their international economic sanctions against Iraq.
Both Barloon's and Daliberti's wives were personally told by telephone by United States President Bill Clinton that their husbands had been released. Bill Barloon's wife Linda was on a business trip to Singapore at the time of their release. [8]
Barloon went to Amman, Jordan on July 18, along with Richardson and Daliberti. From Amman, Barloon boarded a Gulf Air flight that took him to Manama, Bahrain, from where he flew to Kuwait City, Kuwait. [9]
In 2001, a Washington D.C. federal judge determined that Barloon was to be awarded 2.9 million dollars and his wife Linda 1.5, from the Iraqi government, for his incarceration. [10]
Sulaiman Jassem Sulaiman Ali Abu Ghaith is a Kuwaiti regarded as one of al-Qaeda's spokesmen. He is married to one of Osama bin Laden's daughters. In 2013, Gaith was arrested in Jordan and extradited to the United States. In 2014, he was convicted in a U.S. federal court in New York for "conspiring to kill Americans and providing material support to terrorists" and sentenced to life imprisonment He is serving his sentence at the federal ADX Florence prison in Colorado.
Ricardo Sanchez is a former lieutenant general in the United States Army.
Abu Ghraib prison was a prison complex in Abu Ghraib, Iraq, located 32 kilometers (20 mi) west of Baghdad. Abu Ghraib prison was opened in the 1950s and served as a maximum-security prison. From the 1970s, the prison was used by Saddam Hussein to hold political prisoners and later the United States to hold Iraqi prisoners. It developed a reputation for torture and extrajudicial killing, and was closed in 2014.
Janis Leigh Karpinski is a retired career officer in the United States Army Reserve. She is notable for having commanded the forces that operated Abu Ghraib and other prisons in Iraq in 2003 and 2004, at the time of the scandal related to torture and prisoner abuse. She commanded three prisons in Iraq and the forces that ran them. Her education includes a Bachelor of Arts degree in English and secondary education from Kean College, a Master of Arts degree in aviation management from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, and a Master of Arts in strategic studies from the United States Army War College.
Abu Ghraib is a city in the Baghdad Governorate of Iraq, located just west of Baghdad's city center, or northwest of Baghdad International Airport. It has a population of 189,000 (2003). The old road to Jordan passes through Abu Ghraib. The government of Iraq created the city and Abu Ghraib District in 1944.
Lynndie Rana England is a former United States Army Reserve soldier who was prosecuted for mistreating detainees during the Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse that occurred at the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad during the Iraq War. She was one of 11 military personnel from the 372nd Military Police Company who were convicted in 2005 for war crimes. After being sentenced to three years in prison and a dishonorable discharge, England was incarcerated from September 27, 2005, to March 1, 2007, when she was released on parole.
Charles A. Graner Jr. is an American former soldier who was court-martialed for prisoner abuse after the 2003–2004 Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal. Along with other soldiers of his Army Reserve unit, the 372nd Military Police Company, Graner was accused of allowing and inflicting sexual, physical, and psychological abuse on Iraqi detainees in Abu Ghraib prison, a notorious prison in Baghdad during the United States' occupation of Iraq.
During the early stages of the Iraq War, members of the United States Army and the Central Intelligence Agency committed a series of human rights violations and war crimes against detainees in the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. These abuses included physical abuse, sexual humiliation, physical and psychological torture, and rape, as well as the killing of Manadel al-Jamadi and the desecration of his body. The abuses came to public attention with the publication of photographs by CBS News in April 2004, causing shock and outrage and receiving widespread condemnation within the United States and internationally. The International Committee of the Red Cross reported that most detainees were civilians with no links to armed groups.
About six months after the United States invasion of Iraq of 2003, rumors of Iraq prison abuse scandals started to emerge.
Camp Cropper was a holding facility for security detainees operated by the United States Army near Baghdad International Airport in Iraq. The facility was initially operated as a high-value detention site (HVD), but has since been expanded increasing its capacity from 163 to 2,000 detainees. Former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was held there prior to his execution. Mr. Hussein was held at a nearby location outside the Camp Cropper complex. He was isolated from the former Ba'ath Party and subsequent HVT’s held at the main Cropper facility.
Salah Mesbah Khalaf, also known as Abu Iyad, was a Palestinian militant and the deputy chief and head of intelligence for the Palestine Liberation Organization. He was the second most senior official of Fatah after Yasser Arafat.
Geoffrey D. Miller is a retired United States Army major general who commanded the US detention facilities at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and Iraq. Detention facilities in Iraq under his command included Abu Ghraib prison, Camp Cropper, and Camp Bucca. He is noted for having trained soldiers in using torture, or "enhanced interrogation techniques" in US euphemism, and for carrying out the "First Special Interrogation Plan," signed by the Secretary of Defense, against a Guantanamo detainee.
Farzad Bazoft was an Iranian journalist who settled in the United Kingdom in the mid-1970s. He worked as a freelance reporter for The Observer. He was arrested by Iraqi authorities and executed in 1990 after being convicted of spying for Israel while working in Iraq.
Ghost detainee is a term used in the executive branch of the United States government to designate a person held in a detention center, whose identity has been hidden by keeping them unregistered and therefore anonymous. Such uses arose as the Bush administration initiated the War on Terror following the 9/11 attacks of 2001 in the United States. As documented in the 2004 Taguba Report, it was used in the same manner by United States officials and contractors of the Joint Interrogation and Debriefing Center at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq in 2003–2004.
Lane McCotter is a controversial United States prison administrator, formerly in charge of the reconstruction of the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
In the runup to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, press stories appeared in the United Kingdom and United States of a plastic shredder or wood chipper into which Saddam and Qusay Hussein fed opponents of their Baathist rule. These stories attracted worldwide attention and boosted support for military action, in stories with titles such as "See men shredded, then say you don't back war". A year later, it was determined there was not enough evidence to support the existence of such a machine.
Santos A. Cardona was a former American soldier and military police dog handler who was convicted of dereliction of duty and aggravated assault in connection with the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse that occurred in 2003-2004. He was sentenced to 90 days of hard labor, along with a fine and reduction in rank. After his release, he continued to serve and was promoted to sergeant before leaving the United States Army in 2007 with an honorable discharge. He later worked as a contractor with American K-9 Detection Services for the U.S. Government in Afghanistan. He was killed in February 2009 when the vehicle he was riding was struck by an improvised explosive device.
Latif Yahia is an Iraqi blogger, political writer, and former lieutenant that served in the Iran–Iraq War. He is known for being the alleged former body double of Uday Hussein, infamous elder son of Saddam Hussein.
Ryszard Krystosik was a Polish ambassador to Iraq in the years of 2004–2007.
During the Iraq War, occupying U.S. forces set up camps and converted existing prisons in Iraq to detain POWs, suspected terrorists, and insurgents who were opposed to the American occupation. While reports vary, from 2003 onwards U.S. troops stationed in Iraq detained more than 100,000 prisoners in the American-held detention complexes. Many of these detainments were later determined to be unlawful, and the treatment of the prisoners, inhumane. While the most prominent case of unlawful imprisonment, torture, and prisoner abuse occurred at Abu Ghraib prison, several other detainment centers were revealed to have operated in a similar fashion, most notably at Camp Bucca and Camp Cropper.