Tall Afar and Detainees

Ewing began talking on detainees. He said 3rd ACR’s commander, Col. H.R. McMaster, “went through great lengths, it seems, to ensure that detainees were not abused the way they had been [by] previous units.” But that’s “little consolation to those Iraqis whose relatives have been detained without good reason.”

In one case, he and his fellow soldiers detained three men because “they had been running.” Another Iraqi was injured in the foot by a gunshot wound. Ewing’s soldiers questioned and detained four of the man’s friends. The JAG attorney said there wasn’t enough evidence to hold them “but we’ll take care of it anyway.” Ewing said that when he read the fine print of an incident report he was asked to sign, a staff sergeant who took the men in had falsely stated the men had confessed to attacking a U.S.-aligned tribe.