Danes guilty of prisoner abuse in Iraq

A Danish intelligence officer and four military police sergeants were found guilty of abusing Iraqi detainees but will not be punished, a Copenhagen court ruled on Thursday, according to the BBC.

"The defendants are to a certain degree found guilty but due to extenuating circumstances there is no basis for a sentence," judge Jorgen Lougart said.

"Hommel several times asked her superiors about procedures and specific guidance regarding detention and interrogation without getting any usable answers, and her superiors did not perform the necessary control that all conventions were observed," the judge added.

Reserve Captain Annemette Hommel, 38, and the others were convicted last year of verbal humiliation and forcing Iraqi prisoners to maintain painful postures during interrogation at a Danish camp in southern IRAQ.

Hommel, who would have faced a penalty of up to one year in prison, claims that she has done nothing wrong. After Thursday’s ruling, she told reporters that the court had “opted for an unnecessarily hard line".

Denmark’s mandate to keep its 530 soldiers in IRAQ expires on Feb 1. but it plans to extend it to July 1.

* "German spies helped U.S. in Iraq war"

German spies in IRAQ helped American forces strike targets at the beginning of the 2003 INVASION despite Berlin’s claims that it wasn’t involved in the WAR, German media reported on Thursday.

According to the Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper and NDR TV, two agents of Germany’s BND foreign intelligence agency were operating in IRAQ at the beginning of the WAR; supplying their American counterparts with information.

“They gave us direct support. They gave us information for targeting,” NDR quoted a former U.S. military official as saying in a preview of a programme to be aired later on Thursday.

The official cited a April 7, 2003 air strike on a Baghdad suburb where SADDAM HUSSEIN was thought to be hiding in. He said U.S. forces carried out the raid after a BND officer confirmed limousines were parked outside a building. More than 12 IRAQI CIVILIANS were killed in the attack.

Correspondents say the report, if confirmed, would be an embarrassment to German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who as chief of staff to then Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, had supervised the German security services at the time.

NDR said Steinmeier refused to be interviewed for the programme. It said that BND confirmed that two agents were operating in IRAQ but denied they had been helping U.S. forces.

Sueddeutsche Zeitung cited unidentified security officials as saying that the approval of BND’s co-operation was a “political decision” taken by Schroeder’s government after discussions between the BND and the chancellery.

The newspaper also said that the German spies had been based in French diplomatic quarters because Germany’s embassy in IRAQ was closed on March 17, 2003 -- three days before the WAR started. France backed Germany’s opposition to the U.S.-led INVASION.

The reports could help Chancellor Angela Merkel, who makes her first official visit to the U.S. later on Thursday on a mission to restore relations harmed by Schroeder’s opposition to the U.S.-led INVASION of IRAQ.