Washington Post
Prisoner Abuse Probe Widened
Sun May 2, 2004 03:18
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Prisoner Abuse Probe Widened
Military Intelligence at Center of Investigation

By Sewell Chan and Michael Amon
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, May 2, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A59750-2004May1.html

BAGHDAD, May 1 -- A top Pentagon intelligence officer is leading an investigation into interrogation practices at an Army-run prison where Iraqi detainees were allegedly beaten and sexually abused, officials announced Saturday. The move came amid allegations that military guards abused prisoners at the behest of military intelligence operatives.

soldier accused of abusing prisoners at the Abu Ghraib facility wrote to his family last December that military intelligence officers encouraged the mistreatment, according to correspondence provided by the soldier's family.

"We have had a very high rate with our style of getting them to break," the soldier, Staff Sgt. Ivan L. "Chip" Frederick II, wrote in a Dec. 18 e-mail released by Frederick's uncle. "They usually end up breaking within hours."

Frederick also wrote that he questioned some of the abuses. "I questioned this and the answer I got was: This is how military intelligence wants it done," he wrote.

The Army Reserve commander who oversaw the prison said that military intelligence, rather than the military police, dictated the treatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib. "The prison, and that particular cellblock where the events took place, were under the control of the MI command," Brig. Gen. Janis L. Karpinski said in a telephone interview Saturday night from her home in Hilton Head, S.C.

Karpinski, who commanded the 800th Military Police Brigade, also described a high-pressure atmosphere that prized successful interrogations. A month before the alleged abuses occurred, she said, a team of military intelligence officers from the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, came to Abu Ghraib last year. "Their main and specific mission was to get the interrogators -- give them new techniques to get more information from detainees," she said.

The naming of Maj. Gen. George R. Fay, the former deputy commander of the Army Intelligence and Security Command, to review the methods and procedures used in questioning Iraqi prisoners represents a widening of the probe into conditions at Abu Ghraib, a prison about 20 miles west of Baghdad that was notorious for torture and executions under the government of former president Saddam Hussein.

A spokesman for the Central Intelligence Agency said Saturday that its inspector general is working with the Pentagon to determine whether the CIA was involved in the abuses, which have drawn international attention. "We are opposed to abusing prisoners in Iraq, and we have found no direct evidence connecting CIA personnel with incidents" of abuse, the spokesman said.

On Saturday, Arabic satellite television networks repeatedly broadcast photographs of naked prisoners being humiliated. The images have been broadcast around the world and drawn condemnation from President Bush and U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan.

In March, the Army charged six military police officers, all from one Army reserve unit, with the physical and sexual abuse of 20 prisoners at Abu Ghraib in November and December. A criminal probe into the actions of four other soldiers is continuing.

In an e-mail, a commissioned officer in the unit, the 372nd Military Police Company, based in Cumberland, Md., acknowledged that the abuses had occurred but attributed them to a far-reaching failure in leadership.

"I won't defend my soldiers," the officer wrote, on the condition of anonymity. "They knew better."

The officer added: "I am extremely disappointed in the way the Army has handled the entire situation and feel the leadership has been made the scapegoat for a few individuals. I think the leadership problems go much higher than the brigade commander."

An issue emerging in the defense of military police allegedly involved in abuse is whether the treatment was condoned or encouraged by military intelligence units interrogating Iraqi prisoners.

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Prisoner Abuse Probe Widened

According to a source familiar with the March findings of an administrative review conducted by the Army, the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade, which helped oversee the questioning of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, pressed members of the military police unit, 372nd Military Police Company, to use rough tactics to prepare prisoners for questioning.


U.S. officials said the review, by Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba, found that prisoners at Abu Ghraib were regularly subjected to cruel and harsh punishments. In an article posted on its Web site, the New Yorker magazine reported in its May 10 issue that Taguba found a pattern of "sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses" at the prison.

According to the New Yorker article, by Seymour M. Hersh, a report last November by Maj. Gen. Donald J. Ryder, the Army's top law enforcement officer, concluded that military intelligence did not order military police to put pressure on prisoners to prepare them for interrogations. Taguba, the article states, disagreed.

"Contrary to the findings of MG Ryder's report, I find that personnel assigned to the 372nd MP Company, 800th MP Brigade were directed to change facility procedures to 'set the conditions' for MI interrogations," Taguba wrote, according to the article. Army intelligence officers, CIA personnel and private contractors "actively requested that MP guards set physical and mental conditions for favorable interrogation of witnesses," according to the article's account of Taguba's report.

The top U.S. military spokesman in Iraq, Army Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, made no attempt Saturday to defend conditions at Abu Ghraib, which holds a majority of the nearly 8,000 detainees in Iraq.

"The very fact that we can't hold our detainee operations as a shining light for how things should be done is personally and professionally embarrassing to me," he said Saturday evening during a somber talk with reporters.

Kimmitt added that he and other commanders in Iraq felt "absolute disgust" at the images, which CBS first broadcast Wednesday night. However, he disputed the idea that the abuses were a result of inadequate training or supervision. "Those soldiers knew what the right thing to do was," he said.

The 372nd Military Police Company was attached to the 800th Military Police Brigade, based in Uniondale, N.Y. In January, 17 soldiers from the company, including seven officers and the six soldiers who were later charged, were suspended from their duties.

Karpinski said she was stunned and sickened to learn of the abuses months after they had occurred.

"If I had ever heard -- and soldiers were never afraid to talk to or approach me about everything -- that there was even a hint or suggestion of abuse, I would have responded immediately and vigorously, and I was never given the chance," she said. "I became aware of these abuses -- these crimes -- when the investigation was near complete and Sanchez was being briefed on it," she added, referring to the top U.S. commander in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez.

"I hadn't been included, I hadn't been informed, and I knew nothing," she said. Following the administrative review, Karpinski was reassigned.

Frederick, the most senior of the six soldiers charged, wrote of inmates being shot with non-lethal bullets, forced to sleep in 3-by-3-foot closets, handcuffed for long periods to the doors of their cells and made to go naked or wear women's underpants.

Frederick's uncle, Bill Lawson, provided the correspondence. He said his nephew began keeping detailed notes of conditions at the prison after Jan. 14, when the military began its investigation. Later that month, Frederick sent single-spaced hand-written letters to four family members in late January.

In one letter, Frederick alleged that an inmate's death in November was covered up. "They stressed him out so bad that the man passed away," Frederick wrote. His body was placed in a black bag, Frederick wrote, and packed in ice for about 24 hours in a shower stall. Frederick alleged that the death was never documented.

Prisoners were interrogated using physical coercion, Frederick wrote. One prisoner with a broken arm was choked, he wrote, and dogs were used as tools of intimidation. Prisoners were made to remain for as long as three days in damp isolation cells without a toilet or running water, he wrote.

In addition to Frederick, criminal charges were filed against Spec. Megan M. Ambuhl, Sgt. Javal S. Davis, Cpl. Charles A. Graner Jr., Spec. Sabrina D. Harman and Spec. Jeremy C. Sivits, according to sealed charging papers provided to The Washington Post.

The appointment of Fay came two days after the military announced that another two-star general, Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller, has taken over U.S. military prisons in Iraq in the new position of deputy commander for detainee operations.

Human rights workers in Iraq said the military has allowed only one group, the International Committee of the Red Cross, to enter Abu Ghraib to interview prisoners and inspect conditions. "One of the key problems is that because we have not been given access by the military, we are not in a position to judge how systematic and widespread these abuses are," said Hania Mufti, a Human Rights Watch representative in Iraq.

Amon reported from Washington. Staff writers Dana Priest, Thomas E. Ricks and Christian Davenport in Washington contributed to this report.
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Iraqis Being Abused by US Personnel
&
SHAME OF ABUSE BY BRIT TROOPS -
'THEY'RE NOT FIT TO WEAR QUEEN'S UNIFORM'

http://www.apfn.org/APFN/POW.HTM

 

 

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