[News] Prisoner Abuse Probe Widened

[News at freedomarchives.org]

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>Note the highlighted line below and remember that the current head of the 
>prison has just been replaced by -- the head of the Guantanamo prison!!
>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.
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   <http://www.washingtonpost.com/>washingtonpost.com<http://www.washingtonpost.com/> 


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

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.

A 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.

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.
© 2004 The Washington Post Company


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