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<blockquote type=cite class=cite cite=""><font face="tahoma" size=2><br>
</font><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=3> <br>
</font><font face="arial" size=2>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remember that the current head of the prison has just been replaced by --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!!<br>
</font><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=3 color="#0000FF"><b>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.<br>
</b></font><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=3><br>
</font><br><br>
<br>
<font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=2></font></blockquote><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=3>
</font><a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/"><font face="helvetica" size=2><b>washingtonpost.com</a></b><a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/">
</a><br><br>
</font><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=5><b>Prisoner Abuse Probe
Widened</b></font><font size=3> <br>
Military Intelligence at Center of Investigation <br><br>
</font><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=2>By Sewell Chan and
Michael Amon<br>
Washington Post Foreign Service<br>
Sunday, May 2, 2004; Page A01 <br><br>
</font><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=3>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.<br><br>
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. <br><br>
"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."<br><br>
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. <br><br>
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. <br><br>
Karpinski, who commanded the 800th Military Police Brigade, also
described a high-pressure atmosphere that prized successful
interrogations.
</font><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=3 color="#0000FF"><b>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.<br><br>
</b></font><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=3>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. <br><br>
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. <br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
"I won't defend my soldiers," the officer wrote, on the
condition of anonymity. "They knew better."<br><br>
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." <br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.
<br><br>
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.<br><br>
"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.<br><br>
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. <br><br>
"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. <br><br>
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. <br><br>
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.<br><br>
Karpinski said she was stunned and sickened to learn of the abuses months
after they had occurred. <br><br>
"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.<br><br>
"I hadn't been included, I hadn't been informed, and I knew
nothing," she said. Following the administrative review, Karpinski
was reassigned.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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. <br><br>
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.
<br><br>
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. <br><br>
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.<br><br>
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. <br><br>
<i>Amon reported from Washington. Staff writers Dana Priest, Thomas E.
Ricks and Christian Davenport in Washington contributed to this
report.</i></font> <br>
<font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=3>© 2004 The Washington Post
Company <br><br>
</font><x-sigsep><p></x-sigsep>
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