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Washington Post - March 5, 2005<br>
<a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A8873-2005Mar4?language=printer" eudora="autourl">http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A8873-2005Mar4?language=printer<br><br>
</a>Soldier Who Reported Abuse Was Sent to Psychiatrist <br><br>
By R. Jeffrey Smith and Josh White<br>
Washington Post Staff Writers<br><br>
An Army intelligence sergeant who accused fellow soldiers in
Samarra,<br>
Iraq, of abusing detainees in 2003 was in turn accused by his commander
<br>
of being delusional and ordered to undergo a psychiatric evaluation
<br>
in Germany, despite a military psychiatrist's initial judgment that
the<br>
man was stable, according to internal Army records released
yesterday.<br><br>
The soldier had angered his commander by urging the unit's
redeployment<br>
from the military base to prevent what the soldier feared would be <br>
the death of one or more detainees under interrogation, according <br>
to the documents. He told his commander three members <br>
of the counterintelligence team had hit detainees, pulled their
hair,<br>
tried to asphyxiate them and staged mock executions <br>
with pistols pointed at the detainees' heads.<br><br>
In another case detailed in the Army files, soldiers in a Florida <br>
National Guard unit deployed near Ramadi in 2003 compiled a
20-minute<br>
video that depicted a soldier kicking a wounded detainee in the face
<br>
and chest in the presence of 10 colleagues and soldiers positioning
<br>
a dead insurgent to appear to wave hello. The video was found <br>
in a soldier's computer files under the heading "Ramadi
Madness," <br>
and it initially prompted military lawyers to recommend charges <br>
of assault with battery and dereliction of duty for tampering <br>
with a corpse. <br><br>
The unit's commander told Army investigators he was concerned <br>
about the images becoming public and promised to take steps to <br>
"Minimize the risk of this and other videos that may end up in the
media."<br><br>
Both criminal investigations involved events that occurred before the
May<br>
2004 revelation of widespread detainee abuse committed by U.S.
military<br>
personnel at Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad in late 2003, but unlike
<br>
that event, neither of these cases led to criminal charges.<br><br>
These cases were among 13 described in more than 1,000 pages of
Army<br>
criminal records released at the Pentagon under the order of a New
York<br>
federal judge. They detail the Army's investigations of other <br>
allegations by U.S. military personnel in Iraq of abuse, rape <br>
and larceny by fellow soldiers.<br><br>
Investigations into similar allegations were previously disclosed in
<br>
tens of thousands of pages of records made public since December under
a<br>
Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties
Union.<br>
Those records describe allegations of detainee abuse in Afghanistan and
<br>
at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in addition to
Iraq,<br>
and show that when FBI field agents and interrogation specialists <br>
in the Defense Intelligence Agency protested alleged abuse, <br>
the complaints were generally ignored.<br><br>
Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, asked about detainee abuse <br>
yesterday on CNN's "Wolf Blitzer Reports," said he was not
surprised.<br>
Gonzales said that he presumed the military used lawful
interrogation<br>
techniques but that "sometimes people do things that they shouldn't
do.<br>
People are imperfect . . . and so the fact that abuses occur,
they're<br>
unfortunate but I'm not sure that they should be viewed as
surprising."<br><br>
In New York, ACLU staff attorney Jameel Jaffer said the new files
"provide<br>
further evidence that abuse of detainees was widespread." He added:
"In<br>
light of the hundreds of abuses that we now know to have taken place, it
is<br>
increasingly difficult to understand why no senior official, civilian
or<br>
military, has been held accountable." The ACLU has called for the
Justice<br>
Department to appoint a special counsel and for Congress to hold hearings
on<br>
the abuse.<br><br>
In each of the 13 cases described in the latest set of documents, <br>
the Army concluded that "the investigations failed to support <br>
any criminal charges," according to a statement it released
yesterday. <br>
In three of the investigations, the Army probes were closed without
<br>
the finding of sufficient evidence to prove or disprove the
allegations.<br><br>
Those conclusions are consistent with the majority of the 226 Army<br>
investigations into alleged wrongdoing in Iraq and Afghanistan that
have<br>
been completed so far; in 70 percent of those, the Army closed its
probes<br>
after concluding it could not substantiate the allegations. Of the<br>
soldiers who have been disciplined in the remaining cases, only 32 <br>
faced a court-martial, which is roughly equivalent to a criminal
trial,<br>
while 88 others were given nonjudicial or administrative sanctions.
<br><br>
The Army intelligence sergeant subjected to a psychiatric evaluation
<br>
was serving with Detachment B, 223rd Military Intelligence Battalion,
<br>
and told investigators that he witnessed an escalation of violence <br>
against detainees shortly after arriving at the unit's Samarra <br>
detention facility in April 2003.<br><br>
Although his name is not listed in the documents, the episode
precisely<br>
matches events described publicly last year by California National
Guard<br>
Sgt. Greg Ford, a former state prison guard and Navy SEAL team medic
whose<br>
complaints were dismissed by the Army in October 2004 as lacking<br>
sufficient evidence. Ford said last night, after hearing what the<br>
documents stated, that he is the sergeant described. <br><br>
The soldier complained that he had had to resuscitate abused detainees
and<br>
urged the unit's withdrawal. He told investigators that the unit's<br>
commander, an Army captain, responded by giving him "30 seconds
to<br>
withdraw my request or he was going to send me forcibly to go see a<br>
psychiatrist." The soldier added: "I told him I was not going
to withdraw<br>
my request and at that time he confiscated my weapon and informed me
he<br>
was withdrawing my security clearance and was placing me under
24-hour<br>
surveillance."<br><br>
A witness in his unit told investigators that the captain later
pressured<br>
a military doctor -- who had found the soldier stable -- into doing<br>
another emergency evaluation, saying: "I don't care what you saw or
heard,<br>
he is imbalanced, and I want him out of here."<br><br>
The next day, after the doctor did another evaluation, the soldier
was<br>
evacuated from Iraq in restraints on a stretcher to a military hospital
in<br>
Germany, despite having been given no official diagnosis, according to
the<br>
documents. A military doctor in Germany ruled he was in stable
mental<br>
health, according to the documents, but sent him back to the United
States<br>
for what the soldier recalls the doctor describing as his
"safety."<br><br>
The soldier depicted the evacuation as part of an effort to cover
up<br>
wrongdoing. But other members of his team denied the allegations,
saying<br>
that the unit was professional and that they never saw abusive behavior
at<br>
the facility. Investigators closed the case without filing charges,<br>
writing that the investigation "did not identify any witnesses"
to the<br>
abuse and did not "produce any logical subjects." <br><br>
The new documents also describe allegations by a military
interrogator,<br>
who was not named, that members of Task Force 626 -- an elite U.S.<br>
military unit assigned to hunt in Iraq for senior officials in
Saddam<br>
Hussein's government -- used harsh interrogation tactics and abused<br>
detainees at a secret detention facility called Camp Nama in Baghdad
in<br>
April and May of last year. The Army's criminal investigators turned
the<br>
investigation over to Special Operations and closed the case; the
Special<br>
Operations probe concluded the allegations of wrongdoing were
unfounded.<br><br>
In the "Ramadi Madness" case, investigators determined the
video<br>
"contained footage of inappropriate rather than criminal
behavior" and<br>
determined that the detainee who was kicked was not abused.<br><br>
[Research editor Lucy Shackelford contributed to this report.] <br><br>
© 2005 The Washington Post Company <br>
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