The first one stops the buck at a corporal. Hard to
believe, but possible. The major thing here is that
someone leaked this private's confession to this reporter.
If this is right, command still should have been doing
inspections. Some Senior NCO was OD for this facility. -
From: LindyBill
First Court Martial Defendant Details Prison Abuse
By Richard A. Serrano
LA Times Staff Writer
3:35 PM PDT, May 13, 2004
WASHINGTON — The first soldier who will be court-martialed in the Abu Ghraib prison scandal has told military authorities a harrowing tale of how a group of guards led by Cpl. Charles A. Graner joked and mocked the Iraqi detainees as they stripped them naked, struck and kicked them, and, in the crudest of humiliations, forced them to hit each other.
In an interview with Army criminal investigators, Spc. Jeremy Sivits said that Graner was always "joking, laughing, pissed off a little, acting like he was enjoying it," according to documents obtained today by the Los Angeles Times.
Once, speaking to an injured detainee, "Graner said in a baby-type voice, 'Ah, does that hurt?'"
Sivits, who according to sources is expected to plead guilty at a court-martial proceeding next week in Baghdad, also gave fresh details about the other suspects in the beating of Iraqi prisoners - for the first time describing their moods as the prisoners were stripped and abused.
<font size=4>
He also maintained, according to the documents, that all
of this was done without the knowledge of their superiors
in the Army chain of command.
"Our command would have slammed us," he said. "They
believe in doing the right thing. If they saw what was
going on, there would be hell to pay."
He said Graner warned him not to say anything, telling
him: "You did not see (this)."<font size=3>
Graner's lawyers have said he and other soldiers were under pressure by military interrogators to "soften up" the detainees to get intelligence. All the other soldiers are expected to plead not guilty.
Sivits said he first became aware of the abuse, and began photographing much of it, on Oct. 3, nearly a month before the early November dates believed to have been the start of the harsh treatment against inmates in the overcrowded prison.
Sgt. Ivan L. (Chip) Frederick II seemed "mellow" as he abused prisoners and watched other guards join in, Sivits said. "He was really not saying too much. Just kind of enjoying it," Sivits said.
<font size=4>
He described Pfc. Lynndie England, the woman often seen smoking and smiling in the photos, as "laughing at the different stuff that they were having the detainees do."
That is a marked difference from England's defense, in which she has claimed that she was ordered to pose in front of the abused inmates.
Sivits said Spc. Sabrina Harman, seen next to a pile of naked male prisoners, was sometimes smiling, but "there was a few times she had a look of disgust on her face."
He added, "She did write the word rapist on the side of the leg of one of the inmates. She did this after she had found out from the processing sheets that he had raped someone. She wrote it with a black marker."
But Sivits stressed that it was Graner and Frederick who led the small band of guards in their nightly revelries.<font size=3> "I was laughing at some of the stuff that they had them do," he conceded. "I was disgusted at some of the stuff as well. As I think about it now, I do not thing any of it was funny."
Asked specifically what was not funny, he said, "the tower thing" - referring to prisoners being forced to strip and form a pyramid on the floor.
He described Graner striking inmates, and Sgt. Javal Davis, another of the suspects, running across the floor and jumping on them when they were handcuffed and piled on the floor.
"A couple of the detainees kind of made an 'ah' sound as if this hurt them or caused them some type of pain when Davis would land on them," he said. "After Davis had done this, Davis then stomped on either the fingers or toes of the detainees. When he stomped the detainees they were in pain, because the detainees would scream loudly."
He recalled that the prisoners usually were reluctant to strip in front of each other, and that Graner forced them to do so anyway. He said Graner punched a detainee in the head so hard the man fell unconscious.
"His eyes were closed and he was not moving," Sivits said.
They later had to check to see he was breathing.
Later still, Graner was shaking his fist, saying, "Damn that hurt."
Sivits said Frederick forced naked detainees to masturbate, showing them how to move their hands back and forth until "one of them did it right." Then, Sivits said, "Harman and England would put their thumbs up and have the picture taken."
He said another inmate was bitten by a police dog after Graner "provoked" the detainee to "go after him." Another was handcuffed to a bed, with wounds on his legs from where "he had been shot with buckshot." He said Graner did not care, and instead kept grabbing a police baton and would "strike the detainee with a half baseball swing."
Said Sivits: "The detainee would beg Graner to stop by saying, 'Mister, Mister, please stop.'"
Another time two inmates were told to strike each other. They first refused, Sivits said, and then complied. "One of the inmates punched the other, then the other struck that one back. They hit each other once each."
Los Angeles Times |
