I guess this wasn't such a SURPRISE now was it?
Unit Says It Gave Earlier Warning of Abuse in Iraq
June 14, 2004
By ANDREA ELLIOTT
FRANKFURT, June 13 - Beginning in November, a small unit of
interrogators at Abu Ghraib prison began reporting
allegations of prisoner abuse, including the beatings of
five blindfolded Iraqi generals, in internal documents sent
to senior officers, according to interviews with military
personnel who worked in the prison.
The disclosure of the documents raises new questions about
whether senior officers in Iraq were alerted about serious
abuses at the prison before January. Top military officials
have said they only learned about abuses then, after a
soldier came forward with photographs of the abuse.
"We were reporting it long before this mess came out," said
one of several military intelligence soldiers interviewed
in Germany and the United States who asked not to be
identified for fear they would jeopardize their careers.
The Red Cross has said it alerted American military
commanders in Iraq to abuses at Abu Ghraib in November. But
the disclosures that the military's own interrogators had
alerted superiors to abuse back then in internal documents
has not been previously reported.
At least 20 accounts of mistreatment were included in the
documents, according to those interviewed. Some detainees
described abuse at other detention facilities before they
were transferred to Abu Ghraib, but at least seven
incidents said to be cited in the documents took place at
the prison, four of them in the area controlled by military
intelligence and the site of the notorious abuses depicted
in the photographs.
The abuse allegations were cited by members of the prison's
Detainee Assessment Branch, a unit of interrogators who
screened prisoners for possible release, in routine weekly
reports channeled to military judge advocates and others.
Military intelligence personnel said the unit's two- to
five-page memorandums were to be sent for final approval to
a three-member board that included Brig. Gen. Janis
Karpinski, the commander of the 800th Military Police
Battalion, and Maj. Gen. Barbara Fast, the top Army
intelligence officer in Iraq. The sections in which the
abuse was cited were generally only a paragraph or two in a
larger document.
Military officials in Baghdad acknowledged Sunday that
lawyers on a magistrate board reviewed the reports, but
they could not confirm whether Generals Karpinski and Fast
had seen them, or whether any action had been taken to
investigate the incidents. Col. Jill E. Morgenthaler, chief
of public affairs at military headquarters in Baghdad, said
Sunday that officials were "trying to find the documents in
question."
"Until then, there's nothing we can say," she said.
Most
of the Abu Ghraib incidents were reported before January,
said military intelligence personnel. In one case a
detainee told workers from the Detainee Assessment Branch
that he was made to stand naked, holding books on his head,
while a soldier poured cold water on him. Among the other
incidents cited by military personnel: a man was shoved to
the ground before a soldier stepped on his head; a man was
forced to stand naked while a female interrogator made fun
of his genitals and a woman was repeatedly kicked by a
military police guard.
The beating of the former generals, which had not been
disclosed, is being examined by the Pentagon as part of its
inquiry into abuses at Abu Ghraib, according to people
knowledgeable about the investigation.
By mid-December, those people said, two separate reports of
the beating had been made - one by the assessment branch
and one by a military intelligence analyst. The analyst
asked a former general at the end of an interrogation what
had happened to his nose - it was smashed and tilted to the
left, and a gash on his chin had been stitched.
The prisoner, in his 50's, told the story of the beating,
which he said had occurred about a week earlier. His
account closely matched that given independently to the
Detainee Assessment Branch by another former general around
the same time.
According to their accounts, here is what happened: One
evening after fierce riots had erupted at the prison in
late November, a group of soldiers rounded up the five
former Iraqi generals, who were suspected of instigating
the revolt. On their way to the prison's isolation unit,
the soldiers stopped the captives, who were handcuffed and
blindfolded, and arranged them in a line. Then the guards
attacked the prisoners with a barrage of punches, beating
them until they were covered in blood.
The military intelligence analyst alerted his sergeant, but
the sergeant said the prisoners "probably deserved it," a
person with first-hand knowledge of the investigation said.
The sergeant, in a telephone interview from his home in
Texas, denied making the comment but said he was questioned
about the case by military criminal investigators after
January, when they began their inquiry into other Abu
Ghraib abuses.
The analyst also cited the beating in his interrogation
notes, stored in an electronic file accessible to several
of the prison's intelligence units. Typically, these notes
were routinely read by analysts in several units.
Soldiers interviewed said they were not aware of an
official prison abuse reporting system. It was not until
January, after the Criminal Investigations Division began
an inquiry, that soldiers were given forms to file
complaints of abuse directly to criminal investigators,
they said.
The Detainee Assessment Branch was formed in October as a
last stop for detainees who were deemed no longer useful by
the prison's interrogators. The unit included four to six
interrogators and some analysts. Claudius Albury, an
employee of CACI, a civilian contractor, set up the unit
and helped manage it, reporting to Maj. Matt Price, the
operations officer in charge of the Joint Interrogation and
Debriefing Center at the prison. Mr. Albury said he could
not comment, pending clearance from his supervisors.
Military officials said the assessment branch was created
to help speed the flow of detainee releases. The unit
screened prisoners in a process that fell somewhere between
an exit interview and an interrogation. The purpose of the
screening was to determine whether a detainee was no longer
of "intelligence value" - that is, whether other
interrogators had forgotten to ask important questions, or
failed to notice inconsistencies in the answers.
In preparation for the screening, interrogators read
through the detainees' files, which consisted mostly of
notes by other interrogators and any intelligence reports
written about the detainee. Detainee Assessment Branch
personnel then asked detainees the same basic questions
other interrogators had asked, like biographical queries
and whether the detainees knew where Saddam Hussein was
hiding.
Starting in mid-November, one member of the unit began
asking detainees, "How have you been treated since you have
been in U.S. custody?" It was intended as a tactic meant to
make the detainee feel like the interrogator cared,
military intelligence personnel said. But the question soon
began eliciting vivid and disturbing answers.
"One guy said he was thrown on the ground and stepped on
the head," said one soldier. "That's when I started paying
attention to it."
As more abuse reports emerged, members of the unit made the
question a formal part of the screening process. In early
December, the question was added to a Microsoft Word
document of questions for the unit's interrogators to ask
detainees, several military intelligence personnel said in
interviews.
"We couldn't believe what we were hearing," said one
soldier. Two detainees reported having been given electric
shocks at other holding facilities before arriving in Abu
Ghraib, according to the interviews. One prisoner's file
included photographs of burns on his body. "We didn't want
people to know that we knew about it and didn't report it,"
the soldier said.
Names of soldiers responsible for the abuse were not
included because most of the time, the detainees could not
identify those responsible, according to several
interviews. But one soldier said, "There's lots of
investigative techniques that could have been used to
discover who the culprits were."
The reports of abuse made by the Detainee Assessment Branch
were often limited to one or two paragraphs in the
"circumstances of capture" section of a memorandum
recommending whether detainees should be released. Military
officials acknowledged that the memorandums were read by
judge advocates.
>From there, military officials said, the lawyers reviewed a
detainee's file, added some documents and sent it to a
three-member Review and Appeal Board made up of General
Karpinski, General Fast and a lawyer. Whether the the
assessment branch memorandum remained in the file is
unclear.
But several military personnel said the policy was for the
board to read the assessment memorandum. Once the board
reviewed a file, the members voted on whether to release
the detainee. At that point, the entire file was returned
to the assessment branch with the board's decision stated
on a separate form, signed by the board members, said the
military intelligence personnel.
"Whether or not they read those things I don't know, but
they should have," said one military intelligence soldier
who worked closely with the unit. "They were making
decisions based on it."
nytimes.com |
