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| Iraq-Jordan |
| Seymour Hersh Reveals Details About Development of Interrogation Scandal |
| 2004-05-01 |
| .... Last June, Janis Karpinski, an Army reserve brigadier general, was named commander of the 800th Military Police Brigade and put in charge of military prisons in Iraq. General Karpinski, the only female commander in the war zone, was an experienced operations and intelligence officer who had served with the Special Forces and in the 1991 Gulf War, but she had never run a prison system. Now she was in charge of three large jails, eight battalions, and thirty-four hundred Army reservists, most of whom, like her, had no training in handling prisoners. ... A month later, General Karpinski was formally admonished and quietly suspended, and a major investigation into the Armyâs prison system, authorized by Lieutenant General Ricardo S. Sanchez, the senior commander in Iraq, was under way. A fifty-three-page report, obtained by The New Yorker, written by Major General Antonio M. Taguba and not meant for public release, was completed in late February. Its conclusions about the institutional failures of the Army prison system were devastating. Specifically, Taguba found that between October and December of 2003 there were numerous instances of âsadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abusesâ at Abu Ghraib. This systematic and illegal abuse of detainees, Taguba reported, was perpetrated by soldiers of the 372nd Military Police Company, and also by members of the American intelligence community. (The 372nd was attached to the 320th M.P. Battalion, which reported to Karpinskiâs brigade headquarters.) Tagubaâs report listed some of the wrongdoing: Breaking chemical lights and pouring the phosphoric liquid on detainees; pouring cold water on naked detainees; beating detainees with a broom handle and a chair; threatening male detainees with rape; allowing a military police guard to stitch the wound of a detainee who was injured after being slammed against the wall in his cell; sodomizing a detainee with a chemical light and perhaps a broom stick, and using military working dogs to frighten and intimidate detainees with threats of attack, and in one instance actually biting a detainee. There was stunning evidence to support the allegations, Taguba addedââdetailed witness statements and the discovery of extremely graphic photographic evidence.â Photographs and videos taken by the soldiers as the abuses were happening were not included in his report, Taguba said, because of their âextremely sensitive nature.â .... Two Iraqi faces that do appear in the photographs are those of dead men. There is the battered face of prisoner No. 153399, and the bloodied body of another prisoner, wrapped in cellophane and packed in ice. There is a photograph of an empty room, splattered with blood. .... The abuses became public because of the outrage of Specialist A government witness, Special Agent Scott Bobeck, who is a member of the Armyâs Criminal Investigation Division, or C.I.D., .... Frederick, at thirty-seven, was far older than his colleagues, and was a natural leader; he had also worked for six years as a guard for the Virginia Department of Corrections. .... Bobeck also testified that witnesses had said that Frederick, on one occasion, âhad punched a detainee in the chest so hard that the detainee almost went into cardiac arrest.â .... After the hearing, the presiding investigative officer ruled that there was sufficient evidence to convene a court-martial against Frederick. ... In letters and e-mails to family members, Frederick repeatedly noted that the military-intelligence teams, which included C.I.A. officers and linguists and interrogation specialists from private defense contractors, were the dominant force inside Abu Ghraib. .... Army regulations limit intelligence activity by the M.P.s to passive collection. But something had gone wrong at Abu Ghraib. There was evidence dating back to the Afghanistan war, the Ryder report said, that M.P.s had worked with intelligence operatives to âset favorable conditions for subsequent interviewsâ â a euphemism for breaking the will of prisoners. âSuch actions generally run counter to the smooth operation of a detention facility, attempting to maintain its population in a compliant and docile state.â .... General Taguba saved his harshest words for the military-intelligence officers and private contractors. .... The problems inside the Army prison system in Iraq were not hidden from senior commanders. .... Some of the incidents had led to the killing or wounding of inmates and M.P.s, and resulted in a series of âlessons learnedâ inquiries within the brigade. Karpinski invariably approved the reports and signed orders calling for changes in day-to-day procedures. But Taguba found that she did not follow up, doing nothing to insure that the orders were carried out. Had she done so, he added, âcases of abuse may have been prevented.â General Taguba further found that Abu Ghraib was filled beyond capacity, and that the M.P. guard force was significantly undermanned and short of resources. .... There were gross differences, Taguba said, between the actual number of prisoners on hand and the number officially recorded. A lack of proper screening also meant that many innocent Iraqis were wrongly being detainedâindefinitely, it seemed, in some cases. ... |
| Posted by:Mike Sylwester |
| #1 Karpinski invariably approved the reports and signed orders calling for changes in day-to-day procedures. But Taguba found that she did not follow up, doing nothing to insure that the orders were carried out. Had she done so, he added, âcases of abuse may have been prevented.â I think dereliction of duty would stick from that alone ... |
| Posted by: Edward Yee 2004-05-02 12:00:58 AM |