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| Iraq-Jordan |
| Enlisted Military Policemen Won’t Take Fall Alone in Interrogation Scandal |
| 2004-05-07 |
| An American general recommended that Army prison guards in Iraq become more involved in "softening up" prisoners for interrogations shortly before abuses occurred at the Abu Ghraib prison last fall, according to an internal report at the heart of the controversy. .... In a report citing "numerous incidents of sadistic, blatant and wanton criminal abuses" inflicted on Iraqis held at Abu Ghraib between October and December 2003, Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba said he found credible evidence that military police guards were improperly drawn into the role of setting "physical and mental conditions for favorable interrogation" of prisoners. Taguba’s report says the practice of using MPs to help break down prisoners may have been imported from the Guantanamo Bay prison complex and possibly others in Afghanistan used to hold terrorist suspects. The Guantanamo Bay prison complex was run by Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller. In late August 2003, Miller conducted an inquiry on interrogation and detention procedures in Iraq and suggested that prison guards could help set conditions for the interrogation of prisoners, according to the Taguba report. ... A November 2003 report by Maj. Gen. Donald Ryder, the Army’s provost marshal, concluded that the Army Reserve’s 800th Military Police Brigade, which was running Abu Ghraib, was not given official orders to get involved in setting conditions for interrogations. Taguba, however, offered a different view. "It is obvious," he wrote, that at least some at lower levels of the 800th did get involved. Interrogators from military intelligence and other government agencies, believed to include the CIA, actively requested that MPs guarding prisoners at Abu Ghraib set the conditions for interrogations, Taguba reported. This is in violation of Army Regulation 190-8, he said. That regulation states: "All persons captured, detained, interned or otherwise held in U.S. armed forces custody during the course of conflict will be given humanitarian care and treatment from the moment they fall into the hands of U.S. forces until final release or repatriation." It also runs counter to the MPs’ intended mission of maintaining a safe and orderly prison, he said. The Army’s top officer, Gen. Peter Schoomaker, confirmed that on Wednesday. "It’s a misstatement to say that the military police are trained to soften everybody up," he said. "Their job is to provide a safe and secure environment for those that we detain." Taguba, however, received sworn statements from MPs who said they were involved in such activities. Spc. Sabrina Harman of the 372nd Military Police Company said a detainee was placed on a box and had wires attached to his fingers, toes and other extremities, and her task was to keep the detainee awake. Military intelligence, she said, "wanted to get them to talk." As a result of the Taguba report, which the Pentagon still classifies secret, the Army has begun a separate probe of military intelligence. |
| Posted by:Mike Sylwester |