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Iraq-Jordan
Five Interrogation Teams Transfered from Gitmo to Abu Ghraib in October
2004-05-29
From The New York Times
Interrogation experts from the American detention camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, were sent to Iraq last fall and played a major role in training American military intelligence teams at Abu Ghraib prison there, senior military officials said Friday. The teams from Guantánamo Bay, which had operated there under directives allowing broad latitude in questioning "enemy combatants," played a central role at Abu Ghraib through December, the officials said, a time when the worst abuses of prisoners were taking place. Prisoners captured in Iraq, unlike those sent from Afghanistan to Guantánamo, were to be protected by the Geneva Conventions.

The teams were sent to Iraq for 90-day tours at the urging of Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller, then the head of detention operations at Guantánamo. General Miller was sent to Iraq last summer to recommend improvements in the intelligence gathering and detention operations there, a defense official said. The involvement of the Guantánamo teams has not previously been disclosed, and military officials said it would be addressed in a major report on suspected abuses by military intelligence specialists that is being completed by Maj. Gen. George W. Fay. ....

The involvement of the Guantánamo teams in Iraq marks the second major instance in which interrogation procedures at Abu Ghraib appear to have been modeled on those in place earlier in Guantánamo or in Afghanistan, at facilities where the United States had declared that the Geneva Conventions did not apply. ....

Confirming an account from military intelligence soldiers who served in Iraq, a senior military official in Iraq said Friday that five interrogation teams, or about 15 interrogators, analysts and other specialists, were sent in October from Guantánamo Bay to the American command in Iraq "for use in the interrogation effort" at Abu Ghraib. A defense official in Washington said that only three teams had been sent, but there was no immediate explanation for the discrepancy.

General Miller, who is now in command of all detention sites in Iraq, played a central role in recommending an overhaul of interrogation procedures at Abu Ghraib, including changes to bring about closer coordination between guards and interrogators. But the general’s report on that issue remains classified, and it is not clear whether either his report or the Guantánamo teams explicitly recommended a toughening of interrogation procedures at Abu Ghraib. ....

According to a military officer on the Miller delegation to Iraq, interrogation teams from Guantánamo took part in interrogations at Abu Ghraib and other prisons in Iraq. The interrogators demonstrated the "tiger team" concept that was developed at Guantánamo, integrating interrogators with an intelligence analyst and an interpreter to focus on particular groups of detainees and pieces of information being sought. ....

The 519th Military Intelligence Battalion, from Fort Bragg, N.C., also played a major role in setting up the new interrogation unit at Abu Ghraib last fall. In its ranks was Capt. Carolyn A. Wood, who had led an interrogation team at the Bagram Collection Point in Afghanistan. Two Afghan prisoners died in Bagram in December 2002 in what investigators have ruled were homicides, during the time Captain Wood’s unit was in charge of interrogations. An Ohio-based Army Reserve unit, the 377th Military Police Company, was guarding Bagram at the time, and Army investigators are now pursuing what they have said are indications that enlisted soldiers from one or both units abused the Afghan prisoners before they died. ....

But one member of the 377th Company said the fact that prisoners in Afghanistan had been labeled as "enemy combatants" not subject to the Geneva Conventions had contributed to an unhealthy attitude in the detention center. "We were pretty much told that they were nobodies, that they were just enemy combatants," he said. "I think that giving them the distinction of soldier would have changed our attitudes toward them. A lot of it was based on racism, really. We called them hajis, and that psychology was really important." ....

In interviews, two military intelligence soldiers who served at Abu Ghraib as part of the 205th Brigade described the unit from Guantánamo as having played a notable role in setting up the interrogation unit in Iraq, which they said was modeled closely after the one that General Miller put in place in Cuba. ....
Posted by:Mike Sylwester

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