PDA

View Full Version : Soldier Reports More Abuses to Senator



DLR'sCock
10-06-2005, 06:19 AM
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/05/international/middleeast/05abuse.html


Soldier Reports More Abuses to Senator
By Eric Schmitt
The New York Times

Wednesday 05 October 2005


Capt. Ian Fishback briefed Senator John McCain and Congressional aides on Tuesday.
(Photo: Jamie Rose / The New York Times)

Washington - An Army captain who has reported new allegations of detainee abuse in Iraq met Tuesday with Senator John McCain and staff aides on the House Armed Services Committee and gave them additional accounts of abuse in Iraq that other soldiers had sent him in recent days, Congressional aides said.

The officer, Capt. Ian Fishback, in a brief interview after his half-hour meeting with Mr. McCain declined to describe the new information he gave the senator or, in a separate meeting, to the House aides. But Captain Fishback said that since he and two other former members of the 82nd Airborne Division last month accused soldiers in their battalion in Iraq of routinely beating and abusing prisoners in 2003 and 2004, several other soldiers had contacted him and asked him to relay to lawmakers their own experiences.

Mr. McCain, an Arizona Republican on the Armed Services Committee, said nothing in a statement about any new reports of abuse, saying only, "I'm even more impressed by what a fine and honorable officer he is."

But a senior House aide who met with Captain Fishback said the officer had read a letter from a sergeant describing detainee abuse in Iraq and allowed the aides to read the document before taking it back. The aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity because Captain Fishback related the information in confidence for use in a possible Congressional investigation, declined to give details of the abuse.

In separate statements to Human Rights Watch, Captain Fishback and two sergeants related their experiences as they recounted how members of the First Battalion, 504th Parachute Infantry, had repeatedly beaten Iraqi prisoners, exposed them to extremes of hot and cold, and stacked them in human pyramids at Camp Mercury, a forward operating base near Falluja.

The abuses reportedly took place between September 2003 and April 2004, before and during the abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad.

The Army has started a criminal inquiry into the allegations by Captain Fishback and the two sergeants.

Captain Fishback is scheduled to meet Wednesday with Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, the ranking Democrat on the Armed Services Committee.




--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Go to Original

Senate to Engage in Debate over Detainees
By Liz Sidoti
The Associated Press

Wednesday 05 October 2005

Washington - The Senate this week will engage in a politically volatile debate over the U.S. military's treatment of terrorism suspects as fresh allegations of prisoner abuse surface and support builds for legislation to establish standards for handling detainees.

Led by Sen. John McCain of Arizona, a group of Republicans wants to have amendments imposing restrictions on the detention, interrogation and prosecution of prisoners tacked onto the $440 billion military spending bill the Senate is to vote on by weeks' end.

Senators offered the same proposals in the summer as the Senate worked on a bill setting Pentagon policy. But Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., scuttled that bill in part because of White House opposition to the detainee proposals.

Undeterred, McCain, who was a prisoner of war in Vietnam, resurrected his legislation this week. His amendment would ban the use of "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment" against anyone in U.S. custody and require all U.S. troops to follow procedures in the Army Field Manual when they detain and interrogate suspects.

On Wednesday, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., was reintroducing his proposal that would define "enemy combatant" and put into law procedures for prosecuting detainees at Guantanamo Bay.

Eight Republicans support the proposals and Democrats also are on board. Votes could come on the amendments as soon as Wednesday night.

As it did before, the White House last week threatened a veto over the proposals, arguing they would tie the president's hands during wartime.

However, this time the administration did not send Vice President Dick Cheney to Capitol Hill to personally lobby McCain, Graham and Sen. John Warner, R-Va., the Senate Armed Services Committee chairman who supports the amendments.

"I hope there is a realization that this is the right thing to do," McCain said Tuesday.

At the same time, Democrats plan to continue to push their own proposal that would establish an independent commission to investigate allegations of prisoner abuse. The Pentagon already has done several of its own investigations and argues that another would be redundant.

But Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, the top Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, said those reviews weren't thorough enough. "This is a rich target for a true investigation," he said Wednesday. He accused the White House of issuing a "false threat" to veto the bill over detainee amendments.

McCain, Graham and Warner decided that standards for handling detainees were needed in light of allegations of mistreatment at the Navy's Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba and the abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

Since July, a list of retired generals and admirals backing the effort has doubled from 14 to 28.

"It is now apparent that the abuse of prisoners in Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and elsewhere took place in part because our men and women in uniform were given ambiguous instructions," the retired officers said in a letter dated last month. "Our service members were denied clear guidance, and left to take the blame when things went wrong. They deserve better than that."

In recent weeks, new claims of abuse and reminders of Abu Ghraib have been in the headlines.

Human Rights Watch, a U.S. rights organization, reported that soldiers in the Army's elite 82nd Airborne Division systematically tortured Iraqi detainees in 2003 and 2004. The Pentagon says it's investigating.

Army Capt. Ian Fishback of the 82nd Airborne disclosed to Senate Republicans and Democrats that he had heard about widespread prisoner abuse while serving in Iraq. Fishback was meeting with Levin on Wednesday, a day after meeting with McCain.

Last week, a federal judge in New York ordered the release of dozens more pictures of prisoners being abused at Abu Ghraib, rejecting government arguments that the images would provoke terrorists and incite violence against U.S. troops in Iraq.

-------