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Iraqi Teens Abused at Abu Ghraib, Report Finds
By Josh White and Thomas E. Ricks
The Washington Post
Tuesday 24 August 2004
An Army investigation into the Abu Ghraib prison scandal has found that military police dogs were used to frighten detained Iraqi teenagers as part of a sadistic game, one of many details in the forthcoming report that were provoking expressions of concern and disgust among Army officers briefed on the findings.
Earlier reports and photographs from the prison have indicated that unmuzzled military police dogs were used to intimidate detainees at Abu Ghraib, something the dog handlers have told investigators was sanctioned by top military intelligence officers there. But the new report, according to Pentagon sources, will show that MPs were using their animals to make juveniles -- as young as 15 years old -- urinate on themselves as part of a competition.
"There were two MP dog handlers who did use dogs to threaten kids detained at Abu Ghraib," said an Army officer familiar with the report, one of two investigations on detainee abuse scheduled for release this week. "It has nothing to do with interrogation. It was just them on their own being weird."
Speaking on the condition of anonymity because the report has not been released, other officials at the Pentagon said the investigation also acknowledges that military intelligence soldiers kept multiple detainees off the record books and hid them from international humanitarian organizations. The report also mentions substantiated claims that at least one male detainee was sodomized by one of his captors at Abu Ghraib, sources said.
"The report will show that these actions were bad, illegal, unauthorized, and some of it was sadistic," said one Defense Department official. "But it will show that they were the actions of a few, actions that went unnoticed because of leadership failures."
The investigative report by Maj. Gen. George R. Fay focuses on the role of military intelligence soldiers in the prison abuse. It will expand the circle of soldiers considered responsible for abuse beyond the seven military police soldiers already facing charges, officials said, to include more than a dozen others -- low-ranking soldiers, civilian contractors and medics. Sources have said that the report also criticizes military leadership, from the prison and up through the highest levels of the U.S. chain of command in Iraq at the time.
One Pentagon official said yesterday that Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, then the top U.S. commander in Iraq, is named in the report for leadership deficiencies and failing to deal with rising problems at the prison as he tried to manage 150,000 troops countering an unexpected insurgency. Sanchez, however, will not be recommended for any punitive action or even a letter of reprimand, the source said. About 300 pages of the 9,000-page report will be released publicly, according to Army officials.
Another report regarding the prison abuse, commissioned by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, is expected to be released this afternoon. That independent commission, chaired by James R. Schlesinger, a former defense secretary, will be critical of the guidance and policies set by top Pentagon and military officials as they worked to get more useful intelligence from detainees in Iraq, said a source familiar with the commission's work.
The Schlesinger report is not expected to implicate high-level officials by name, but it would be the first report to link the abuse at Abu Ghraib to policies set by top officials in Washington. The Fay report, by contrast, does not point a finger at the Pentagon and instead assigns most of the blame to military intelligence and military police who worked on the chaotic grounds of the overcrowded and austere Abu Ghraib.
Rumsfeld had not been briefed on the commission's findings as of yesterday, a Defense Department source said, and the commission likewise has not briefed members of Congress, who have been anticipating the reports for months. Initially, the Schlesinger commission was slated to take 45 days, and Rumsfeld suggested that it consider limiting itself to reviewing the work of other investigations. But the commission hired a staff of more than 20 people and conducted dozens of interviews, taking more than two months to complete its work.
The reports are part of several investigations into U.S. detainee operations around the world, and so far they have expanded the scope of culpability beyond the seven MPs charged in connection with the most notorious incidents of abuse, such as stacking naked detainees in a pyramid, posing them in mock sexual positions and beating them. Pentagon officials said yesterday that the abuse came not as the result of direct orders but rather as "off-the-clock mischief" that arose from vague instructions and a general lack of oversight.
The core conclusion of the Fay report, said one general who is familiar with it, is that there was a leadership failure in the Army in Iraq that extended well beyond a handful of MPs. "There's a vacuum there," he said. "Either people knew it and turned a blind eye, or they weren't paying attention."
In particular, top leaders failed to give proper attention to reports from the International Committee of the Red Cross that decried conditions at Abu Ghraib, reported allegations of abuse and raised warning flags about detainees being hidden from them. Top Pentagon officials have denied keeping detainees from the ICRC, but the Fay report will concur with an earlier Army investigation that cited the prison for keeping "ghost detainees."
"This report will address the ghost-detainee problem, and it was an outright policy violation," said one Pentagon official familiar with the report. "It did happen, and accordingly it is still being investigated."
Another officer at the Pentagon said he felt that the latest revelations, including the use of dogs to frighten juveniles, were some of the most worrisome of the scandal. He said one particular worry at the Pentagon is how the use of dogs against Arab juveniles will be viewed in the Middle East.
"People know that in war, you know, you have to break eggs," he said. "But this crosses the line."
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Abu Ghraib Report Faults Top Commanders
NBC News
Monday 23 August 2004
Panel finds overlooked problems, understaffing at prison.
The Pentagon commission investigating abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq will accuse top commanders of responsibility for disorganization in the command structure that led to wrongdoing at the prison, according to excerpts of the commission?s report obtained by NBC News.
The investigation, headed by former Defense Secretary James Schlesinger, is one of two expected to be released this week. The other was ordered by the Army.
The Schlesinger commission found no evidence that units up the chain of command from the 800th Military Police Brigade, which was in charge of security at Abu Ghraib, and the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade, which oversaw interrogations, were directly involved in the incidents. But it will accuse the Joint Staff at the Defense Department of failing to recognize deteriorating mission performance among military intelligence interrogators owing to the stress of repeated combat deployments.
In addition, the report underscores, there were not enough trained military police assigned to an increasingly growing detainee population because reinforcements were not sent to the prison despite a growing insurgency. Partly as a result, suspect interrogation techniques first used with detainees at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, were employed at Abu Ghraib without proper safeguards, the report found. Among those techniques was the use of unmuzzled dogs.
The Washington Post, citing Pentagon sources, reported that the Army investigation found military police dogs were used to frighten Iraqi teenagers detained at the prison as part of a sadistic game. The Post reported that MPs were using their animals to make juveniles?as young as 15 years old?urinate on themselves as part of a competition.
"It has nothing to do with interrogation," The Post quoted one Army officer as saying. "It was just them on their own being weird."
7 MPs charged
Seven members of the Army?s 372nd Military Police Company, a reserve unit based at Cresaptown, Md., are charged in the scandal over physical abuse and sexual humiliation of prisoners in Iraq.
Pretrial hearings in the cases of four of the MPs were under way Monday in Mannheim, German. One of the four said in a statement Monday that he would plead guilty to some charges, and a fifth already has pleaded guilty.
The Schlesinger commission concluded that Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, commander of the 800th MP Brigade, and Col. Thomas Pappas, commander of the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade, knew or should have known that the abuses were taking place and should have taken measures to prevent them.
Pappas received a letter of reprimand. Karpinski, who was suspended in May, has denied knowing about any mistreatment of prisoners until photographs surfaced at the end of April.
The report is particularly harsh on Karpinski, accusing her of leadership failures that set the conditions that led to the abuses. The report cites her failure to establish appropriate standard operating procedures and to ensure that protections of the Geneva Conventions were afforded prisoners, as well as her failure to take appropriate action against ineffective commanders and staff officers.
Karpinski said in an interview broadcast this month by the British Broadcasting Corp. that there had been a conspiracy to prevent her knowing about the abuse. Asked whether she thought the conspiracy reached up to the Defense Department or the White House, she said, ?The indication is that it may have.?
Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, who was the top U.S. military officer in Iraq at the time of the abuse, testified before Congress that he did not find out about the abuse until this year, when a military police officer revealed the problem at the prison. The new report essentially absolves Sanchez, saying only that he should have been more vigilant in supervising Karpinski.
The Los Angeles Times, quoting senior defense officials, and other news organizations reported last week that the commission would also recommend that two dozen intelligence soldiers face criminal abuse charges similar to those lodged against the seven MPs.
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Judge Demands Results in Prison Probe
By Jeffrey Fleishman
Los Angeles Times
Tuesday 24 August 2004
He says he might drop charges against a soldier accused in the Abu Ghraib scandal if evidence isn't brought forward soon.
MANNHEIM, Germany - A military judge here Monday criticized the pace of U.S. investigations into the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, saying if prosecutors did not move quickly to divulge evidence, he might dismiss charges against a soldier accused of humiliating and assaulting Iraqi detainees.
The judge, Col. James L. Pohl, said four incomplete U.S. investigations were hindering progress in the case involving Cpl. Charles A. Graner Jr., a military police officer who appears in many abuse-related photos taken at Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad. The judge grew irritated when informed that in one probe, a single investigator was assigned to search hundreds of thousands of pages stored in a secret computer server.
"The government has to figure out what they want to do with the prosecution of this case," Pohl said. He added that if the investigations, including one by the Pentagon, were not accelerated by next month, he would "seriously revisit" a motion by Graner's lawyers to dismiss the case at a hearing in Baghdad on Oct. 21. New charges, he said, could be refiled when the reports were completed.
The judge's remarks came on the first of two days of preliminary hearings at the U.S. military base here for four soldiers charged with conspiracy, cruelty, maltreatment and other offenses. The soldiers are Spc. Megan Ambuhl, Staff Sgt. Ivan L. "Chip" Frederick II, Sgt. Javal S. Davis and Graner, who is often described by investigators as the ringleader of the alleged criminal actions. They each face possible court-martial.
Frederick issued a statement Monday saying he would plead guilty to "certain charges" in connection with the scandal. He is charged with maltreatment of detainees, conspiracy to maltreat detainees, dereliction of duty and wrongfully committing an indecent act. The statement did not detail which charges Frederick would accept guilt for.
"I have concluded that what I did was a violation of the law," the statement read. "I am hopeful that all those within the Army who contributed to or participated in the chaos that was Abu Ghraib will also come forward and accept responsibility."
Frederick's preliminary hearing is scheduled for today in Mannheim.
Most of Monday's proceedings dealt with Graner's case. The judge denied a motion by the defendant's lawyers to exclude from the case photos and other evidence seized from Graner's computer this year. Dozens of photos show Graner and his girlfriend, Pfc. Lynndie England, with naked, half-dressed or hooded detainees. The photos have led to wider investigations into alleged abuse of detainees by U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The court also rejected a defense motion for a change of venue. Graner's legal team wants to move a possible court-martial away from Baghdad. His military lawyer, Capt. Jay Heath, told the court that Graner could not receive a fair trial in Iraq because publicity had "tainted" the case and many soldiers believed that the accused had "damaged" the U.S. mission in the Middle East.
Pohl said there was no place where the trial could take place to escape the notoriety surrounding the scandal.
During the proceedings Monday, Graner, a 35-year-old Army reservist and civilian prison guard from Pennsylvania, sat at a table next to his lawyers. He intermittently moved about in his chair, crossing his legs and shifting from elbow to elbow. He testified that investigators had coerced him into handing over his computer. When he was first questioned, on Jan. 14, he said, he was exhausted and stressed from days of riding in prison convoys that often came under fire.
The judge granted a defense motion to suppress a comment Graner made to a military investigator early on Jan. 14. The investigator testified that Graner had told him, "What you are looking for is on my computer." Graner also said he was being made a "scapegoat," according to testimony. The defense said the comment about the computer was inadmissible because Graner had uttered it after he had asked for a lawyer.
"Charles Graner knew exactly what he was doing," said prosecutor Maj. Michael R. Holly, adding that as a military police officer, the defendant was aware of his rights when he was being questioned.
At a news conference after the hearing, Graner's lawyer, Guy Womack, said government investigators had not disclosed unclassified evidence, including names of military intelligence officials and civilian contractors who worked at Abu Ghraib. Among reports Womack is awaiting is an investigation by Army Maj. Gen. George R. Fay into the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade, which was responsible for the prison.
Graner and other military police officers at Abu Ghraib were following orders and using approved interrogation techniques, Womack said.
"As the MPs saw it, there was nothing wrong with it," he said. They "were consistently told to follow those orders and that they were lawful."
Womack said that the ordeal at the prison was not orchestrated by "seven rogue MPs" and that it "would be laughable" to say actions were not sanctioned by commanders.
When asked why Graner was smiling in photos depicting prisoner mistreatment, Womack said, "It's what I call gallows humor?. It's a way of handling stress of the moment."
Frederick's lawyer, Gary Myers, could not be reached for comment on his client's statement. Frederick's uncle, Bill Lawson, who has acted as a spokesman for the family, said the family always expected that the disgraced former civilian prison guard would be punished for his role in the detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib.
"We said right from the beginning that we thought Chip was responsible for something, and that he was willing to take his licks," Lawson said.
Frederick's statement also expressed concern for the well-being of Spc. Joseph Darby, the military police officer who this year blew the whistle on the detainee abuse. Darby has been in protective military custody since receiving death threats.
"To all who have supported me, I want you to know that I have no bad feelings toward Spc. Darby and neither should you," the statement read. "He did what he thought was right, and it was right. I ask you to accept that and move on."
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