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US spies urged abuse of prisoners Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,9451235%255E2703,00.htmlhttp://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,9451235%255E2703,00.html
US spies 'urged abuse' of prisoners
BY Roy Eccleston, Washington correspondent, and John Kerin
03may04
THE scandal over the US military's abuse of Iraqi prisoners at a notorious Baghdad prison is deepening, with new claims the possible war crimes were encouraged by American intelligence officers wanting inmates "softened up" for interrogation.
A London newspaper has also broadened the abuse allegations to British troops. The Daily Mirror published photographs at the weekend of what it said was a tortured Iraqi man, after receiving details of the alleged eight-hour beating from two British soldiers.
The claim that the "sadistic, blatant and wanton criminal abuses" by at least six US military police were actively encouraged by intelligence officers came in a confidential military report leaked to The New Yorker magazine.
The magazine also reported that when one Iraqi prisoner was so stressed by questioning – possibly by CIA officers – that he died, his body was packed in ice for a day and then taken from the jail with a mock intravenous drip in his arm to disguise his death.
Army Reserve general Janis Karpinski, who has been stood down over the allegations, told The New York Times on Sunday that she also believed the brutal behaviour had been encouraged by intelligence officers, who were now being protected. "We're disposable," said General Karpinski, who had been in charge of military prisons in Iraq, referring to the reservist military police (MPs) allegedly involved.
"Why would they want the active-duty people to take the blame? They want to put this on the MPs and hope that this thing goes away. Well, it's not going to go away."
The Arab world is outraged at photographs broadcast first on the US current affairs program Sixty Minutes II last week, showing the humiliation of naked Iraqi prisoners at one of the prisons most notorious for torture during the reign of Saddam Hussein.
While General Karpinski said the pictures sickened her when she saw them, and that those responsible were "bad people", she also added that the Abu Ghraib prison cell block involved – 1A – was under the control of military intelligence officers 24 hours a day.
"They were in there at 2 in the morning, they were (there) at 4 in the afternoon," she told the paper, adding that she had never been in the area, despite having overall control of the prison.
Foreign Minister Alexander Downer conceded yesterday that the mistreatment provided a "propaganda victory for al-Qa'ida", but stopped short of describing the behaviour as a breach of the Geneva Convention on torture.
However, Human Rights Watch in New York said that under the Geneva Conventions, mistreatment of prisoners that amounted to "torture or inhuman treatment" would be a war crime.
Kenneth Roth, executive director of HRW, a respected private monitor of human rights abuses, claimed the bold behaviour of the soldiers in posing for photographs with the prisoners "suggests they had nothing to hide from their superiors".
The scandal is a devastating blow to the US image in Iraq, where the Iraqi Governing Council is demanding an investigation. Council member Ghazi Mashal Ajil al-Yawer told Associated Press the perpetrators must be punished "as war criminals" because "the dignity of an Iraqi citizen is no less than the dignity of an American".
Investigative reporter Seymour Hersh in The New Yorker magazine said a leaked Pentagon report by Major-General Antonio Taguba, completed in February, found that between October and December last year there were numerous cases of "sadistic, blatant and wanton criminal abuses" of Iraqi prisoners at the prison.
Among the alleged abuses were: 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; sodomising 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.
Six reservist military police, including several women, have been charged and face court-martial. But Hersh also reported some of the accused soldiers claimed they had been urged to act by military intelligence interrogators.
The Taguba report said army intelligence officers, CIA agents and private contractors "actively requested that MP guards set physical and mental conditions for favourable interrogation of witnesses".
The most senior of those charged, Sergeant Ivan Frederick, in letters to his family blamed military intelligence, according to Hersh.
He claimed he questioned some things that were done, such as leaving prisoners with no clothes or in women's underpants, but was told "this is how the military intelligence wants it done". The intelligence officers "encouraged and told us 'great job', they were now getting positive results and information".
He also claimed a man brought in by the CIA and its employees had died. "They stressed him out so bad that the man passed away," he wrote, the magazine said.
"They put his body in a body bag and packed him in ice for approximately 24 hours in the shower. The next day the medics came and put his body on a stretcher, placed a fake IV (intravenous drip) in his arm and took him away."
No record was made that the man had been there.
President George W. Bush, who cites the end of Saddam's torture chambers as a justification for war, has tried to reel in the public relations disaster the claims represent.
"(The prisoners') treatment does not reflect the nature of the American people," Mr Bush said. "That's not the way we do things in America. And so I – I didn't like it one bit."
The British allegations, complete with photographs showing a hooded man being urinated on and assaulted with a rifle butt, were made by two anonymous soldiers to the Daily Mirror newspaper.
"The prisoner, aged 18-20, begged for mercy as he was battered with rifle butts and batons in the head and groin, was kicked, stamped and urinated on, and had a gun barrel forced into his mouth," the paper said.
Barely conscious after eight hours of assaults, he was thrown from a truck. It was not known if he survived.
"If it happened, it's completely unacceptable," said British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
"If this is proven, the perpetrators are not fit to wear the Queen's uniform," said Chief of the General Staff General Sir Michael Jackson.
The Sunday Telegraph newspaper said military police were expected to arrest six soldiers from the Queen's Lancashire Regiment in connection with the apparent abuse by tomorrow.
The Sunday Times reported that the treatment may have been part of a series of revenge beatings for the murder of a British soldier last August, although the Sunday Express also suggested the pictures could have been "a cruel joke".
HRW's Mr Roth said the US had been slack at cracking down on troops who had already been shown to have abused prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan. "It is clear that the US has not taken the issue of prisoner abuse seriously enough," he charged.
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