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Rules for Prisoner Treatment Fluctuated During September to May
From The Washington PostLt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the senior U.S. military officer in Iraq, borrowed heavily from a list of high-pressure interrogation tactics used at the U.S. detention center in Guantanamo Bay. ... The U.S. policy ... was approved in early September, shortly after an Army general sent from Washington completed his inspection of the Abu Ghraib jail .... Before last October, they could be imposed without first seeking the approval of anyone outside the prison. That gave officers at Abu Ghraib wide latitude in handling detainees. Unnamed officials at the Florida headquarters of the U.S. Central Command ... objected to some of the 32 interrogation tactics approved by Sanchez in September, including the more severe methods that he had said could be used at any time in Abu Ghraib with the consent of the interrogation officer in charge. As a result, Sanchez decided on Oct. 12 to remove several items on the list and to require that prison officials obtain his direct approval .... These were not dropped by Sanchez until a scandal erupted in May over photographs depicting abuse at the prison. ... Officials have said that Sanchez approved the use of only one of the more severe techniques -- long-term isolation -- on 25 occasions after Oct. 12 and before the third set of rules was issued this May. .... One of the documents, an Oct. 9 memorandum on "Interrogation Rules of Engagement," which each military intelligence officer at Abu Ghraib was asked to sign, sets out in detail the wide range of pressure tactics approved in September and available before the rules were changed on Oct. 12. ... The document states that the list of tactics in the memorandum is derived from a Sept. 10, 2003, "Interrogation and Counter-Resistance Policy" approved by Combined Joint Task Force-7, which Sanchez directs. While the document states that "at no time will detainees be treated inhumanely nor maliciously humiliated," it permits the use of yelling, loud music, a reduction of heat in winter and air conditioning in summer, and "stress positions" for as long as 45 minutes every four hours -- all without first gaining the permission of anyone more senior than the "interrogation officer in charge" at Abu Ghraib. .... No formalized rules for interrogation existed in Iraq before the policy imposed on Sept. 10, one day after Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller -- who was then in charge of the Guantanamo site -- departed from Iraq. He was accompanied on the Iraq visit by at least 11 senior aides from Guantanamo, including officials from the CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency. While that list of options was subsequently truncated on Oct. 12, some military personnel at the jail told Army investigators that they lacked awareness or understanding of the changes. For example, Spec. Luciana Spencer, a member of the 66th Military Intelligence Group who was removed from interrogations because she had ordered a detainee to walk naked to his cell after an interview, told investigators that the military police did not know their boundaries. "When I began working the night shift I discussed with the MPs what their SOP [standard operating procedure] was for detainee treatment," Spencer said in a statement. "They informed me they had no SOP. I informed them of my IROE [interrogation rules of engagement] and made clear to them what I was and wasnât allowed to do or see." A civilian contractor, Adel Nakhla, an interpreter for military intelligence, told investigators he was briefed on interrogation rules only after being implicated in an abusive event. .... Moreover, when intelligence officers arranged for military police to help impose some of the more severe tactics, they often failed to specify how to do so, leaving wide latitude for potentially abusive behavior. .... Posted by: Mike Sylwester 2004-06-12 |
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