|
MP Captain Describes Circumstances of Prisonerâs Death
From The Washington PostThe company commander of the U.S. soldiers charged with abusing detainees at Abu Ghraib prison testified Thursday that the top military intelligence commander at the prison was present the night a detainee died during an interrogation and that efforts were made to conceal the details of the detaineeâs death. Capt. Donald J. Reese, commander of the 372nd Military Police Company, said he was summoned one night in November to a shower room in a cellblock at the prison, where he discovered the body of a bloodied detainee on the floor. A group of intelligence personnel was standing around the body, discussing what to do, and Col. Thomas M. Pappas, commander of military intelligence at the prison, was among them, Reese said. Reese said an Army colonel named Jordan sent a soldier to the prison mess hall for ice to preserve the body overnight. Lt. Col. Steven L. Jordan was head of the interrogation center at the prison, but it was unclear whether he was the officer to whom Reese referred. No medics were called, Reese said, and the detaineeâs identification was never recorded. Reese testified that he heard Pappas say at one point, "Iâm not going down for this alone." An autopsy the next day determined that the manâs death was caused by a blood clot resulting from a blow to the head, and the body subsequently was hooked up to an intravenous drip, as if the detainee was still alive, and taken out of the prison, Reese recalled. There is no known record of what happened to the body after that. .... During an earlier hearing for another soldier in the 372nd, Spec. Jason A. Kenner testified that a Navy SEAL team and officers from other government agencies -- referred to as OGA, a common designation for CIA operatives -- brought the detainee in alive with a bag over his head. Kenner said he later saw that the man had been severely beaten on his face. Intelligence officers took the detainee to a shower room used for interrogations, Kenner said, and shackled him to a wall. "About an hour later, he died on them," Kenner testified. "They decided to put him on ice. There was a battle between [OGA] and MI [military intelligence] as to who was going to take care of the body. A couple days later, he was finally disposed of." .... Reese said military intelligence clearly controlled the cellblock where Harman and other members of her military police platoon worked the night shift. "My MPs, they were directed by the MI people for what they wanted and how they wanted it," he said. .... Posted by: Mike Sylwester 2004-06-25 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=36373 |