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Prison-Scandal Defendants Don't Show Any Directions from Above
From The New York Times.... the soldiers charged with mistreatment [of Iraqi prisoners] have defended themselves by saying they were simply following orders. But as of the end of testimony here on Friday in a military court hearing for Pfc. Lynndie R. England - the last, the longest and the most closely watched of the proceedings to determine whether the seven soldiers should be court-martialed - there have been no witnesses and no evidence to back up that central assertion. ... No one has said there were direct orders to carry out the treatment seen in photos, or even, as Private England has told investigators, that the military police soldiers were encouraged to "keep it up" as a way of encouraging better interrogations. "To my knowledge, ma'am, they were never ordered to do anything," Specialist Joseph M. Darby, the soldier who first turned in the photos, replied to a question from a prosecutor here on Friday. Witness after witness has said that the treatment in the pictures, including forcing prisoners to masturbate and piling naked detainees in a pyramid, would never be allowed under any stretch of the rules. "It was wrong - it was more than wrong," testified Specialist Matthew Wisdom, who like the charged soldiers, is a member of the 372nd Military Police Company. "It was absolutely wrong." Capt. Donald Reese, the commander of the company, testified that military intelligence soldiers conducting interrogations would ask the police soldiers to strip detainees or deprive them of sleep. Then a prosecutor asked him about whether there had been requests for the behavior seen in the photos: Slapping? A dog pile of naked detainees? Forced masturbation? Taking nude photographs? "No, ma'am," he replied grimly. However, other testimony has contradicted the government's argument that the Abu Ghraib abuses were solely the work of seven rogue soldiers. Witnesses have described varying degrees of mistreatment or sexual humiliation committed by soldiers beyond the group accused. Some testimony has included the assertion that high-ranking officers, including Col. Thomas Pappas, the highest-ranking intelligence officer at the prison, knew about the improper use of dogs, as well as some abuses, including the death. The testimony in the hearings also leaves unclear what the rules were for interrogations and how harsh the treatment was. Soldiers have testified about seeing detainees being kicked and handcuffed with their hands so high above their heads that their toes barely touched the ground. ... According to other testimony, Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, who came to Abu Ghraib in August to improve interrogations, said the military police should "set the conditions" for military intelligence soldiers doing interrogations. .... Yet the soldiers did not say that meant harsh treatment of prisoners. As Capt. Carolyn Wood, of the 519th Military Intelligence Battalion, described it, military police were to collect information on detainees' families or personalities that interrogators could use in questioning, and to help move an increasingly large population of detainees between several wings of the prison. The soldier who investigators call the ringleader of the abuse, Cpl. Charles Graner, wrote in a log that military police soldiers should not deprive an inmate of sleep without a written order from military intelligence. Although the accused soldiers say they received orders, none could recall who gave them. "Initially there was some, 'They told us to do it,' " testified Special Agent Tyler Pieron, an Army investigator. "Never could figure out who 'they' was." ... Private England's lawyer, Richard Hernandez, said he had names of military intelligence soldiers who had given orders to carry out the acts seen in the photographs, but he would not produce them yet because the burden of proof in this hearing, he said, "is on the government." By the end of the four days of testimony, Private England's legal team has seemed to have embraced an "everyone else was doing it" defense, pushing witnesses to say that higher-ups had not vigorously prosecuted or even investigated abuse by other soldiers, or inappropriate conduct. They argue that Private England, who is pregnant, faces more jail time for her alleged sexual misconduct than for prison abuse, while other sexual misconduct went unpunished. Posted by: Mike Sylwester 2004-08-07 |
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