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US documents report further abuse of Iraq prisoners
Members of a US special operations task force punched and abused prisoners in Iraq in front of Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) agents and then threatened the agents to keep them quiet, a official document has revealed. A letter from the head of the DIA to a senior Pentagon intelligence official, which detailed previously unknown incidents of abuse by US forces on prisoners in Iraq, said the agents also saw detainees with burn marks and bruises. It was written two months after photographs of US soldiers abusing prisoners at Abu Ghraib jail near Baghdad became public, and five months after American commanders in Iraq first learned of the Abu Ghraib abuse. The Abu Ghraib revelations prompted international outrage and undercut US credibility as it sought to stabilise Iraq amid a bloody insurgency after last year's invasion. The new revelations of abuses elsewhere were included in a June 25 letter from Navy Vice Admiral Lowell Jacoby, director of the DIA, to Stephen Cambone, undersecretary of defence for intelligence. The letter was one of numerous US Government documents released by the American Civil Liberties Union, which obtained them under the Freedom of Information Act. Other documents depict a split between the Defence Department and the FBI over Pentagon use of harsh interrogation methods on prisoners. Vice Admiral Jacoby wrote that two unidentified DIA agents, who worked as interrogators and debriefers at a detention facility in Baghdad, saw task force officers "punch a prisoner in the face to the point the individual needed medical attention". Vice Admiral Jacoby said that "the debriefer was ordered to leave the room". The date of the incident was not stated. Posted by: God Save The World 2004-12-08 |
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