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| Iraq-Jordan |
| Prison’s Detainee Assessment Branch Reported Abuses in November |
| 2004-06-14 |
| From The New York Times Beginning in November, a small unit of interrogators at Abu Ghraib prison began reporting allegations of prisoner abuse, including the beatings of five blindfolded Iraqi generals, in internal documents sent to senior officers, according to interviews with military personnel who worked in the prison. The disclosure of the documents raises new questions about whether senior officers in Iraq were alerted about serious abuses at the prison before January. Top military officials have said they only learned about abuses then, after a soldier came forward with photographs of the abuse. "We were reporting it long before this mess came out," said one of several military intelligence soldiers interviewed in Germany and the United States who asked not to be identified for fear they would jeopardize their careers. .... At least 20 accounts of mistreatment were included in the documents, according to those interviewed. Some detainees described abuse at other detention facilities before they were transferred to Abu Ghraib, but at least seven incidents said to be cited in the documents took place at the prison, four of them in the area controlled by military intelligence and the site of the notorious abuses depicted in the photographs. The abuse allegations were cited by members of the prison’s Detainee Assessment Branch, a unit of interrogators who screened prisoners for possible release, in routine weekly reports channeled to military judge advocates and others. ... Most of the Abu Ghraib incidents were reported before January, said military intelligence personnel. In one case a detainee told workers from the Detainee Assessment Branch that he was made to stand naked, holding books on his head, while a soldier poured cold water on him. Among the other incidents cited by military personnel: a man was shoved to the ground before a soldier stepped on his head; a man was forced to stand naked while a female interrogator made fun of his genitals and a woman was repeatedly kicked by a military police guard. The beating of the former generals, which had not been disclosed, is being examined by the Pentagon as part of its inquiry into abuses at Abu Ghraib, according to people knowledgeable about the investigation. By mid-December, those people said, two separate reports of the beating had been made — one by the assessment branch and one by a military intelligence analyst. The analyst asked a former general at the end of an interrogation what had happened to his nose — it was smashed and tilted to the left, and a gash on his chin had been stitched. The prisoner, in his 50’s, told the story of the beating, which he said had occurred about a week earlier. His account closely matched that given independently to the Detainee Assessment Branch by another former general around the same time. According to their accounts, here is what happened: One evening after fierce riots had erupted at the prison in late November, a group of soldiers rounded up the five former Iraqi generals, who were suspected of instigating the revolt. On their way to the prison’s isolation unit, the soldiers stopped the captives, who were handcuffed and blindfolded, and arranged them in a line. Then the guards attacked the prisoners with a barrage of punches, beating them until they were covered in blood. The military intelligence analyst alerted his sergeant, but the sergeant said the prisoners "probably deserved it," a person with first-hand knowledge of the investigation said. ... The Detainee Assessment Branch was formed in October as a last stop for detainees who were deemed no longer useful by the prison’s interrogators. The unit included four to six interrogators and some analysts. Claudius Albury, an employee of CACI, a civilian contractor, set up the unit and helped manage it, reporting to Maj. Matt Price, the operations officer in charge of the Joint Interrogation and Debriefing Center at the prison. Mr. Albury said he could not comment, pending clearance from his supervisors. Military officials said the assessment branch was created to help speed the flow of detainee releases. The unit screened prisoners in a process that fell somewhere between an exit interview and an interrogation. The purpose of the screening was to determine whether a detainee was no longer of "intelligence value" — that is, whether other interrogators had forgotten to ask important questions, or failed to notice inconsistencies in the answers. In preparation for the screening, interrogators read through the detainees’ files, which consisted mostly of notes by other interrogators and any intelligence reports written about the detainee. Detainee Assessment Branch personnel then asked detainees the same basic questions other interrogators had asked, like biographical queries and whether the detainees knew where Saddam Hussein was hiding. Starting in mid-November, one member of the unit began asking detainees, "How have you been treated since you have been in U.S. custody?" It was intended as a tactic meant to make the detainee feel like the interrogator cared, military intelligence personnel said. But the question soon began eliciting vivid and disturbing answers. ... "We couldn’t believe what we were hearing," said one soldier. Two detainees reported having been given electric shocks at other holding facilities before arriving in Abu Ghraib, according to the interviews. One prisoner’s file included photographs of burns on his body. "We didn’t want people to know that we knew about it and didn’t report it," the soldier said. ... |
| Posted by:Mike Sylwester |