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| Iraq-Jordan |
| MP Captain Describes Circumstances of Prisoner’s Death |
| 2004-06-25 |
| From The Washington Post The 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 detainee’s 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 detainee’s identification was never recorded. Reese testified that he heard Pappas say at one point, "I’m not going down for this alone." An autopsy the next day determined that the man’s 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 |
| #5 Joe Average could care less what happens to Iraqi POW's. Joe Average sees Iraqi POW's as the enemy. Joe Average knows that war is brutal and nasty. Joe Average's main concern about this war is body bag counts and it doesn't matter what color panties or other "brutality" that is alleged about our GI's, the only thing Joe Average cares about is how many GI's are killed in a war that Joe Average is having less and less certainty should have been started in the first place. Kapeesh? The WH, the MSM, and some of you are worried about "fair play" in war and Joe Average has far more common sense, he is more pragmatic. If George Bush loses the election because of the Iraq War[btw, polls show him leading Kerry by 7 points this week because the economy is picking up]it's not going to be because of POW abuse. It will be because of a)the Iraqi's actions-their lack of gratitude and support of what we have done for them and b) because Joe Average has zero interest in this experimental theory of solving terrorism by playing Johnny Appleseed with democracy thruout the hellholes of the world and getting American boys killed and maimed in the process. |
| Posted by: rex 2004-06-25 12:40:25 PM |
| #4 Anon1, I think you may be conflating different incidents here. Sounds like the SEALs brought in a prisoner who was badly banged up. He subsequently died. Exactly how he got banged up is unknown. You can't leap from that to an assertion of a prison policy to "beat prisoners to death". (Though I'm sure plenty will.) This is a war folks. Operators don't read bad guys their miranda rights and bring them in with velvet handcuffs. Their job is to kill, not detain. No one should be surprised if they bring in someone who is looking worse for wear and tear. As for the MP staff taking trophy photos with the corpse, that's just plain wrong and is being dealt with. I don't see any news here. |
| Posted by: Classical_Liberal 2004-06-25 12:36:16 PM |
| #3 Spot on, Anon1--and with the anti-Bush frenzy in the media, that 0.1% is all we're going to hear about until Joe Average thinks it represents the 99.9% as well. *sigh* |
| Posted by: Dar 2004-06-25 9:35:05 AM |
| #2 Sounds like the people involved are being charged. What's your beef, Mikey? |
| Posted by: Robert Crawford 2004-06-25 8:19:16 AM |
| #1 this was a bad business. hard to claim high moral ground if you beat prisoners to death. i feel they shamed the army and made the rest of the good GIs jobs a lot harder. mortal blow to homefront psychology - deserved or not - US troops have a reputation for not caring about human rights. Annoying because 99.9% of the time they are above board, clean as. This 0.1% have just tarnished the other 99.9% in the minds of the masses all over the world. And in a democracy it matters what the masses think. how could they have been so stupid... to take TROPHY PICTURES into the bargain! I really hope it was an aberration and that it doesn't come out that it was actually sanctioned at the highest levels. warzone or not, HOW you conduct yourself is as important as reaching your objective. |
| Posted by: Anon1 2004-06-25 7:45:52 AM |