April, 2004, Week 5

The commander of the US prison camp at Guantanamo Bay has been sent to Iraq to oversee the treatment of 8,000 detainees as part of an investigation into torture at a US army-run prison outside Baghdad,

Photographs of the torture shocked the world after they were shown on prime time TV in the US.

Six US military police men and women have been charged following the discovery of prisoner abuse. But their families claimed today they were ill trained and are being made scapegoats

The charges included conspiracy, dereliction of duty, cruelty and maltreatment, assault and indecent acts with another, the military’s term for sexual abuse.

According to the charges:

Soldiers forced prisoners to lie in “a pyramid of naked detainees” and jumped on their prone bodies.

Detainees were ordered to strip and perform or simulate sex acts.

A hooded man allegedly was made to stand on a box meals ready to eat, and told that he would be electrocuted if he fell off.

A soldier unzipped a body bag and took snapshots of a detainee’s frozen corpse inside.

Several times, soldiers were photographed and videotaped posing in front of humiliated inmates. One gave a thumbs-up sign in front of the human pyramid.

The documents add to growing accusations of improper prisoner treatment at Abu Ghraib, which was Iraq’s largest and most notorious prison during Saddam Hussein’s rule.

US officials confirmed that TV images were authentic and said they had taken several steps to stop the mistreatment of prisoners.

Major General Geoffrey Miller has been appointed head detention facilities in Iraq. He had previously overseen the detention facility at the naval base at Guantanamo Bay, which holds hundreds of detainees from about 40 countries, many of them from the 2001 war in Afghanistan.

The top US commander in Iraq, Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, has ordered administrative penalties against seven officers who supervised the reserve military police unit that was responsible for the Abu Ghraib detention facility.

In addition, Sanchez has ordered new training on the requirements of the Geneva Conventions and on the military’s rules of engagement.

He also has ordered the creation of a team of officers that would retrain prison guards on conditions of confinement, “with emphasis on treating detainees with dignity and respect,” said the top US military spokesman in Iraq, Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt.

In January, after a soldier tipped off investigators about abuses at Abu Ghraib, Sanchez suspended 17 soldiers from their duties and ordered separate criminal and administrative investigations.

The highest-ranking officer to be suspended was Army Reserve Brigadier General Janis Karpinski, commander of the 800th Military Police Brigade. She was responsible for all US military detention facilities inside Iraq.

Relatives of some the the accused soldiers said were being made scapegoats for following orders from officers who actively supported, and even commended, the way they treated the prisoners.

Robin Harman said her daughter, Specialist Sabrina Harman, was not properly trained.

“She’s being railroaded,” Harman said of her daughter, who before the Iraq war was an assistant manager at a pizzeria. “This kid has never hurt anyone in her life. They took her fresh out of boot camp and threw her platoon over there.”

Gary Myers, a lawyer for two, said the prison was set up in such a fashion that the intelligence community had far too much influence.

“They were instructing or advising the MPs to create favourable conditions’ for interrogation. Favourable conditions’ were conditions where the detainees were susceptible to providing intelligence information, and that process involved techniques of humiliation.”

The soldiers were congratulated by their senior officers, he said. “These guys are being told they are doing a fantastic job for their country, that they are saving lives and to keep up the good work,” Myers said.

A soldier accused of abusing Iraqi prisoners of war claimed that his commanders silenced his questions about harsh, humiliating treatment of inmates.

In a journal he started after military investigators looking into the abuse approached him in January, Army Reserve Staff Sergeant Ivan Frederick wrote that Abu Ghraib prison was nothing like the Virginia state prison where he worked in civilian life.

The Iraqi prisoners were sometimes confined naked for three consecutive days without toilets in damp, unventilated cells with floors 3ft by 3ft, Frederick wrote in materials supplied to The Associated Press by a relative.

“When I brought this up with the acting BN (battalion) commander, he stated, ‘I don’t care if he has to sleep standing up’. That’s when he told my company commander that he was the BN commander and for me to do as he says,” Frederick wrote.
/PA

A Sterling Record