The Militant (logo)  
   Vol. 69/No. 12           March 28, 2005  
 
 
Top U.S. military brass cleared
of wrongdoing in Abu Ghraib abuse
 
BY SAM MANUEL  
WASHINGTON, D.C.—The official report by government investigators into the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by the U.S. military at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq has concluded that the torture and humiliation of inmates was not the result of Pentagon policies. The report was ordered by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to review policies for treatment of detainees in Afghanistan, Iraq, and at the U.S. naval base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. It was also an attempt by Washington to minimize the political cost it continues to pay for the Abu Ghraib scandal, which, as the Militant reported last year, reflected practices that are widespread throughout the U.S. prison system.

In a press conference following a March 10 hearing by the Senate Armed Services Committee, Navy Vice Adm. Albert Church claimed, “There was no linkage between the authorized interrogation techniques and the abuses that in fact occurred.” Church led the investigation and authored the report.

According to the unclassified executive summary of the report, Church concluded that “poor unit-level compliance” contributed to abuses along with poor “dissemination of interrogation policy.”

Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski told investigators that a boy held in the Abu Ghraib prison, who said he was 12 years old, “looked like he was only eight,” according to documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union under the Freedom of Information Act. Karpinski, who was the commander of the U.S.-run prison, has been suspended from duties while the investigation was going on.

Military officials said no juveniles were subjected to the abuses captured in photographs revealed last year, the Associated Press reported.

Karpinski also said she had seen a written order to hold a prisoner the CIA had captured without keeping a record of the individual. These inmates were often referred to by prison guards as “ghosts detainees.”

Karpinski is the only officer who has been relieved of command as a result of the abuse at Abu Ghraib. Six enlisted soldiers pled guilty to military charges stemming from their roles in the abuse at Abu Ghraib. Pvt. Charles Graner, Jr. was convicted at a court-martial this year and sentenced to 10 years in prison.

Pfc. Lynndie England, who was shown in photographs last year leading a naked male detainee at Abu Ghraib by a leash, and gesturing at the genitals of another as if she were holding a gun, is scheduled to go on trial May 3. England faces 16 years in prison.

Meanwhile, U.S. Army criminal investigative reports, which have not been made public yet but have been obtained by Human Rights Watch, revealed that two Afghan prisoners who died while in U.S. custody in 2002 were chained to the ceiling, kicked, and beaten by U.S. military personnel in sustained assaults that caused their deaths. One soldier, Pfc. Willie Brand, was reportedly charged with manslaughter for one of the deaths in a closed hearing in Texas last month. Brand allegedly acknowledged striking a detainee, named Dilawar, 37 times and was accused of killing him over five days by “destroying his leg muscle tissue with repeated unlawful knee strikes.”

The Church report stated that U.S. interrogators have killed six prisoners. Subsequent information provided by the Army and the Navy indicated that at least 26 Afghan and Iraqi inmates have died in the last three years at the hands of their U.S. captors. A number of these cases are still under investigation and may result in homicide charges. Only one of the deaths reportedly occurred at Abu Ghraib.
 
 
Related articles:
On Iraq, Kurdish struggle
Iraqi Kurds make progress toward return to oil-rich Kirkuk  
 
 
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