[And then of course there's the gulag our boys run. Sodomy, killing, electrodes. What makes us different? We investigate first, and then dismiss the allegations. Evil tyrants dismiss the allegations without first pretending to investigate.]
January 25, 2005 LOS ANGELES TIMES
Documents contain descriptions of severe detainee mistreatment beyond Abu Ghraib.
By John Hendren
Times Staff Writer
WASHINGTON -- Pentagon documents released Monday disclosed that Iraqi
prisoners had lodged dozens of abuse complaints against U.S. and Iraqi
personnel who guarded them at a little-known palace in Baghdad
converted to a U.S. prison. Among the allegations was that guards had
sodomized a disabled man and killed his brother, whose dying body was
tossed into a cell, atop his sister.
The documents, obtained in a lawsuit against the federal government by
the American Civil Liberties Union, suggest for the first time that
numerous detainees were abused at Adhamiya Palace, one of Saddam
Hussein's villas in eastern Baghdad that was used by his son Uday.
Previous cases of abuse of Iraqi prisoners have focused mainly on Abu
Ghraib prison.
A government contractor who was interviewed by U.S. investigators said
that as many as 90 incidents of possible abuse took place at the
palace, but only a few were detailed in the hundreds of pages of
documents released Monday.
The documents also touch on alleged abuses in other U.S.-run lockups
in Iraq. The papers include investigative reports linking some abuses
to ultrasecret Pentagon counter-terrorism units.
The latest allegations add to a pattern that human rights activists
said suggested systematic abuse of prisoners at U.S. military
detention facilities across the globe. ACLU officials, who have
obtained and released thousands of documents in recent months, on
Monday accused the Pentagon of a "woefully inadequate" response to
hundreds of incidents of alleged abuse.
"Some of the investigations have basically whitewashed the torture and
abuse," said the group's director, Anthony D. Romero. "The documents
that the ACLU has obtained tell a damning story of widespread torture
reaching well beyond the walls of Abu Ghraib."
Responding to the latest allegations, U.S. military officials
maintained that a few low-level troops had committed the abuses,
independent of senior commanders. They noted that more than 300
criminal investigations had examined allegations of prisoner
mistreatment and subjected 100 soldiers to court-martial proceedings
and administrative punishments.
"The Army and Department of Defense have aggressively investigated all
credible allegations of detainee abuse and held individuals
accountable," said Lt. Col. Gerard Healy, an Army spokesman.
Few of the alleged abuses at the Adhamiya palace have previously
received attention from Pentagon investigators or human rights groups.
The palace is a prison overseen by the U.S. Army's 1st Cavalry
Division, with interrogations conducted at least in part by members of
the 5th Special Forces Group of Ft. Campbell, Ky.
The alleged abuse at the palace included forced sodomy, electric
shocks, cigarette burns and severe beatings. Some allegations by
prisoners were corroborated by U.S. civilian military contractors
hired to help interrogate detainees, according to the Pentagon
documents.
One prisoner held at the palace during 2004 said an Iraqi security
officer had burned him with cigarettes and struck him repeatedly, the
documents state. Another said Iraqi interrogators had pinched his nose
and poured water in his mouth, raped him with a wooden stick and
shocked his testicles.
In one of the more detailed cases, Iraqi security troops arrested
several members of a family accused of supplying arms and money to
members of the fedayeen, paramilitaries who had been allied with
Hussein's regime.
A woman whose name was blacked out from the documents claimed in
interviews with U.S. Army investigators that the bloody, bruised body
of her brother had been tossed into her cell on top of her sister. Her
brother died shortly afterward, according to her account.
Another brother, who is disabled, said guards pulled him around by his
penis. The guards forced a water bottle up his rectum, he told
investigators.
Military investigators noted in reports released Monday that the man's
legs and arms are uneven in length from a bone deficiency.
A woman who recounted a similar incident to the French newspaper Le
Monde was identified recently as Houda Azzawi. Her brother who died
was identified in the newspaper's article as Ayad.
The family's complaints were supported by a sworn statement of a
military contractor from CACI International Inc., who was interviewed
at the Abu Ghraib prison, where the disabled brother was later sent.
The contractor, whose name was redacted from the documents given to
the ACLU, recalled "a detainee who was handicapped and was beaten up
very bad."
A second CACI contractor corroborated the story, saying that he did
not witness abuse by Americans or Iraqis working with them, but noted
in an interview with Army investigators "one incident of rape with a
bottle and a death of a brother" in January at the palace.
"I heard that the Iraqis recently killed him and hung him. I heard
this through interpreters but not official channels yet," the
contractor said. "One of the individuals who had been abused said he
remembers one of the Americans had a flag on his arm."
An Army Criminal Investigation Command document dated Oct. 14, 2004,
concluded that there was insufficient evidence to prove the allegation
that one of the detainees was abused by U.S. troops.
"However, it appears he may have been abused by the Iraqi Civil
Defense Corps," the document stated. After an ICDC captain turned over
the detainee to U.S. troops, he "was received from the ICDC with
visible injuries."
The Army report, whose author's name also was blacked out, concluded
that the investigation was "terminated" because continuing would be
"of little or no value."
Many detainees from Adhamiya who were transferred to Abu Ghraib
complained of abuse to civilian interrogators, according to the
documents. The interrogators said another detainee complained he was
unable to sit after bottles were inserted into his rectum.
"There were many detainees who came in abused. While we were screening
the detainees, they would ask us, 'Are they going to beat us here
too?' " the first interrogator said in a statement to investigators.
"Some would have broken shoulders, others came in on crutches."
The documents detailed dozens of other alleged abuses in other
locations. ACLU officials said the documents suggested that Army
criminal investigators failed to pursue leads in abuse cases.
The documents released Monday raised questions about some activities
of elite Special Forces teams. One investigation was based on Red
Cross reports revealing that an Iraqi detainee turned over to a
special U.S. commando unit known as Task Force 6-26 in April 2004 at a
base in Fallouja had been abused.
The Red Cross said the detainee had been suspended by his thighs and
was beaten while hooded and restrained. The same reports indicated
that the Iraqi had been shot in the arm and beaten in the shins with a
rubber hose.
However, the case was dropped after investigators concluded he was
abused while in the custody of Kurds, before he was turned over to the
commando unit, a conclusion ACLU officials continue to question.
In another case involving a group known as Task Force 20, a collection
of Special Forces soldiers and CIA officers, a 73-year-old woman
complained she was arrested, flown to an undisclosed location and
questioned for several days. She said one male captor "rode" her and
called her names. She added that two of her fingers were broken and
that she was sexually abused with a stick. That case was dropped
because "the investigation did not develop sufficient evidence" to
prove wrongdoing, investigators wrote.
One investigation was begun in response to a May 11, 2004, Los Angeles
Times article detailing the abuses suffered by Iraqi women in U.S.
custody as described by their Iraqi attorneys. The matter was quickly
dropped when investigators were unable to learn the names and
locations of any victims.
In another incident last July, according to the Army documents, a
photo emerged showing an Army private pointing a gun at the head of a
hooded and bound detainee.
During questioning, the soldier in the photo, whose name was redacted,
told investigators that his duties as a guard at an unnamed safe house
operated by Special Forces and CIA personnel included requiring
detainees to "maintain stressful positions" and preventing them from
sleeping by playing loud music, dousing them with water or poking,
prodding or slapping them, according to the documents.
Although Army criminal investigators concluded there was probable
cause to believe the soldier had committed aggravated assault by
pointing his pistol at the detainee, there was no record of punishment
or further investigation of the treatment of detainees at the safe
house.
An investigation into an alleged beating of an Iraqi detainee in
February 2004 found "probable cause" that an unnamed lieutenant
colonel had made a death threat and fired a pistol next to the
detainee's head at a base in Taji.
Four enlisted soldiers from the 2-20th Field Artillery Battalion of
the Army's 4th Infantry Division and a civilian interpreter allegedly
punched and kicked the detainee "numerous times while they were
interrogating him."
According to the Army documents, the soldiers received light
administrative punishment and the interpreter does not appear to have
been sanctioned at all.
In a Nov. 14, 2003, statement, a U.S. soldier said he "saw what I
think were war crimes" while assigned to a Baghdad facility known as
Camp Red. In the statement, the soldier reported seeing U.S. troops
assault detainees at the camp and the use of prolonged hooding,
exposure to heat and cold and excessive restraints.
"In my mind," the soldier said, "my chain of command did nothing to
stop these war crimes, and allowed them to happen."
Despite the soldier's testimony, the investigation was closed due to
"insufficient evidence."
Times staff writer Esther Schrader contributed to this report.
Copyright 2005 Los Angeles Times