Thursday, Aug 26, 2004
A US army investigation concluded on Wednesday that 27 members of the military intelligence unit that oversaw the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad committed or condoned acts of abuse against Iraqi inmates that ranged from forcing them into uncomfortable stress positions to physical beatings.
As with a separate independent report released on Tuesday, the army investigators attributed the abuses to a combination of poor supervision from senior officers, overcrowding and the sadism of small groups of uniformed soldiers.
However, the report was shocking in that it categorised in graphic detail 44 separate instances of abuse by US soldiers and private contractors working as interrogators at Abu Ghraib.
These included the alleged rape of a 15-year-old boy by a civilian contractor, forced masturbation, and a contest among guards to use prison dogs against Iraqi teens in an effort to make them lose control of their bowels.
The report also concluded that at least eight prisoners were not entered into official records in a manner that made them untraceable to human rights organisations such as the International Committee of the Red Cross.
"There is no single, simple explanation for why this abuse happened," said General Paul Kern, who led the army investigation. "The primary causes are misconduct ranging from inhumane to sadistic by a small group of morally corrupt soldiers and civilians."
Most of the violent or sexual abuse did not occur during interrogations, according to Gen Kern, and was not conducted against individuals believed to have intelligence on the insurgency in Iraq.
The report found that Gen Ricardo Sanchez, the senior US commander in Iraq at the time, and other members of the military leadership were not culpable for the abuse but bore responsibility for failing to direct proper resources to the prison and for failing to rectify confusion among soldiers about proper interrogation techniques.
The army has referred the troops for possible military charges, including Colonel Thomas Pappas, who was in charge of the 205th military intelligence unit. Gen Kern said his investigators found "no instances" in which Col Pappas directly participated in abuse but the report concluded that he improperly authorised the use of dogs during interrogations and failed to oversee his troops.
The army had also submitted information on four civilian contractors to the Justice Department to face possible criminal charges, although it declined to provide names.
Two companies, CACI International and Titan, have acknowledged that they supplied the army with interrogators and translators, respectively, who worked at Abu Ghraib. CACI said this month that its internal investigation had produced no credible information that its personnel participated in abuse.
Wednesday's report often refered to as the "Fay Report" for the general who was originally called on to lead the investigation complements an earlier army investigation by Gen Antonio Taguba into the unit of military police officers who worked with the 205th brigade at Abu Ghraib.
A separate independent report led by former defence secretary James Schlesinger concluded that senior Pentagon leaders shared responsibility for the torture of inmates at Abu Ghraib.
Joshua Chaffin in Washington
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