- WASHINGTON - Abuse of Iraqi
prisoners that sparked worldwide condemnation may have been ordered by
US military intelligence to extract information from the captives, and
was possibly more cruel than officially acknowledged, The New Yorker
magazine
and Britain's daily Guardian reported on Saturday.
-
- Seymour Hersh, investigative reporter for The New Yorker,
said that Staff Sergeant Ivan Frederick, one of six US military policemen
accused of humiliating Iraqi prisoners at the Abu Gharib prison outside
Baghdad, wrote home in January that he had "questioned some of the
things" he saw inside the prison, but that "the answer I got
was, 'This is how military intelligence wants it done'."
-
- According to his letter quoted by Hersh, military
intelligence
officers had congratulated Frederick and other soldiers on the "great
job" done with prisoners because "they were now getting positive
results and information".
-
- The Guardian newspaper said it had reviewed a journal
Frederick began keeping in January after an investigation was launched
into the alleged abuse of prisoners.
-
- "The journals... detail the conditions of the
prisoners,
apparent torture and the death of one inmate after interrogation,"
the newspaper said.
-
- According to Frederick's journal quoted in the Guardian,
"prisoners were forced to live in damp cool cells" and those
placed in isolation cells were left there with "little or no clothes,
no toilet or running water, no ventilation or window for as much as three
days."
-
- Frederick writes in his journal that he tried to raise
the issue with his superior who told him: "Don't worry about
it".'
-
- "Stress Out"
-
- He said that soldiers were told to stress out prisoners
as much as possible to get information and on one occasion in November
soldiers "stressed out (an inmate) so bad that the man passed
away".
-
- Fredericks writes that the man's body was packed in ice
for 24 hours before medics "came in and put his body on a stretcher,
placed a fake IV in his arm and took him away".
-
- The prison scandal broke out on Wednesday, after CBS's
"60 Minutes II" programme broadcast a picture showing a prisoner
standing on a box with a hood over his head and wires attached to his
hands.
-
- Other pictures showed nude prisoners lying on each other
and simulating sex acts as smiling US troops pointed and laughed.
-
- Six US military police were charged in March with
conspiracy,
dereliction of duty, cruelty, maltreatment, assault and indecent acts
against
up to 20 prisoners at the jail last November and December. They may face
a court martial.
-
- But Gary Myers, a civilian defence attorney who
represents
Frederick, said his client and the other soldiers were only carrying out
orders that came from their superiors.
-
- "Do you really think a group of kids from rural
Virginia decided to do this on their own? Decided that the best way to
embarrass Arabs and make them talk was to have them walk around nude?"
Myers is quoted as asking.
-
- http://www.news24.com/News24/World/Iraq/0,,2-10-1460_1520513,00.html
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