- US military dog handlers at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison
say they were ordered to use their animals to intimidate detainees, according
to media reports.
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- They made the allegation in statements provided to military
investigators, the Washington Post newspaper says.
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- The handlers also said the jail's top military intelligence
officer had approved the tactic, the paper reports.
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- Pentagon officials have said abuses at Abu Ghraib were
confined to a small group of military police soldiers.
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- But the Washington Post says the statements reinforce
the view that there were two kinds of abuse at the jail - sexual humiliation
and beatings at the hands of military police (MPs), and intimidation using
dogs during interrogations under the auspices of military intelligence.
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- The MPs are accused of stripping, beating, humiliating
and photographing detainees.
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- To date, seven MPs have been charged with abuses at the
jail that do not include any incidents involving dogs.
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- 'Competing'
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- The newspaper says that in their sworn statements, Sgts
Michael Smith and Santos Cardona - US army dog handlers assigned to Abu
Ghraib - told investigators that military intelligence personnel requested
that they bring their unmuzzled dogs to prison interrogation sites on several
occasions in December and January.
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- They said Col Thomas Pappas, who was in charge of military
intelligence at the prison, told both of them that the use of dogs in interrogations
had been approved, according to the paper.
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- The Post also quotes a military intelligence interrogator's
statement as saying that two dog handlers at Abu Ghraib were competing
to see how many detainees they could make involuntarily urinate out of
fear of the dogs.
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- In his statement, Specialist John Harold Ketzer, a military
intelligence interrogator, reportedly says saw a dog team corner two male
prisoners against a wall, one prisoner hiding behind the other and screaming.
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- "When I asked what was going on in the cell, the
handler stated that he was just scaring them, and that he and another of
the handlers was having a contest to see how many detainees they could
get to urinate on themselves," he is quoted as saying.
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- Elisa Massimino, a director of New York-based Human Rights
First, said using dogs to frighten and intimidate prisoners violated the
Geneva Convention, and was also a violation of US policy as stated in the
army field manual.
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- © BBC MMIV http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3797021.stm
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