- The US officer at the heart of the Abu Ghraib prison
scandal says she has evidence that Israelis helped to interrogate Iraqis
at another facility.
-
- Brig Gen Janis Karpinski told the BBC she met an Israeli
working as an interrogator at a secret intelligence centre in Baghdad.
-
- A BBC reporter says it is the first time a senior US
officer has suggested Israelis worked with the coalition.
-
- The Israeli foreign ministry said the reports were completely
untrue.
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- Intelligence access
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- Gen Karpinski was in charge of the military police unit
that ran Abu Ghraib and other prisons when the abuses were committed. She
has been suspended but not charged.
-
- She told BBC Radio 4's Today programme she met a man
claiming to be Israeli during a visit to an intelligence centre with a
senior coalition general.
-
- "I saw an individual there that I hadn't had the
opportunity to meet before, and I asked him what did he do there, was he
an interpreter - he was clearly from the Middle East," she said in
the interview.
-
- "He said, 'Well, I do some of the interrogation
here. I speak Arabic but I'm not an Arab; I'm from Israel.'"
-
-
- Until a 1999 ruling by the Israeli Supreme Court, Israeli
secret service interrogators were allowed to use "moderate force".
-
- The US journalist who broke the Abu Ghraib scandal told
the programme his sources confirm the presence of Israeli intelligence
agents in Iraq.
-
- Seymour Hersh said that one of the Israeli aims was to
gain access to detained members of the Iraqi secret intelligence unit,
who reportedly specialise in Israeli affairs.
-
- 'Convenient scapegoat'
-
- The BBC reporter, Matthew Grant, says that whatever the
truth, these allegations could cause anger in the Arab world.
-
- Photographs of naked Iraqi detainees being humiliated
and maltreated first started to surface in April, sparking shock and anger
across the world.
-
- One soldier has been sentenced and six others are awaiting
courts martial for abuses committed at Abu Ghraib jail.
-
- Gen Karpinski has said she was being made a "convenient
scapegoat" for abuse ordered by others.
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- © BBC MMIV
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- http://NEWS.BBC.CO.UK/2/hi/middle_east/3863235.stm
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