Guantanamo Bay chief takes over after shameful jail abuse
The US military is weighing disciplinary action against the army general who was in charge of a prison on the outskirts of Baghdad where American troops were accused of abusing Iraqi prisoners, while the commander of the US military detention camp at Guantanamo Bay has been transferred to Iraq to oversee the treatment of 8000 detainees.
Officials said on Thursday that the top US commander in Iraq, Lieutenant-General Ricardo Sanchez, had ordered administrative penalties against seven unnamed officers who supervised the Army Reserve military police unit that was responsible for Abu Ghraib jail in November, when US soldiers allegedly subjected Iraqi prisoners to beatings and sexually degrading acts.
In January, after a soldier tipped off investigators about abuses at Abu Ghraib, General Sanchez suspended 17 soldiers and ordered separate criminal and administrative investigations.
The highest-ranking officer to be suspended was Brigadier-General Janis Karpinski, of the Army Reserve, who was responsible for all US military jails in Iraq.
General Karpinski, who left Iraq earlier this year as part of a scheduled rotation of US forces, could be relieved of her command, blocked from promotion or receive a letter of reprimand after a non-criminal administrative investigation relating to events at Abu Ghraib, said Colonel Jill Morgenthaler, a military spokeswoman in Baghdad.
"We found it very abhorrent that American soldiers indulged in those acts of humiliation. And second of all, they photographed these acts. It's very shameful," Colonel Morgenthaler said.
The documents add to a growing body of accusations of improper treatment at Abu Ghraib, which was Iraq's largest and most notorious prison during the rule of Saddam Hussein. Details of the abuses and photographs from inside the jail were broadcast on US television on Wednesday.
But the lawyer for an accused soldier says the jail used private contractors to interrogate detainees, raising questions of oversight of the jail and treatment of prisoners.
The lawyer, Gary Myers,
said two US companies were involved in providing interrogators and translators at Abu Ghraib.
According to a military investigation into the abuse at the jail, one of interrogators was taken off duty at the jail because of rule violations.
Criminal charges were filed in March against six members of the military police unit. The charges included conspiracy, dereliction of duty, cruelty and maltreatment, assault and indecent acts with another, the military's term for sexual abuse.
In April Major-General Geoffrey Miller took over the US-run detention facilities in Iraq in the new position of deputy commander for detainee operations, reporting directly to General Sanchez. General Miller had previously overseen the detention camp at the naval base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, which holds hundreds of detainees from about 40 countries, many of them from the 2001 war in Afghanistan.
In addition, General Sanchez has ordered new training on the requirements of the Geneva Conventions. He has also ordered the creation of a team of officers that would retrain prison guards on conditions of confinement, "with emphasis on treating detainees with dignity and respect", a spokesman said.
The Washington Post, Reuters