The Hindu : International : I was assigned to break down prisoners: Harman

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Sunday, May 09, 2004

International

International

I was assigned to break down prisoners: Harman

Sabrina Harman

WASHINGTON, MAY 8. One of the seven American soldiers charged with abusing Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib has said that she was assigned by the military intelligence to break down inmates for interrogation.

"They would bring in one to several prisoners at a time already hooded and cuffed," Specialist Sabrina D Harman, charged with conspiracy, dereliction of duty and cruelty to the Abu Ghraib prisoners, said, The Washington Post reported today.

She said there were no rules and she had little training but the mission was clear: She was assigned to break down prisoners for interrogation.

"The job of the MP (military police) was to keep them awake, make it hell so they would talk," Ms. Harman, 26, said in interviews by e-mail from Baghdad this week.

Ms. Harman is the second soldier to speak publicly about her time at Abu Ghraib and her comments echo findings of the Army's investigation into prisoner abuse there, the Post noted.

That probe documented the maltreatment of detainees and found that the prison was chaotically run, that there were no apparent rules governing interrogations and that Ms. Harman's military police unit was ill-trained for the job it was asked to perform.

At the hearing at the House and Senate armed services committees, it was also revealed that the guards did not have to wear uniforms or salute officers and there was failure of leadership.Ms. Harman, an Army reservist from Alexandria (Virginia), said members of her police unit took direction from Army military intelligence officers, from CIA operatives and from civilian contractors who conducted investigations. She is among the soldiers who posed with Iraqi detainees. She is accused by the Army of videotaping prisoners who were ordered to strip. She is seen smirking in the picture.

Ms. Harman is accused by the Army of taking photographs of the pyramid of naked prisoners published worldwide, and videotaping detainees who were ordered to strip and masturbate in front of other prisoners and soldiers, according to a charge sheet obtained by the Post.

She is also charged with photographing a corpse and then posing for a picture with it; with striking several prisoners by jumping on them as they lay in a pile, with writing "rapist" on a prisoner's leg, and with attaching wires to a prisoner's hands while he stood on a box, with his head covered.

She told him he would be electrocuted if he fell off the box, the documents said.

Prisoners were stripped, searched and then "made to stand or kneel for hours," Ms. Harman said.

— PTI

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