The Hindu : International : Top U.S. commanders were informed of abuses

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Dec 03, 2004

International

International

Top U.S. commanders were informed of abuses

By Sridhar Krishnaswami

WASHINGTON, DEC. 2. Top American military commanders in Iraq were informed of abuses of detenus in December 2003, or a month before Army investigators got images of the gross violations on prisoners at Abu Ghraib, according to a confidential report presented to the United States Army Generals now obtained by The Washington Post.

The report, based on an investigation by retired Colonel Stuart Herrington, had come to the conclusion that some of the arrests and detention practices could `technically' be illegal; and made the point that coalition forces could be feeding the militancy by "making gratuitous enemies" as they took in hundreds of detenus during sweeps and holding them for months at a time.

The investigation found that members of Task Force 121, a joint special operations group involving also the Central Intelligence Agency, had been abusing detenus all over Iraq and using a secret interrogation facility to hide their activities. The findings of Col. Herrington reveal essentially two things: that top echelons in the Pentagon were aware of what was going on in Iraq; and that the abuses were not just confined to Abu Ghraib.

Confirmation process

The American treatment of detenus has been meriting considerable attention in the media here and elsewhere and is bound to be a topic of intense questioning when nominees of the President appear before various Senate Committees as a part of the confirmation process.

The report, which is extensively covered in The Post, is also said to have provided an early glimpse of the so-called ghost detenus where agents from `other' Government agencies — read CIA — kept ghost prisoners by simply not logging their arrests.

This practice was reluctantly acknowledged by the Department of Defence some six months into the Abu Ghraib scandal.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

International