US uses Saddam's 'Black Room'

2006-03-19 14:22

New York - An elite US special operations forces unit has converted one of Saddam Hussein's former military bases near Baghdad into a top-secret detention centre and used one of the former Iraqi leader's torture chambers as its own interrogation cell, The New York Times reported late on Saturday.

The newspaper said the chamber was named the Black Room.

In June 2004, defence under-secretary Stephen Cambone ordered his deputy, Lieutenant-General William Boykin, to look into allegations of detainee abuse at Camp Nama, according to the report.

The windowless, garage-size Black Room was used by some soldiers to beat prisoners with rifle butts, yell and spit in their faces and, in a nearby area, use detainees for target practice in a game of jailer paintball, The Times said.

Their intention was to extract information to help hunt down Iraq's most-wanted terrorist, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the paper pointed out, citing unnamed defence Department personnel, who served with the unit or were briefed on its operations.

The Black Room was part of a temporary detention site at Camp Nama, the secret headquarters of a shadowy military unit known as Task Force 6-26, according to the report.

Located at Baghdad International Airport, the camp was the first stop for many insurgents on their way to the Abu Ghraib prison a few miles away.

The paper said placards posted by soldiers at the detention area advised: "No Blood, No Foul."

The slogan, as one defence department official explained, reflected an adage adopted by Task Force 6-26: "If you don't make them bleed, they can't prosecute for it."

According to Pentagon specialists who worked with the unit, The Times said, prisoners at Camp Nama often disappeared into a detention black hole, barred from access to lawyers or relatives, and confined for weeks without charges.

"The reality is, there were no rules there," the paper quotes an unnamed Pentagon official as saying.

It said its information about Task Force 6-26 is based on documents and interviews with more than a dozen people.

The new account reveals the extent to which the unit members mistreated prisoners months before and after the photographs of abuse from Abu Ghraib were made public in April 2004, The Times said.

And it helps belie the original Pentagon assertions that abuse was confined to a small number of rogue reservists at Abu Ghraib, the report pointed out.

The abuses at Camp Nama continued despite warnings beginning in August 2003 from an army investigator and American intelligence and law enforcement officials in Iraq.

The CIA was concerned enough to bar its personnel from Camp Nama that August, The Times said.

- AFP