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'Cover-up' at Abu Ghraib
21/05/2004 07:31 - (SA)
Washington - The Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal has netted only low level soldiers so far, but not for lack of fingers pointing at the military intelligence who held sway in a maximum security cellblock where Iraqi inmates were stripped, beaten and sexually humiliated.
The military intelligence role has been shrouded by an investigation launched by the army's deputy chief of staff for intelligence, Major General George Fay.
But there have been allegations that military police guards abused prisoners at the encouragement, if not direction, of military intelligence.
"It's still not clear in my mind whether there was some kind of directive that these detainees should be treated differently, that perhaps the Geneva Conventions did not apply to all of them because they were not technically prisoners of war," Republican Senator Susan Collins told CNN on Thursday.
The top US military commander of US forces in Iraq told the Senate Armed Services Committee there was a systemic failure at Abu Ghraib but no evidence of a larger pattern of abuse.
"But it's clear that there were some breakdown in procedures, in access, in standards of interrogation, and confusion between the roles of what the military intelligence people were doing versus the military police," General John Abizaid said.
Among evidence that has surfaced so far of a military intelligence role in the abuses:
Photos showing intelligence interrogators and analysts present during at least some of the abuse.
Allegations by accused military police guards and their lawyers that they were encouraged by military intelligence to soften up prisoners for interrogation.
Statements by the former commander of the prison, Brigadier General Janis Karpinski, that military intelligence controlled the cellblocks where abuses occurred.
Major General Antonio Taguba, who investigated the abuses, found that two intelligence officers and two civilian contractors were "either directly or indirectly responsible for the abuse at Abu Ghraib."
A military intelligence sergeant told ABC news this week that interrogators had told him the sexual humiliation began as a technique ordered by military intelligence.
Sergeant Samuel Provance said he was interviewed by Fay, but the general seemed more interested in what the military police were doing.
'There's definitely a cover-up'
"There's definitely a cover-up," Provance said. "People are either telling themselves or being told to be quiet."
The abuses occurred between October and December last year, not long after a visit to Iraq to assess intelligence gathering from prisoners by the general in command of the US detention centre for suspected al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters in Guantanamo, Cuba.
Major General Geoffrey Miller recommended that the military police be brought under military intelligence at the prison and be used to "set the conditions for successful" interrogations of internees, Taguba said in his report.
- AFP
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