By Richard A. Serrano
Financial Times, 23 December 2004
Internal army investigations into the suspicious deaths of several Iraqi detainees were cut short when authorities lost records, failed to conduct autopsies and contaminated evidence, according to government documents made public this week amid mounting questions for the US military over prisoner abuse.
The documents, the latest released by the American Civil Liberties Union in its lawsuit against the government, also report new allegations of mistreatment, including mock executions, death threats during interrogation and the use of dogs to force frightened prisoners to urinate at the US-run Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad.
The newly disclosed incidents were detailed in reports filed during the US military occupation of Iraq, during the war in Afghanistan and at the detainee prison camp at the US naval base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Many of the episodes occurred after revelations of abuse at Abu Ghraib prompted Bush administration pledges to curtail the mistreatment of captives.
Other incidents occurred in the autumn of 2003, when the worst of the Abu Ghraib abuses were occurring, and showcase an army criminal investigative division, or CID, that was unable properly to review an increasing number of abuse allegations.
An earlier collection of government documents obtained by the ACLU and released on Monday showed widespread complaints by FBI agents assigned to defence facilities about treatment of prisoners by military guards. Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman, said he would have "nothing new" to say about the latest documents released by the ACLU in New York.
In one case in Tikrit, Iraq, on September 11 2003, an inmate named Obeed Hathere Radad died after he was shot by an army guard but the criminal investigative division did not receive a report of the incident for five days after his death. Then, "due to the delay", no autopsy was conducted and the investigators found that the crime scene had been "significantly altered", according to the documents.
Evidence, including the guard's rifle, was "not collected", even though the "CID determined that probable cause existed for a murder charge". Instead, the army held a preliminary hearing into the inmate's death at Camp Packhorse and, without a more complete inquiry, ended up reducing the rank of an army specialist and discharging him.
In the death of another detainee in 2003 there was no autopsy and military investigators were unable to determine what became of the body. Nevertheless, the cause of death was listed as "natural" and, despite the investigation's shortcomings, the army concluded: "There are no indications of wrongdoing."
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Citation: Richard A. Serrano. "Files show trail of bungled Abu Ghraib inquiries," Financial Times, 23 December 2004.
Original URL: http://news.ft.com/cms/s/bd64f432-5487-11d9-8280-00000e2511c8,ft_acl=,s01=2.html
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