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News :: Civil & Human Rights : Government Secrecy : International Relations : Iraq : Prisons : Regime |
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Guantanamo Bay Sent Its Interrogators to Iraqi Prison |
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by Douglas Jehl and Andrea Elliott
(No verified email address) |
28 May 2004
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The teams from Guantánamo Bay, which had operated there under directives allowing broad latitude in questioning "enemy combatants," played a central role at Abu Ghraib through December, the officials said, a time when the worst abuses of prisoners were taking place. Prisoners captured in Iraq, unlike those sent from Afghanistan to Guantánamo, were to be protected by the Geneva Conventions.
"We were pretty much told that they were nobodies, that they were just enemy combatants," he said. "I think that giving them the distinction of soldier would have changed our attitudes toward them. A lot of it was based on racism, really. We called them hajis, and that psychology was really important." |
ASHINGTON, May 28 — Interrogation experts from the American detention camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, were sent to Iraq last fall and played a major role in training American military intelligence teams at Abu Ghraib prison there, senior military officials said Friday.
The teams from Guantánamo Bay, which had operated there under directives allowing broad latitude in questioning "enemy combatants," played a central role at Abu Ghraib through December, the officials said, a time when the worst abuses of prisoners were taking place. Prisoners captured in Iraq, unlike those sent from Afghanistan to Guantánamo, were to be protected by the Geneva Conventions.
The teams were sent to Iraq for 90-day tours at the urging of Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller, then the head of detention operations at Guantánamo. General Miller was sent to Iraq last summer to recommend improvements in the intelligence gathering and detention operations there, a defense official said.
The involvement of the Guantánamo teams has not previously been disclosed, and military officials said it would be addressed in a major report on suspected abuses by military intelligence specialists that is being completed by Maj. Gen. George W. Fay.
The report by General Fay will be the second major chapter in the Army's examination of the prisoner abuses in Iraq. Military officials said he would determine whether tactics used by military interrogators at Guantánamo and in Afghanistan were wrongly applied in Iraq, including at Abu Ghraib.
Over the last month, General Fay and his 29-member team have conducted scores of interviews in Iraq, Europe and the United States, and the general is now expected to brief Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the top American commander in Iraq, on his findings sometime in the next week, a senior Army official said.
The involvement of the Guantánamo teams in Iraq marks the second major instance in which interrogation procedures at Abu Ghraib appear to have been modeled on those in place earlier in Guantánamo or in Afghanistan, at facilities where the United States had declared that the Geneva Conventions did not apply.
In Iraq, Bush administration officials have insisted that the provisions of the Geneva Conventions were "fully applicable" to all prisoners, whether they were prisoners of war or civilians waging an insurgency against the United States. But since the abuses at Abu Ghraib have become public, some American officers have acknowledged that there may have been confusion there about whether certain tactics used on prisoners — including hooding, chaining, isolation and sleep deprivation — required approval from the American command in Baghdad.
Confirming an account from military intelligence soldiers who served in Iraq, a senior military official in Iraq said Friday that five interrogation teams, or about 15 interrogators, analysts and other specialists, were sent in October from Guantánamo Bay to the American command in Iraq "for use in the interrogation effort" at Abu Ghraib. A defense official in Washington said that only three teams had been sent, but there was no immediate explanation for the discrepancy.
General Miller, who is now in command of all detention sites in Iraq, played a central role in recommending an overhaul of interrogation procedures at Abu Ghraib, including changes to bring about closer coordination between guards and interrogators. But the general's report on that issue remains classified, and it is not clear whether either his report or the Guantánamo teams explicitly recommended a toughening of interrogation procedures at Abu Ghraib.
To date, there have been no accusations of serious prisoner abuse in connection with interrogations at Guantánamo. Most of the criticisms have generally focused on the lack of legal rights and due process and the indefinite nature of the detentions.
According to a military officer on the Miller delegation to Iraq, interrogation teams from Guantánamo took part in interrogations at Abu Ghraib and other prisons in Iraq. The interrogators demonstrated the "tiger team" concept that was developed at Guantánamo, integrating interrogators with an intelligence analyst and an interpreter to focus on particular groups of detainees and pieces of information being sought.
To date, seven enlisted soldiers from a military police unit are the only Americans charged in connection with abuse at Abu Ghraib, but with the report by General Fay, the investigation's focus is turning to the role played by interrogators and other military intelligence soldiers.
The 519th Military Intelligence Battalion, from Fort Bragg, N.C., also played a major role in setting up the new interrogation unit at Abu Ghraib last fall. In its ranks was Capt. Carolyn A. Wood, who had led an interrogation team at the Bagram Collection Point in Afghanistan.
Two Afghan prisoners died in Bagram in December 2002 in what investigators have ruled were homicides, during the time Captain Wood's unit was in charge of interrogations. An Ohio-based Army Reserve unit, the 377th Military Police Company, was guarding Bagram at the time, and Army investigators are now pursuing what they have said are indications that enlisted soldiers from one or both units abused the Afghan prisoners before they died.
The 377th is based in Cincinnati, Army officials said Friday. An Army Reserve spokesman confirmed that among the unit's duties was guarding prisoners at Bagram Collection Point. In interviews, some members of the unit acknowledged that they were interviewed by criminal investigators in the last three months, but said they had no knowledge that the prisoners who died had been abused.
But one member of the 377th Company said the fact that prisoners in Afghanistan had been labeled as "enemy combatants" not subject to the Geneva Conventions had contributed to an unhealthy attitude in the detention center.
"We were pretty much told that they were nobodies, that they were just enemy combatants," he said. "I think that giving them the distinction of soldier would have changed our attitudes toward them. A lot of it was based on racism, really. We called them hajis, and that psychology was really important."
At least six members of the 377th Company who were reached by telephone declined comment on the investigation, saying they had been directed by their commanders not to talk to the news media about it.
The top American officers in charge of the interrogation effort at Abu Ghraib, including Brig. Gen. Barbara Fast, General Sanchez's top deputy for intelligence, have all declined requests for interviews since the scope of the abuses there became evident. They include Col. Thomas M. Pappas, who commanded the 205th Intelligence Brigade, and Lt. Col. Steven Jordan, director of the Joint Interrogation and Debriefing Center at Abu Ghraib, which was established in September.
Both officers were named in the first major Army report on the abuses, issued by Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba, as having been either "directly or indirectly responsible" for the misconduct.
In interviews, two military intelligence soldiers who served at Abu Ghraib as part of the 205th Brigade described the unit from Guantánamo as having played a notable role in setting up the interrogation unit in Iraq, which they said was modeled closely after the one that General Miller put in place in Cuba.
"They were sent to Iraq to set up a Gitmo-style prison at Abu Ghraib," a military intelligence soldier said of the unit. None of the soldiers knew what military unit the group from Guantánamo had been drawn from, but one of them said he understood that it had also served earlier in a detention facility in Guantánamo.
Eric Schmitt and Leslie Wayne contributed reporting for this article.
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company
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