A second damning report into the mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners says that military interrogators were deeply involved in the abuse at Abu Ghraib.
Twenty-seven military intelligence specialists “encouraged” or “participated” in abuses of inmates at the prison in Iraq, according to a United States Army report released today.
The inquiry, headed by Major-General George Fay, has been released by the Pentagon to key lawmakers in the US Congress only a day after the semi-independent Schlesinger inquiry produced an unexpectedly tough report, blaming failures at the highest level for the abuse at the Iraqi prison.
“We discovered serious misconduct and a loss of
moral values,” said General Paul Kern, the head of the Army investigation, while briefing reporters at the Pentagon today.
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Of the 27 individuals, 23 were members of the military personnel and four were contractors. Another eight, including two contractors, knew of abuse and failed to report it, General Kern said.
“There is no single, simple explanation for why the abuse at Abu Ghraib happened,” the report’s executive summary says.
The summary blames the abuses on several factors: “misconduct (ranging from inhumane to sadistic) by a small group of morally corrupt soldiers and civilians, a lack of discipline on the part of leaders and soldiers,” and a “failure or lack of leadership; by higher command in Iraq.
The Fay report makes a distinction between the abuse depicted in many of the now-famous photographs from the prison, which the military says was committed by a small group of rogue guards not attached to the intelligence unit there, and the abuses committed during interrogations.
Some of the abuses during interrogations were committed by soldiers who were unclear on what techniques they could legally use on prisoners, the report says.
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Major-General Fay is expected to recommend that the 27 military intelligence personnel should now face disciplinary and possible legal action for instances of torture and humiliation at the prison, including sexual abuse and sodomy.
So far only seven military police reservists, mostly guards at the notorious prison near Baghdad, have been charged over the alleged abuses. The reservists have claimed in their defence that they were encouraged to abuse prisoners by military intelligence officers who came and went from the jail to carry out interrogations.
Today’s report says: “From 25 July 2003 to February 2004, 27 ... [military intelligence] personnel allegedly requested, encouraged, condoned or solicited military police personnel to abuse detainees and/or participated in detainee abuse and/or violated established interrogation procedures and applicable laws and regulations during interrogation operations at
Abu Ghraib.”
The report is also believed to criticise Lieutenant-General Ricardo Sanchez, a former top US commander in Iraq, for leadership failures for not addressing troubles at the Abu Ghraib prison on the outskirts of Baghdad.
The contents of yesterday’s report from a semi-independent panel led by James Schlesinger, a former defence secretary, surprised Pentagon chiefs.
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The panel of four, all with links to the Pentagon, was appointed by Mr Rumsfeld to pinpoint shortcomings in the chain of command revealed by the Abu Ghraib debacle. It produced a much harsher report than anticipated, saying that the defence secretary himself, along with the Pentagon’s top brass, shared responsibility for the most damaging episode to America’s image overseas for a generation.
“There was chaos at Abu Ghraib,” James Schlesinger, head of the four-man inquiry team and a former Defence Secretary, said.
“Abuses were not limited to a few individuals,” he said, adding that there were now about about 300 cases of mistreatment under investigation.
The semi-independent panel uncovered a string of failures in leadership that went beyond individual cell blocks to the headquarters of US Central Command, the body in charge of US troops in Iraq, and to the Pentagon itself.
The report also said that Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary, had helped to create the climate in which the abuse took place. It said Mr Rumsfeld had helped sow confusion in the ranks about the kind of techniques that should be allowed when interrogating prisoners.
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The report also added to the criticisms of Mr Rumsfeld’s controversial war plan. It said his insistence on sending fewer troops to Iraq than some generals wanted was partly to blame for the way Abu Ghraib became swamped, with too few guards presiding over many more prisoners than had been envisaged.
It said that the military leadership had missed repeated warning signs that the regime at Abu Ghraib had gone off the rails.”
It was ‘Animal House’ on the night shift,” Mr Schlesinger said. Animal House was a film about riotous behaviour at a student boarding house.
But he found that there was no authorised or co-ordinated attempt to use abuse such as that pictured in the notorious photographs from Abu Ghraib to elicit intelligence.
The panel agreed unanimously in recommending that no senior Pentagon figure should resign over the scandal.