Document: Prisoner abuse was worse than admitted
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More than two months after the Abu Ghraib prison scandal in Iraq
shocked the world, an official memo described how military intelligence
officers witnessed further prisoner abuse in Baghdad but were
threatened to prevent them from reporting it. The memo was the most
recent in a collection of government documents released Tuesday. It was
dated June 25 and written by Vice Adm. Lowell E. Jacoby, who directs
the Defense Intelligence Agency. Lowell described how two DIA officers,
assigned as interrogators to a special operations unit designated as
Task Force 6-26, witnessed evidence of prisoner abuse while working at
an unnamed "temporary detention facility" in Baghdad. The extensive
collection of government documents suggests that abuse of detainees in
Iraq and elsewhere was more widespread and systematic than senior
officials have admitted publicly. The officials repeatedly have tried
to characterize abuse last year at Abu Ghraib as an isolated series of
incidents. A small number of low-ranking soldiers already have been
prosecuted or are awaiting trial in these cases. The documents released
Tuesday, however, reveal that senior U.S. officials, who claimed they
were unaware of the abuse, were repeatedly informed of accusations of
abuse through official channels. They also suggest that these and other
reports of abuse failed to trigger investigations into what
increasingly appears to have been a widespread pattern of prisoner
abuse in Afghanistan, Iraq and at the Guantanamo Bay naval base in
Cuba. [more]
- Chickens Come Home to Roost [more]
