Setting the tone
Quote of note:
"There was a mentality that the people we're in charge of are not humans," the U.S. official said.
Oh, you mean a belief these people have no souls?
Iraqi Prisoner Abuse Appears More Extensive
Several accounts describe infliction of physical and mental pain. A sergeant charged in the investigation says intelligence officers encouraged such actions.
By T. Christian Miller
Times Staff Writer
May 2, 2004
WASHINGTON — At least one Iraqi prisoner died after interrogation, some were threatened with attack dogs and others were kept naked in tiny cells without running water or ventilation, according to an account written by a military police sergeant who is one of six U.S. soldiers charged in a growing scandal over prisoner abuse in Iraq.
The account of Staff Sgt. Ivan "Chip" Frederick II, along with interviews Saturday with other soldiers in Frederick's unit and senior U.S. and military officials, paints a portrait of a prison that spun out of control last fall as thousands of captured Iraqis poured into its razor-wire confines.
In some cases, as few as a dozen U.S. soldiers were responsible for overseeing more than 1,000 prisoners. Escape attempts were common. Mortar fire from insurgents rained down on prison grounds, killing U.S. guards and Iraqi prisoners.
Relatives of Frederick, who faces court-martial in connection with the alleged sexual and physical degradation of prisoners in Iraq, gave The Times a copy of the account that they said was handwritten by Frederick shortly after his arrest in January.
Frederick, 37, wrote that U.S. intelligence officers and civilian contractors who were conducting interrogations urged military police at the Abu Ghraib prison west of Baghdad to take steps to make prisoners more responsive to questioning.
Military intelligence officers have "encouraged us, and told us, 'great job,' that they were now getting positive results and information," he said in the neatly written 10-page document that covers a two-week period of last fall.
One U.S. official said 50 to 100 Iraqis had died in U.S. custody during the last year, victims of mortar attacks, heat exhaustion, wounds suffered in battles and attacks by other prisoners.
Although Frederick said one prisoner died after interrogation, the official said that so far no such allegations had been independently substantiated. He said the deaths from other causes amounted to a small percentage of the estimated 35,000 Iraqis who had spent time in U.S. detention centers.
Still, he said that the abuse allegations and other evidence showed that Iraqi prisoners had suffered under U.S. custody.
"There was a mentality that the people we're in charge of are not humans," the U.S. official said. "That's not consistent with our values. The people who were doing this lost it."
The New Yorker magazine reported Saturday that it had obtained a 53-page U.S. military report that concluded that Iraqi prisoners had been subjected to "sadistic, blatant and wanton criminal abuses" at the prison, which before last year's U.S.-led invasion had been Saddam Hussein's primary killing ground for political enemies.
The author of the report, identified by the New Yorker as Army Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba, said it appeared that some of the inmates had been beaten and sodomized, perhaps with a broomstick or a chemical light.
