A Secret Guantanamo, for the ’Ghost Detainees’, the new ’Disappeared’...

British quizzed Iraqis at torture jail

· Tories demand Hoon explains when he was told about prisoner abuse
· Whitehall alarmed over report that detainees were hidden from Red Cross

Peter Beaumont, Martin Bright and Paul Harris in Washington
Sunday May 9, 2004
The Observer http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,6903,1212769,00.html

British military intelligence officers were interrogating prisoners in the notorious Abu Ghraib jail in Iraq even as the first reports of abuses at the prison came to light, The Observer can reveal.
The Ministry of Defence has confirmed that three ’military personnel’ were stationed at the prison, outside Baghdad, between January and April this year. Coalition sources in Iraq say MI6 also visited the jail regularly.

The revelations threaten to drag the British government into the heart of the international scandal over coalition abuse at Abu Ghraib. It follows claims in yesterday’s Guardian that the humiliating sexual abuse at the jail was consistent with procedures taught to British and American special forces.

An MoD spokesman said the three British military staff were based at Abu Ghraib, but insisted they were unaware of abuses or the US investigation that began in January. The three interrogators interviewed a small number of prisoners with a view to ’gathering information’ that could help the coalition. Their work, he said, was consistent with the Geneva Conventions on the treatment of prisoners and responsibility for guarding them remained with the US.

The interrogators arrived at the prison after the abuse was discovered and after investigations began into the allegations. One left the prison in March while the others remained until April.

The disclosure will put fresh pressure on British Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon to clarify when he first heard of allegations of mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners amid claims from the Red Cross that British officials were alerted in November.

The MoD told The Observer that Hoon was not informed of the American investigation into Abu Ghraib and was first alerted to the scandal by media reports.

Shadow foreign secretary Michael Ancram said: ’These new revelations show that it is now imperative that Geoff Hoon or the Foreign Secretary himself come to the House of Commons on Monday to fully explain when he was first informed of the abuses in Abu Ghraib.’

Senior Pentagon sources have also told this newspaper that plans are being drawn up to bulldoze Abu Ghraib within a month in an attempt to assuage Arab outrage at photographs of US sexual abuse of detainees inside the prison.

But the commander of US detention facilities in Iraq said yesterday the US military will continue to run the prison with a reduced population and that if orders are received to close Abu Ghraib, the military would shift the mission to Camp Bucca, south of Basra.

The Red Cross disclosed to The Observer that its president, Jakob Kellenberger, had personally warned three of George W. Bush’s most senior officials - National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of State Colin Powell and Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz - of widespread abuse tantamount to torture.

Whitehall sources expressed concern last night that the US was transporting prisoners from Afghanistan to Abu Ghraib for interrogation to avoid being overseen by the Red Cross.

Officials are known to be shocked by the findings, contained in a report by Major-General Antonio Taguba, the senior US officer secretly sent to investigate the abuse. According to Taguba’s leaked report: ’Various detention facilities operated by military police in Iraq, hosted "ghost detainees" - unidentified prisoners brought to them by "other government agencies".’

Taguba reports that the 320th MP Battalion at Abu Ghraib ’held a handful of "ghost detainees" that they moved around within the facility to hide them from a visiting International Committee of the Red Cross survey team.’ He concludes: ’This manoeuvre was deceptive, contrary to army doctrine and in violation of international law.’

British officials believe Abu Ghraib became a secret substitute for the controversial US prison facility at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, which was attracting hostile international attention.

Although Taguba does not refer to foreign prisoners, it is thought that some who might otherwise have been shipped to Guantanamo ended up at Abu Ghraib.

The new revelations came as Bush used his weekly national radio address yesterday to condemn the abuse as ’a stain on our country’s honour and reputation’ but vowed not to be deterred in America’s mission to bring democracy to Iraq.

The revelations also came as Lynndie England, one of the central figures in the abuse allegations, was charged with conspiring to mistreat prisoners, among other charges.

Bush repeated his claim that the abuse ’was the wrongdoing of a few’ and should not reflect on the thousands of US military personnel ’who are serving and sacrificing in Iraq’.