Abu Ghraib: army prison abuse cases linked

Abu Ghraib interrogators involved in earlier Afghanistan probe

By ELISE ACKERMAN

WASHINGTON - Army investigators believe that some of the military interrogators who were implicated in the abuse scandal at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq were involved in earlier deaths and abuses of detainees held by U.S. forces in Afghanistan.

Yet even as investigators were uncovering troubling evidence of prisoner abuse in Afghanistan, orders were cut to transfer the military intelligence company involved to Iraq and to Abu Ghraib.

To date, no one has been criminally charged in the Afghan abuse case, despite investigators’ belief that charges are warranted against six interrogators.

Critics say the Army’s handling of the Afghan investigation amounts to a cover-up. And they say the fact that no one has been held accountable for the acts in Afghanistan suggests that high-ranking officers didn’t consider mistreatment of detainees to be a serious offense until graphic pictures of Abu Ghraib prisoners were broadcast around the world.

The Army refused to release details of the investigation into the deaths of the two Afghan detainees, because, they say, the inquiry is continuing. However, three senior intelligence officials who are familiar with the investigation or the circumstances of the deaths spoke to Knight Ridder. Key aspects of their accounts were later confirmed by Army public affairs.

THE STORIES

The first detainee to die at a U.S. Army detention facility in Afghanistan, according to records released by the Army, was a 28-year-old Afghan named Habibullah, or “God’s beloved.”

The details of Habibullah’s arrest are sketchy. Coalition soldiers fighting a shadowy guerrilla war against the remnants of the hard-line Taliban movement picked up Habibullah, who like many Afghans had only one name, at the end of November 2002.

By all accounts, his body was badly battered when he was delivered to the cavernous concrete structure known as the Bagram Collection Point.

Though he was wounded, the interrogators decided it was necessary to isolate him in a “safety” position, with his arms shackled and tied to a beam in the ceiling.

Habibullah was left in that painful position for days. He was found dead, still hanging from the ceiling, on Dec. 3, 2002.

A week later, a 22-year-old part-time farmer and taxi driver named Dilawar died after he was interrogated at Bagram. Dilawar also was injured when he arrived. For unknown reasons, he was roughed up by military police and interrogators, who beat him and stood on top of him, resting their weight on his groin. Dilawar died Dec. 10.

The Army launched a criminal inquiry, but the investigation proceeded slowly and didn’t appear to have a high priority.

FROM BAGRAM TO ABU GHRAIB

In January 2003, the small platoon of 15 interrogators who’d been working at Bagram when Habibullah and Dilawar died returned to their base at Fort Bragg, N.C. In mid-March, they were sent to Iraq, and at the end of July they were assigned to Abu Ghraib, along with another 15 or so fellow soldiers from Company A of the 519th Military Intelligence Battalion.

Carolyn Wood, the 34-year-old captain who’d led the platoon of interrogators at Bagram, was put in charge of a far larger effort at Abu Ghraib. The move surprised intelligence officials who were familiar with the circumstances of the Bagram deaths.

In May of this year, Col. Marc Warren, the top Army lawyer in Iraq, told a Senate committee looking into abuse allegations that Wood and other interrogators from Company A had taken the same techniques to Iraq that they’d used in Afghanistan.

Col. Billy J. Buckner, a spokesman for Fort Bragg, said an informal inquiry ordered by Lt. Gen. Dan McNeill, then commander of U.S. and coalition forces for Afghanistan, showed that two interrogators and two military police officers had acted inappropriately but their actions “were determined not to be the cause of the deaths.”

To date, the only action taken against Company A interrogators was a nonjudicial punishment imposed Jan. 4 by Col. Thomas Pappas, the commander of Abu Ghraib, on three soldiers accused of mistreating a female detainee.

Pappas reduced the interrogators’ ranks and ordered them to forfeit between $500 and $750 each for conducting interrogations at unapproved times and in unapproved locations.

After Wood left Afghanistan and Iraq, she received two Bronze Stars for “exceptionally meritorious service” for her time abroad, including her service at the Bagram Collection Point.

http://www.thestate.com/mld/thestate/news/nation/9458043.htm