Iraq abuse ’ordered from the top’ Gen Karpinski

"The US commander at the centre of the Iraqi prisoner
scandal says she was told to treat detainees like
dogs."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3806713.stm

Brig Gen Janis Karpinski told the BBC she was being
made a "convenient scapegoat" for abuse ordered by
others.

Top US commander for Iraq, Gen Ricardo Sanchez, should
be asked what he knew about the abuse, she told BBC
Radio 4’s On The Ropes programme.

One soldier has been sentenced and six others are
awaiting courts martial for abuses committed at Abu
Ghraib jail.

Gen Karpinski said more damaging information was likely
to emerge at those trials.

Gen Karpinski was in charge of the military police unit
that ran Abu Ghraib and other prisons when the abuses
were committed. She has been suspended but not charged.

More details awaited

Photographs showing naked Iraqi detainees being
humiliated and maltreated first started to surface in
April, sparking shock and anger across the world.

Gen Karpinski said military intelligence took over part
of the Abu Ghraib jail to "Gitmoize" their
interrogations - make them more like what was happening
in the US detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, which
is nicknamed "Gitmo".

He said they are like dogs and if you allow them to
believe at any point that they are more than a dog then
you’ve lost control of them General Karpinski

In pictures: Prisoner abuse She said current Iraqi
prisons chief Maj Gen Geoffrey Miller - who was in
charge at Guantanamo Bay - visited her in Baghdad and
said: "At Guantanamo Bay we learned that the prisoners
have to earn every single thing that they have."

"He said they are like dogs and if you allow them to
believe at any point that they are more than a dog then
you’ve lost control of them."

Gen Karpinski repeated that she knew nothing of the
humiliation and torture of Iraq prisoners that was
going on inside Abu Ghraib - she was made a scapegoat.

Top commander Ricardo Sanchez must be asked serious
questions about what he knew about the abuse and when,
she said.

Gen Sanchez said in May that he took a personal
responsibility for the abuse by soldiers at Abu Ghraib
jail. But he denied authorising interrogation
techniques such as sleep deprivation, stress positions
or sensory deprivation.

Last week, he asked to be excused from any role in
reviewing the results of an investigation into the
abuses. He requested that a higher-ranking general take
on that task, Pentagon officials said.

A US general who has investigated the abuse has blamed
the soldiers - and found no evidence "of a policy or a
direct order given to these soldiers to conduct what
they did".

But Gen Karpinski believes the soldiers had not taken
the pictures of their own accord.

"I know that the MP [military police] unit that these
soldiers belonged to hadn’t been in Abu Ghraib long
enough to be so confident that one night or early
morning they were going to take detainees out of their
cells, pile them up and photograph themselves in
various positions with these detainees."

"How it happened or why those photographs came to the
Criminal Investigation Division’s attention in January
I think will probably come out very clearly at each
individual’s court martial."