Sole U.S. Officer Charged Over Abu Ghraib To Face Trial

TurkishPress.com reports:
The only US military officer charged with tormenting prisoners at Baghdad's infamous Abu Ghraib jail will stand trial in August, a judge ruled Tuesday, amid claims that the government itself is getting off scot-free.
While the court martial of Lieutenant Colonel Steven Jordan will go ahead, there is anger that no higher ranking commanders or politicians are in the dock, three years after reports of abuse at Abu Ghraib first emerged.

Defense lawyers for Jordan, 51, argued at a hearing at Washington's Fort McNair that he was never properly informed of his rights by investigators, thus undermining the government's prosecution case.

The presiding judge, Colonel Stephen Henley, backed part of their argument and agreed to slim down the charges.

As a result, Jordan now faces a maximum jail term of 16 and a half years, down from 22 years initially. But all the other charges still stand, including cruelty and mistreatment of detainees, obstruction of justice, dereliction of duty and disobeying orders.

The trial had been set to begin next month, but Henley pushed the date back to August 20 to allow for further review of emails and documents from Abu Ghraib. Another pre-trial hearing was scheduled for July 10.

Major Kris Poppe, one of Jordan's defense attorneys, said after the hearing that his client was "anxious to have his day in court."

"It's been a long process, and he's ready obviously to get to the conclusion," he told reporters.

Government lawyers refused to comment on their case against Jordan, who remains on active duty at the intelligence and security command at Fort Belvoir, Virginia.

Jordan headed a US Army interrogation center at the notorious Iraqi prison, where sordid abuses of detainees became public in April 2004 with the publication of graphic photographs.

The photographs showed bloodied, bound and naked prisoners smeared with excrement, forced to perform sexual acts and cowering under attack from US guards' dogs.

A year ago, President George W. Bush said the Abu Ghraib scandal was the "biggest mistake" made by the United States in Iraq, regretting the damage it had inflicted in the court of global public opinion.

Seven low-ranking US soldiers -- controversially described by then defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld as only "a few bad apples" -- have been jailed over the abuses.

But for human rights activists, official retribution for Abu Ghraib and for alleged mistreatment at places like the US detention camp in Guantanamo Bay should go far higher up the chain of command.

The American Civil Liberties Union said it was "deeply disappointed" at a federal judge's decision in March to throw out a case against Rumsfeld brought by nine Iraqi and Afghan former detainees for the "torture" they suffered in US military custody.

"We believe that the law and constitution require more, and that the former secretary of defense must be held accountable for his policies that led to this abuse," ACLU attorney Lucas Guttentag said.

Specialist Charles Graner, shown in one photograph smiling and giving a thumbs-up over the corpse of an Iraqi prisoner, was said to have been the Abu Ghraib ringleader and was jailed for 10 years.

Graner's girlfriend of the time, Private Lynndie England, who was pictured holding a naked prisoner at the end of a dog leash, was sentenced to three years.

The prison commander at the time, Janis Karpinski, was the most senior officer to be reprimanded. She was demoted from brigadier general to colonel but faced no charges.

And Jordan's immediate superior, Colonel Thomas Pappas, has escaped prosecution after agreeing to testify against him.

New Questions For Abu Ghraib Prison Commander

Miller meets with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld during a tour of Abu Ghraib prison on May 13

Newsweek reports:
Things may be heating up in the prison abuse scandal for Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, the former Guantanamo Bay commander who is now in charge of detainees in Iraq. In a harshly worded letter, the senior Democrat on the House Intelligence committee questioned the "candor and accuracy" of Miller’s responses in a classified briefing to the committee last week.

The May 21 letter to Miller from Rep. Jane Harman, the ranking minority member on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, chastises the general for "gaps and discrepancies in your presentation" and for selectively withholding information. "If information is only provided in response to a question that is phrased in precisely the right way, it is virtually impossible for Congress to fulfill its constitutional oversight responsibility," Harman writes.

In her letter, Harman refers to new details about interrogation policies at the Gitmo detention facility that became public less than 24 hours after Miller’s May 20 testimony. "I am dismayed that information emerging immediately after your briefing raises questions about the candor and accuracy of your statements," she says. A copy of the letter was obtained by NEWSWEEK.

Harman cites a recent Pentagon briefing and press reports, in The Washington Post and elsewhere, that documented deep misgivings by military lawyers and other legal experts over the interrogation policies at Gitmo overseen by Miller. She also expresses her chagrin that the committee has not received a copy of an Oct. 12, 2003, interrogation policy at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq that was reportedly issued by Iraq commander Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez. That policy, Harman says, "seems to indicate a role for military police that goes well beyond the passive intelligence collection role that you have described."

NEWSWEEK also confirmed Monday an Associated Press report that Vice Adm. Albert Church III, the Navy inspector general, has recommended a more in-depth look at the interrogation practices initiated by Miller at Gitmo. Church inspected Gitmo during a brief visit in early May. Lt. Chris Servello, a Navy IG spokesman, said Church’s recommendation has been passed up to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s office.

Miller’s performance at Gitmo and in Iraq has come under increasing scrutiny as the scandal has widened. Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, commander of the 800th Military Police Brigade that once ran Abu Ghraib, has accused Miller of exporting interrogation practices directed at alleged al Qaeda and Taliban suspects at Gitmo--which a Pentagon spokesman called "more rigorous"--to Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, possibly in violation of Geneva Convention protections. The Gitmo prisoners were deemed to be "unlawful combatants" not subject to the Geneva Conventions, though the admininstration maintained a policy of treatment loosely consistent with the Conventions.

Miller has denied that any systemic abuse occurred at Gitmo. And he has insisted that he only intended for members of the military police (MPs) at Abu Ghraib to play a "passive" role by passing on information about prisoners to interrogators with Military Intelligence (MI).

But a number of MPs at Abu Ghraib have said that MI interrogators encouraged them to soften up prisoners with physically and psychologically abusive practices. Even though the Iraq war was nominally fought in observance of the Geneva conventions, which forbid torture or inhumane and degrading treatment of detainees, Miller brought with him to Iraq a "matrix" of such practices modeled on Gitmo’s interrogation techniques. These included the use of harsh heat or cold, withholding food or altering a prisoner's diet, isolation, threatening prisoners with dogs, and limited use of "stress positions" to cause discomfort or pain.

Congressional leaders, including some Republicans in both houses, have grown increasingly infuriated over what Harman calls "a breakdown in congressional oversight in addition to the breakdown of the chain of command" in the prison abuse scandal. Harman says she was not aware that interrogation practices were being questioned even though she visited both Iraq and Gitmo--the latter three times--and spoke with Miller in December 2003.

A spokesman for Joint Task Force 7 in Iraq, Capt. Mark Doggett, said he was unaware of the letter and had no immediate response to it.

Abuse Incident Foreshadowed Abu Ghraib

The Baltimore Sun reports:


At least two U.S. senators received letters and other contacts nearly a year ago from relatives of four Army reservists who were accused of abusing detainees at the Camp Bucca prison in southern Iraq, detailing dangerous conditions and low morale.

The troubles at Camp Bucca, which surfaced as early as a year ago, in some ways foreshadowed what happened last fall at Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad, where allegations of abuse and humiliation of Iraqi prisoners have triggered investigations by the military and by Congress.

The man who commanded Camp Bucca when four soldiers were accused of assaulting prisoners there, Lt. Col. Jerry L. Phillabaum, was promoted to run Abu Ghraib, where photos and videos of sexual humiliation and brutal treatment of Iraqi detainees shocked the world and led to criminal charges against seven soldiers from the Western Maryland-based 372nd Military Police Company.

The two senators, Rick Santorum and Arlen Specter, both Pennsylvania Republicans, said yesterday that in response, they had contacted the Pentagon and made an attempt to meet with at least one of the soldiers to investigate the charges.

A June 2003 letter to Specter from David J. Girman recounts a "horrifying" incident at Camp Bucca referred to as the "PALM SUNDAY RIOTS, a revolt in which thousands of Iraqi prisoners attempted to overthrow the [military police guards] and create a hostage situation, and from several accounts were within minutes and feet of doing so."

Higher-ranking soldiers "failed to quell the uprising," said Girman, whose sister, Master Sgt. Lisa Girman, was one of four reservists who were accused of abuse at Camp Bucca. She and Staff Sgt. Scott McKenzie, Sgt. Shawna Edmondson and Spc. Timothy Canjar received administrative punishments early this year on charges that included dereliction of duty and maltreatment of prisoners, according to an Army letter sent to Specter.

Girman also asserted that his sister and the other accused soldiers were acting in self-defense and had been accused of abuse by other soldiers as retaliation for complaints she made about higher-ranking officers.

"The morale of the entire camp," he wrote, "is pitiful."

An Army report that details the abuse at Abu Ghraib, written by Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba, also refers back to the case of the four Pennsylvania reservists, who were accused of punching and kicking detainees while transporting them to the prison from an air base.

It describes Camp Bucca as overcrowded and undermanned. The report lists "inexperienced guards, lapses in accountability, complacency, lack of leadership presence, poor visibility, and lack of clear and concise communication between the guards and the leadership."

Many of these problems, Taguba makes clear, were replicated at Abu Ghraib.

In interviews aired Wednesday on CBS' 60 Minutes II, Lisa Girman and Canjar corroborated that account. They described a prison riot by detainees armed with shanks and rocks, and they called their commanders neglectful and often absent.

Edmondson's mother, Linda Edmondson, said her daughter had been "repeatedly stoned" by prisoners at Camp Bucca. "All I can say is that she was following orders," she added.

Her daughter had basic military police training, but no training about how to guard a prison, and was in charge of 500 to 700 people by herself, Edmondson said. She asserted that her daughter's "other-than-honorable-conditions discharge" from the military was far too harsh.

"She was told what to do," Edmondson said of her daughter. "It all stemmed from one incident, not repeated" abuse.

Girman and Canjar told CBS that they had tried to draw attention to the troubles at the prison by writing to the Defense Department and to several senators, including Joseph I. Lieberman, a Connecticut Democrat, and Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat, as well as Santorum and Specter.

Spokesmen for Levin and Lieberman said they had no record of communication with the families of any of the four soldiers accused of abuse at Camp Bucca.

Santorum and Specter said they heard from the soldiers' families only after the soldiers had been accused of abusing prisoners at Camp Bucca.

Santorum set up a meeting with Girman in February, but a ricin scare on Capitol Hill forced him to cancel the meeting, and an offer to reschedule it was never answered, Santorum said yesterday.

Specter wrote to the Defense Department in July 2003 seeking information about the four reservists' legal status. He said he waited more than six months for a response. In February, the Defense Department wrote to Specter to tell him that the four had received administrative punishments from the Army, including "other than honorable" discharges for Lisa Girman and Edmondson and demotions for Canjar and McKenzie.

Taguba's report faulted the officer who oversaw the military prison system in Iraq - Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, whose 800th Military Police Brigade also managed Camp Bucca - for failing to ensure after the incidents at Camp Bucca that all her soldiers were familiar with military rules and international standards guaranteeing humane treatment for detainees.

"Following the abuse of several detainees at Camp Bucca in May 2003," Taguba wrote, "I could find no evidence that [General] Karpinski ever directed corrective training for her soldiers or ensured that [military police] soldiers throughout Iraq clearly understood the requirements of the Geneva Conventions relating to the treatment of detainees."

The Taguba report also severely criticizes Phillabaum, whom it calls an "extremely ineffective commander and leader."

The colonel and his wife, Pamela Phillabaum, sent e-mails to Specter's office several times in March, pleading for the senator's help in bringing him home from Iraq.

"I feel that I am being made a scapegoat by the Army," Phillabaum wrote in an e-mail forwarded to Specter's office by Pamela Phillabaum. "I have suffered pain and humiliation for doing the best job that anyone could have done given the resources I had to work with."

Phillabaum complained to Specter that he was being forced to remain in Iraq while waiting to hear whether he would receive an administrative reprimand for the troubles at Abu Ghraib, while others implicated in the case - including Karpinski - were allowed to return home.

In his official response to the Army's allegations against him, obtained by The Sun, Phillabaum wrote that he lacked enough resources to control individual soldiers, at Camp Bucca or Abu Ghraib, who were bent on abusing prisoners.

He accuses Lisa Girman of having assaulted a prisoner who she believed had raped Pfc. Jessica Lynch, likening Girman's case to that of Cpl. Charles A. Graner Jr., one of the seven members of the 372nd who have been criminally charged in the mistreatment at Abu Ghraib.

"Training alone would not have prevented these acts of abuse," Phillabaum wrote in his rebuttal. "As battalion commander, I could not be everywhere at all times and therefore delegated authority.

"If I were omnipotent, I would have removed MSG Girman and CPL Grainer [sic] from their duties and avoided the abuse of prisoners and the disgrace to the nation."