Rumsfeld and Pentagon brass blamed over prisoner abuse

TOP Pentagon officials and the military command in Iraq contributed to an environment in which prisoners were abused at Abu Ghraib prison, a high-level panel investigating the detentions has concluded, a defence official said yesterday.

The independent four-member panel headed by former Defence Secretary James Schlesinger found that Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and the Joint Chiefs of Staff failed to exercise proper oversight over confusing detention policies at US prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as at the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The official, who asked not to be identified, said the panel did not find that Mr Rumsfeld or military leaders directly ordered abuse such as stripping prisoners naked and sexually humiliating them.

In addition, a separate army investigation headed by Major General George Fay faulted Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, at the time the top US commander in Iraq, for leadership failures for not addressing troubles at Abu Ghraib, a senior army official said.

The Fay report, to be released today, found Lt Gen Sanchez and his staff were preoccupied with combating an escalating insurgency and did not focus on the festering problems at Abu Ghraib.

The report also found that army military intelligence soldiers kept a number of prisoners, dubbed "ghost detainees", off the books and hidden from the International Committee of the Red Cross, the official added.

It also found a small number of military police used dogs to menace teenage Abu Ghraib detainees.

Seven army reservists from the 372nd Military Police Company have already been charged with abusing prisoners at Abu Ghraib. The Fay report implicates about two dozen more low-ranking soldiers, medics and civilian contractors in the Abu Ghraib abuse.

About half of them will be recommended for criminal proceedings.

But the Fay report maintains the abuse was perpetrated by a few soldiers, but went unchecked as a result of military leadership deficiencies. Photographs of smiling US soldiers tormenting naked Iraqi detainees drew international condemnation when they surfaced in April, prompting charges that policies adopted in the US war on terrorism had encouraged the cruelty.

The defence official confirmed the Schlesinger panel also concluded the military's Joint Staff at the Pentagon, responsible for allocating forces, did not recognise that Abu Ghraib guards were overwhelmed by an influx of detainees during violence in Iraq.

One of the soldiers charged in connection with the abuse, Staff Sergeant Ivan Frederick yesterday reached a deal with army prosecutors after agreeing to plead guilty to some of the charges.