Officials cleared of Abu Ghraib blame

THE US army failed to react to early signs of abuse at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and missed opportunities to correct lapses that caused prisoner abuse elsewhere. However, its own policies and top officials were not directly to blame, a Pentagon report said yesterday.

The report, by navy inspector general Vice Admiral Albert Church, was billed by the Pentagon as the broadest of its investigations into the treatment of detainees by the US military, particularly in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo.

A 21-page unclassified summary released at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing largely echoed the Pentagon’s previous contention that its leaders were not directly responsible for sexual and physical mistreatment of prisoners. The full 368-page report is classified. The summary found “no single, over- arching explanation” for the abuses, which have drawn international condemnation and undermined US credibility as it pursues President George W Bush’s ‘war on terror’.

The report was condemned by Human Rights Watch. “This looks like another whitewash. Almost a year after the Abu Ghraib pictures, we still haven’t had an independent investigation into the widespread prison abuse by someone not appointed by or subordinate to Secretary Rumsfeld,” the organisation’s special counsel, Reed Brody, said.