US chief heard abuse claims in January

US ADMINISTRATOR Paul Bremer first heard of allegations that troops were mistreating Iraqi captives at Abu Ghraib prison in January, a spokesman said yesterday.

The Red Cross claimed it had been warning of prisoner abuse throughout Iraq since the very beginning of the US-led invasion.

Mr Bremer's spokesman, Dan Senor, said he did not know when Mr Bremer first saw the photos of abusive acts. It was the pictures, not the initial announcement of the investigation, that ignited international outrage.

In mid-January, Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, the commander of US forces in Iraq, announced an investigation into allegations of mistreatment of prisoners at a coalition detention facility in Iraq prompted by complaints of a US guard at Abu Ghraib who told his superiors he could not tolerate abuses he had witnessed.

"Ambassador Bremer was made aware of the charges relating to the humiliations in January 2004," when the investigation was announced, Mr Senor said.

The international Red Cross, meanwhile, said it had warned US officials of abuse of prisoners in Iraq more than a year ago, shortly after the beginning of the US-led invasion.

It continued giving verbal and written reports through to November, including detailed allegations of mistreatment at Abu Ghraib.

Pierre Kraehenbuehl, director of operations for the International Committee of the Red Cross, said the abuse represented more than isolated acts, and the problems were not limited to the Abu Ghraib prison.

"We were dealing here with a broad pattern, not individual acts," he said".

He confirmed a leaked ICRC report to US authorities, published on Thursday by the Wall Street Journal, was genuine. The newspaper said the 24-page report described prisoners kept naked in total darkness in empty cells at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison and male prisoners forced to parade around in women's underwear. Coalition forces also fired on unarmed prisoners from watchtowers, killing some of them.

It said that information obtained suggested that ill-treatment "went beyond exceptional cases and might be considered a practice tolerated by" coalition forces.

The report was given to Mr Bremer and military commanders in February but represented a summary of the information given to US authorities during the previous year, Mr Kraehenbuehl said.

He said some of those discussions earlier were with the commander of the unit in charge of Abu Ghraib prison, the 800th Military Police Brigade, Brigadier General Janis Karpinski.

She has said since returning to the United States that she knew nothing of the abuses.