Army 'covering up prisoner abuse' says US soldier

The US Army is trying to “cover up” widespread abuse of prisoners at Iraq’s notorious Abu Ghraib jail, a witness in the investigation claimed today.

Sgt Samuel Provance made his damaging claims hours before the first of the courts martial against seven accused US prison guards was due to begin.

Sgt Provance claimed that dozens of soldiers were involved in mistreating Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib, despite claims by top Bush administration officials that it was perpetrated by a group of rogue soldiers.

“There’s definitely a cover-up. People are either telling themselves or being told to be quiet,” Sgt Provance told ABC News.

Sgt Provance, 30, was part of the 302nd Military Intelligence Battalion stationed at Abu Ghraib last September.

Speaking despite receiving orders not to, he said: “What I was surprised at was the silence. The collective silence by so many people that had to be involved, that had to have seen something or heard something.”

Sgt Provance, now stationed in Germany, operated the top-secret computer network used by military intelligence at the prison.

He said he did not see incidents of abuse taking place himself, but said interrogators admitted mistreating prisoners.

“One interrogator told me about how commonly the detainees were stripped naked, and in some occasions, wearing women’s underwear,” he said.

“If it’s your job to strip people naked, yell at them, scream at them, humiliate them, it’s not going to be too hard to move from that to another level.”

Some of the abuse included US soldiers “striking [prisoners] on the neck area somewhere and the person being knocked out”, Sgt Provance said.

In one incident two drunken interrogators took a female Iraqi prisoner from her cell in the middle of the night and stripped her naked to the waist.

The pair had to be restrained by a prison guard, he said.

Sgt Provance said anything the guards did “legally or otherwise, they were to take those commands from the interrogators”.

Nearly all the military guards who have been charged with abusing prisoners at Abu Ghraib, near Baghdad, claim that they were simply following orders.

The exception is Specialist Jeremy Sivits, 24, who faces a special court martial in Baghdad later today.

He is understood to have told interrogators it was a case of renegade soldiers attacking prisoners for their own amusement.

A further three former guards were appearing before court martial in Iraq today. It is not believed that they will be asked to enter a plea but Army Sgt Javal Davis, Spc Charles Graner and Staff Sgt Ivan Fredericks are expected to plead not guilty at later hearings.

Sgt Provance said he felt that his evidence to military investigators was not taken seriously.

“It was almost as if I actually felt if all my statements were shredded and I said, like most everybody else, ’I didn’t hear anything, I didn’t see anything, I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ then my life would be just fine right now.”

He added: “I would say many people are probably hiding and wishing to God that this storm passes without them having to be investigated [or] personally looked at.”

Meanwhile, three journalists working for the Reuters news agency claimed they were mistreated when they were arrested by US troops.

They said they were beaten, taunted and forced to put shoes in their mouths during their detention at a military camp near the Iraqi city of Fallujah in January.

“The US investigation in this case remains totally unsatisfactory as far as we’re concerned,” Susan Allsopp, a Reuters spokeswoman in London said.

“We would urge them to re-evaluate the investigation in light of recent invents.”

The three newsmen said they were detained after going to report on the shooting down of a US helicopter near Fallujah.

The men are Baghdad-based cameraman Salem Ureibi, Fallujah-based freelance television journalist Ahmad Mohammad Hussein al-Badrani and driver Sattar Jabar al-Badrani. They were released without being charged.

A US military investigation found no evidence of wrongdoing.

US Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, commander of ground forces in Iraq, told Reuters in a letter he was confident an investigation had been “thorough and objective” and its findings were sound.

Yesterday, it emerged that Private Lynndie England – the woman seen in photographs pointing at naked detainees and holding another by a leash – told investigators some inmates were made to crawl through broken glass. Others were forced to wear women’s sanitary products.

In a statement to investigators, obtained by the Los Angeles Times, she said “everyone in the company from the commander down” knew what was going on.

She added: “We did what we were told.”

Other former guards at the jail near Baghdad told investigators how a hooded detainee died after being taken to a shower room for interrogation by the CIA.

A CIA spokesman said he could not comment on the matter because it was under investigation by the agency’s inspector general’s office in conjunction with other military investigations.