Prisoner scandal soldier: I lied

One of the US Army reservists charged with abusing inmates at Abu Ghraib prison admitted at a pre-trial hearing today that he initially lied to a military investigator by saying he did not take part in the maltreatment.

Specialist Javal Davis said he was exhausted after a day manning a watchtower and made the false statement because he wanted the January 14 interview to end.

However, he said he went back to investigators the next day and confessed.

“I was dishonest about the things I was accused of,” Davis told the hearing at a US military barracks in Mannheim. “I wanted to maintain my integrity.”

Davis testified he had worked a 13-hour shift and had been asleep for less than an hour when he was woken up by officials including his company commander, Captain Donald Reese. Seven hours of intermittent questioning followed.

“I was very, very tired. I was exhausted,” Davis testified, adding he told the interviewing agent, Manora Iem, several times that “I wanted to get this over with”.

However, Judge Colonel James Pohl rejected a defence request to bar Davis’s January 14 statement to Iem from the evidence, noting that Davis testified he had understood his rights to refuse cooperation.

At the second day of pre-trial hearings for four soldiers at a US military base in Mannheim, Germany, Davis’s lawyer pounced on an acknowledgement by Iem that the agent, too, was tired when he interviewed Davis on January 14.

“You knew that you were tired that day and yet you put nothing in the report,” defence lawyer Paul Bergrin challenged Iem during sharp cross-examination.

Iem said he took no notes during the interview but drafted a five-page report of Davis’s statements which the soldier signed. Iem said Davis told him “that he had seen things that were immoral” and described several of them.

Davis, of Roselle, New Jersey, is among seven US army reservists charged in the prison abuse scandal that erupted last spring when photos became public, causing worldwide outrage.

Lawyers for Specialist Charles Graner – identified in testimony as the ringleader of the abuse – used a similar strategy, arguing he was too tired to make a clear decision about his right to refuse cooperation when he allowed investigators to take a laptop and CDs from his quarters at the prison in January.

Davis and Graner are among soldiers accused of piling naked Iraqi prisoners into a human pyramid and photographing themselves standing by, grinning and giving the thumbs-up sign. Graner, Davis and Ivan “Chip” Frederick II also allegedly jumped on the pile of prisoners.

Frederick has said he would plead guilty to some charges, but did not specify which ones.

Frederick is charged with maltreating detainees, conspiracy to maltreat detainees, dereliction of duty and wrongfully committing an indecent act.