27 US intelligence staff involved in Iraq prison abuse

Twenty-seven members of a United States military intelligence unit at Baghdad’s Abu Ghraib prison either requested or condoned certain abuses of Iraqi prisoners there, an investigation concluded tonight.

“We discovered serious misconduct and a loss of moral values,” said General Paul Kern, head of the US army inquiry into the scandal, as he briefed reporters at the Pentagon in Washington.

Kern and other officials detailed the results of the investigation, commonly called the Fay report, after one of the chief investigators.

Of the 27 individuals, 23 were members of the military personnel and four were contractors.

Another eight, including two contractors, knew of abuse and failed to report it, Kern said.

“There is no single, simple explanation for why the abuse at Abu Ghraib happened,” the report’s executive summary says.

The full report was not provided to reporters.

The summary blames the abuses on several factors:

:: “misconduct (ranging from inhumane to sadistic) by a small group of morally corrupt soldiers and civilians”;

:: “a lack of discipline on the part of leaders and soldiers”;

:: and “failure or lack of leadership” by higher command in Iraq.

The Fay report makes a distinction between abuse depicted in many of the infamous photographs from the prison, which the military says was committed by a small group of rogue guards who were not attached to the intelligence unit there, and abuses committed during interrogations.

Some of the abuses during interrogations were committed by soldiers who were unclear about what techniques they could legally use on prisoners, the report says.

The report attributes some of the problems to the influence of officials with “other government agencies” – a term frequently used by the Pentagon for the Central Intelligence Agency.

“It is clear that the interrogation practices of other government agencies led to a loss of accountability at Abu Ghraib,” it said.

The non-military interrogators had wider latitude in determining what techniques they could use, and also had “ghost detainees” – prisoners kept off the books shown to the International Committee of the Red Cross.

The guards at Abu Ghraib were from the 800th Military Police Brigade, commanded by Brig Gen Janis Karpinski. This unit handled security at the prison.

The interrogators belonged to the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade, commanded by Col. Thomas Pappas.

The Fay report comes a day after a separate, independent panel released a report blaming senior leaders, including Defence Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Richard Myers, for lax oversight and inattention to the issue of military-run prisons in Iraq.

This contributed to the chaos at Abu Ghraib, said members of that panel, led by former Defence Secretary James Schlesinger.

The Schlesinger report, which looked at problems throughout the system of US-run prisons in Iraq, Afghanistan and at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, said about one-third of the substantiated cases of prisoner abuse took place during interrogations.

It found no policy of abuse and concluded that the problems were directly the fault of the soldiers who committed violence against the prisoners, and their immediate supervisors.

The Schlesinger panel said disciplinary action “may be forthcoming” against Karpinski and Pappas.

Earlier, it was announced that a US military policewoman accused in the Abu Ghraib scandal had had the charges against her reduced as a set of pre-trial hearings concluded at an American base in Germany.

The decision by military prosecutors could significantly reduce jail time for Specialist Megan Ambuhl – one of seven Army reservists charged with abuse of Iraqi prisoners – if she is found guilty.

Two counts of cruelty and maltreatment and one of conspiracy had been added after the investigation against Ambuhl was completed, a step her lawyers argued was improper and added a possible three more years of prison time.

But prosecutor Captain Christopher Graveline told a pre-trial hearing today the government would not proceed with the new charges.

Ambuhl, of Centreville, Virginia, now faces a possible 7 1/2 years in prison if convicted on one count of conspiracy, dereliction of duty, cruelty and maltreatment and indecent acts.

The hearing made plain that she is mainly accused of failing to intervene or report abuse at the prison outside Baghdad.

“All the charges that remain before the court are complacency and failure to act or report,” her military lawyer, Capt Jennifer Crawford, said in court.

Crawford asked the court to approve a civilian prison psychologist as an expert witness, who she said could help persuade a jury how the conditions at the prison might have affected her client’s judgement.

Judge Colonel James Pohl rejected her request for the specific expert, but said if the government could not provide an acceptable military counterpart in the coming weeks he would reconsider the motion.

The rulings came on the last of three days of pre-trial hearings.

On Monday and Tuesday, Poll heard motions in the cases of Specialist Charles Garner, Sgt Javal Davis, Ambuhl and Staff Sgt Ivan Frederick – four of the seven soldiers accused in the Abu Ghraib prison abuse case.

During the hearings, Pohl suggested he may force key military intelligence officers to testify, broadening the scope of the prison scandal beyond the 372nd Military Police Company, an Army reserve unit from Maryland to which all soldiers facing charges so far were assigned.