The US military has reprimanded six senior commissioned and non-commissioned officers in connection with the abuse of prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad, a senior US military official said yesterday.
The announcement followed an administrative investigation ordered by Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, the commander of US forces in Iraq, into abuse of Iraqis at Abu Ghraib.
Six other soldiers are already being criminally investigated for their involvement in the alleged abuse at a prison notorious in the Saddam Hussein era for its torture chambers where thousands of people are believed to have died.
The reprimands -- the most serious written punishment the US Army hands down -- are private and no details would be released on the names or ranks of those punished, the US official said. A seventh person received a lesser letter of admonishment in connection with the same incident.
Last week, the US network CBS released pictures of US soldiers abusing and humiliating prisoners inside Abu Ghraib, including piling them up naked and hooded. In one case a prisoner standing on a box had wires attached to his hands and feet and was told he would be electrocuted if he stepped off it.
Sanchez ordered an investigation into possible abuse in January and in March the US military brought charges of assault, cruelty and maltreatment against six soldiers, members of a military police battalion.
The alleged abuses were said to have involved around 20 prisoners and took place in November and December last year.
Sanchez's non-criminal, administrative investigation was launched at the same time as the criminal probe. A second administrative investigation, into "interrogation practices used in Abu Ghraib" is also underway and follows reports that intelligence officers may have encouraged the abuse.
Meanwhile, the guards and interrogators attempted to cover up the systematic abuse of Iraqi inmates from the international Red Cross, according to a US general dismissed after evidence surfaced of torture at a jail near Baghdad.
The claims add weight to a growing body of evidence that the reports of torture at Abu Ghraib prison reflect a pattern of abuse which goes far beyond the six guards now facing possible court martial.
The former head of US military prisons in Iraq, Brigadier General Janis Karpinski, who was relieved of her command earlier this year, yesterday alleged that military intelligence officers discouraged her from entering the cell block at Abu Ghraib where they interrogated prisoners. They also went "to great lengths to try to exclude" the Red Cross from their prison wing.
A US military investigation, carried out by Major General Antonio Taguba, uncovered evidence of war crimes against the inmates, including: breaking chemical lights and pouring the phosphoric liquid on detainees; pouring cold water on naked detainees; beating detainees with a broom handle and a chair; threatening male detainees with rape; sodomising a detainee with a chemical light and perhaps a broom stick.
The New Yorker magazine, which obtained a complete copy of the report, observed: "General Taguba saved his harshest words for the military intelligence officers and private contractors."
The Taguba report urged disciplinary action against two employees of a Virginia-based firm, CACI International, hired to carry out interrogations. A company spokeswoman said that its employees had volunteered to be interviewed by investigators but she was unaware of any charges against them.
In an interview with the Washington Post, Karpinski sought to distance herself from the prison scandal.
"The prison, and that particular cell block where the events took place, were under the control of the MI [military intelligence] command," she said.
She conceded that she "probably should have been more aggressive" about visiting the cell block, particularly after military intelligence officers went "to great lengths to try to exclude the ICRC [International Committee for the Red Cross] from access to that interrogation wing."
Meanwhile, British military police were yesterday investigating the authenticity of a series of photographs purporting to show British soldiers torturing an Iraqi prisoner outside Basra, amid suspicions that the pictures could be an elaborate set-up.
Officers from Britain's special investigations branch began interrogating soldiers from the Queen's Lancashire Regiment at their base in Cyprus to establish whether anyone had taken the pictures.
The images show an unidentified squaddie kicking, beating and urinating on a hooded prisoner in the back of a truck. They were said to have been taken during eight hours of mistreatment after the Iraqi was arrested for stealing in Basra last year. But military experts and sources close to the regiment believe the pictures are suspicious.
A source close to the regiment said that the pictures looked too pristine to have been taken by a soldier with a pocket camera. Other defense experts said the rifle in the photograph was an SA80 Mk 1 which was not issued to soldiers in Iraq and British troops on patrol wore berets or helmets not floppy hats like the one in the picture.
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