Sun, May 30, 2004 - Page 7 News List

US abuses alleged at other facilities

COERCION Another four holding facilities in Iraq were alleged to have been the scene of abuse of a number of Iraqi prisoners by US military-intelligence operatives

AP , WASHINGTON

Other charges leveled against military-intelligence troops include stuffing an Iraqi general into a sleeping bag, sitting on his chest and covering his mouth during an interrogation at a prison camp at Qaim, near the border with Syria. The general died during that interrogation, although he also had been questioned by CIA operatives in the days before his death.

Detainees at an Army prison camp near Samarra, north of Baghdad, were said to have been choked and beaten and to have had their hair pulled. Prisoners are also alleged to have been placed in painful positions for hours at Camp Cropper, a prison at Baghdad International Airport for prominent former Iraqi officials.

Military officials say they are investigating all of those incidents.

One focus of the incident at Qaim is Chief Warrant Officer Lewis Welshover, an interrogator with the 66th Military Intelligence Group.

Welshover was part of a two-person interrogation team that questioned Iraqi Air Force Major General Abed Hamed Mowhoush, 57. Military autopsy records say Mowhoush was asphyxiated by chest compression and smothering.

Army officials say members of a California Army National Guard military-intelligence unit are accused of abusing prisoners at a camp near Samarra, north of Baghdad. The New York Times has reported that those accusations include pulling prisoners' hair, beating them and choking them to force them to give information.

The Red Cross complained to the military in July that Camp Cropper inmates had been kept in painful "stress positions" for up to four hours and had been struck by military-intelligence soldiers.

One of the military-intelligence soldiers interviewed in the Abu Ghraib probe claimed some prisoners were beaten before they arrived at Camp Cropper.

Corporal Robert Bruttomesso of the 325th Military Intelligence Battalion told Army investigators he reported that abuse to his chain of command. The report of his interview does not include details on what action, if any, Bruttomesso's commanders took.

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