US Army guards at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq kept some prisoners awake for as much as 20 hours a day at the direction of private contractors and military intelligence soldiers, a private interrogator told investigators in testimony that conflicts with some generals' accounts.
Steven Stefanowicz also said Monday he may have heard -- but did not see -- some military police physically abusing a prisoner. Otherwise, he said, he did not see any abuses inside Abu Ghraib like those documented in photos that became public.
Stefanowicz, whose own veracity has been questioned in the official prison investigation, told Army investigators in a sworn statement that Colonel Thomas Pappas, the military intelligence chief at Abu Ghraib, approved of the sleep deprivation tactics.
Prison guards were given copies of interrogation plans for each inmate, which were prepared by three-person teams comprised of contractors or military intelligence soldiers, Stefanowicz said in the sworn statement.
Those plans specifically placed one detainee on a "sleep/meal management program" that involved letting the prisoner sleep only in small blocks of time totaling no more than four hours out of every 24, up to a total of three days. The prisoner then would be allowed 12 hours' sleep, Stefanowicz said.
"The MPs are allowed to do what is necessary to keep the detainee awake in the allotted period of time as long as it adheres to approved rules of engagement and proper treatment of the detainee," Stefanowicz said, adding he never ordered MPs to assault a prisoner.
His statement conflicts with congressional testimony by some top generals and statements by Stefanowicz' employer, CACI International Inc, that private contractors and military intelligence operatives never gave guards orders to take actions that would assist interrogations.
Major General Geoffrey Miller, now in charge of US prisons in Iraq, and former Iraq commander Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez have said their orders allowed military police to offer information to help interrogators, but they were forbidden to take active roles, such as denying sleep.
CACI president and CEO Jack London has said CACI's contract did not allow its workers to tell MPs or any other soldiers what to do. London has said Army officials have praised Stefanowicz's work and never complained about him.
"In connection with inquiries into our operations in Iraq, we have been assured that our employees had no involvement in any inappropriate activity," CACI said in a statement Sunday.
A Pentagon spokesman did not immediately return a telephone message seeking comment Monday night.
Major General Antonio Taguba, who oversaw the investigation that documented the abuses at Abu Ghraib, had access to Stefanowicz's statement before writing his report. Taguba agreed with the assertion that military intelligence officials directed the prison guards on activities but disputed Stefanowicz on the issue of whether he saw, engaged in or encouraged abuses.
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