A US soldier convicted of abusing Iraqi prisoners said, in remarks made public late on Sunday, that she knew of "worse things" happening at Abu Ghraib and insisted military commanders were fully aware of what was going on in Iraq's infamous jail.
The comments, made by Private First Class Lynndie England in her first post-court-martial interview, contradicted assertions by top Pentagon officials that a small group of out-of-control soldiers were responsible for abuse at Abu Ghraib, and that no matter how repulsive that mistreatment was, it did not amount to torture.
Damaging scandal
England was sentenced last Tuesday to three years in prison and ordered to be dishonorably discharged from the army after a military jury found her guilty of maltreating prisoners and committing an indecent act.
The trial capped a damaging scandal that erupted last year, following publication of pictures that showed Abu Ghraib inmates piled up naked on the floor in front of US soldiers, cowering in front of snarling military dogs, chained to beds in stress positions and forced to stand naked in front of female guards. But England, appearing on NBC's Dateline program, said the pictures did not convey the full extent of the abuse that took place in the cell block.
"I know worse things were happening over there," admitted the 22-year-old convict.
She said one night she heard blood-curdling screams coming from the block's shower room, where non-military interrogators had taken an Arab detainee.
"They had the shower on to muffle it, but it wasn't helping," she recalled. "They never screamed like that when we were humiliating them. But this guy was like screaming bloody murder. I mean it still haunts me I can still hear it just like it happened yesterday."
The interrogators were not identified, but several investigations into the abuse disclosed that Central Intelligence Agency operatives worked at Abu Ghraib alongside US military intelligence, mining for useful information. Nine low-ranking soldiers have now been convicted or voluntarily pleaded guilty in the scandal. But a Defense Department probe has cleared all top US commanders of criminal responsibility in the matter.
Sanctioned strategy
Taking issue with that finding, England argued stripping prisoners naked and handcuffing them to steel bars was part of an officially-sanctioned strategy.
"It was just humiliation tactics and things that we were told to do." she said.
She insisted Specialist Charles Graner, a senior prison guard and her boyfriend, would always show pictures of intimidation procedures to military intelligence (MI) officers when they came to work in the morning.
"And the MI would be like, `Oh, that's a good job! I never would have thought of that,'" England recalled. "He'd show him and he'd show the command and they'd be like, `Oh, just keep up the good work.'"
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