Posted on 06/13/2004 9:34:25 PM PDT by conservative in nyc
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RANKFURT, June 13 — Beginning in November, a small unit of interrogators at Abu Ghraib prison began reporting allegations of prisoner abuse, including the beatings of five blindfolded Iraqi generals, in internal documents sent to senior officers, according to interviews with military personnel who worked in the prison.
The disclosure of the documents raises new questions about whether senior officers in Iraq were alerted about serious abuses at the prison before January. Top military officials have said they only learned about abuses then, after a soldier came forward with photographs of the abuse.
"We were reporting it long before this mess came out," said one of several military intelligence soldiers interviewed in Germany and the United States who asked not to be identified for fear they would jeopardize their careers.
The Red Cross has said it alerted American military commanders in Iraq to abuses at Abu Ghraib in November. But the disclosures that the military's own interrogators had alerted superiors to abuse back then in internal documents has not been previously reported.
At least 20 accounts of mistreatment were included in the documents, according to those interviewed. Some detainees described abuse at other detention facilities before they were transferred to Abu Ghraib, but at least seven incidents said to be cited in the documents took place at the prison, four of them in the area controlled by military intelligence and the site of the notorious abuses depicted in the photographs.
The abuse allegations were cited by members of the prison's Detainee Assessment Branch, a unit of interrogators who screened prisoners for possible release, in routine weekly reports channeled to military judge advocates and others.
Military intelligence personnel said the unit's two- to five-page memorandums were to be sent for final approval to a three-member board that included Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, the commander of the 800th Military Police Battalion, and Maj. Gen. Barbara Fast, the top Army intelligence officer in Iraq. The sections in which the abuse was cited were generally only a paragraph or two in a larger document.
Military officials in Baghdad acknowledged Sunday that lawyers on a magistrate board reviewed the reports, but they could not confirm whether Generals Karpinski and Fast had seen them, or whether any action had been taken to investigate the incidents. Col. Jill E. Morgenthaler, chief of public affairs at military headquarters in Baghdad, said Sunday that officials were "trying to find the documents in question."
"Until then, there's nothing we can say," she said.
Most of the Abu Ghraib incidents were reported before January, said military intelligence personnel. In one case a detainee told workers from the Detainee Assessment Branch that he was made to stand naked, holding books on his head, while a soldier poured cold water on him. Among the other incidents cited by military personnel: a man was shoved to the ground before a soldier stepped on his head; a man was forced to stand naked while a female interrogator made fun of his genitals and a woman was repeatedly kicked by a military police guard.
The beating of the former generals, which had not been disclosed, is being examined by the Pentagon as part of its inquiry into abuses at Abu Ghraib, according to people knowledgeable about the investigation.
By mid-December, those people said, two separate reports of the beating had been made — one by the assessment branch and one by a military intelligence analyst. The analyst asked a former general at the end of an interrogation what had happened to his nose — it was smashed and tilted to the left, and a gash on his chin had been stitched.
The prisoner, in his 50's, told the story of the beating, which he said had occurred about a week earlier. His account closely matched that given independently to the Detainee Assessment Branch by another former general around the same time.
According to their accounts, here is what happened: One evening after fierce riots had erupted at the prison in late November, a group of soldiers rounded up the five former Iraqi generals, who were suspected of instigating the revolt. On their way to the prison's isolation unit, the soldiers stopped the captives, who were handcuffed and blindfolded, and arranged them in a line. Then the guards attacked the prisoners with a barrage of punches, beating them until they were covered in blood.
The military intelligence analyst alerted his sergeant, but the sergeant said the prisoners "probably deserved it," a person with first-hand knowledge of the investigation said. The sergeant, in a telephone interview from his home in Texas, denied making the comment but said he was questioned about the case by military criminal investigators after January, when they began their inquiry into other Abu Ghraib abuses.
The analyst also cited the beating in his interrogation notes, stored in an electronic file accessible to several of the prison's intelligence units. Typically, these notes were routinely read by analysts in several units.
Soldiers interviewed said they were not aware of an official prison abuse reporting system. It was not until January, after the Criminal Investigations Division began an inquiry, that soldiers were given forms to file complaints of abuse directly to criminal investigators, they said.
The Detainee Assessment Branch was formed in October as a last stop for detainees who were deemed no longer useful by the prison's interrogators. The unit included four to six interrogators and some analysts. Claudius Albury, an employee of CACI, a civilian contractor, set up the unit and helped manage it, reporting to Maj. Matt Price, the operations officer in charge of the Joint Interrogation and Debriefing Center at the prison. Mr. Albury said he could not comment, pending clearance from his supervisors.
Military officials said the assessment branch was created to help speed the flow of detainee releases. The unit screened prisoners in a process that fell somewhere between an exit interview and an interrogation. The purpose of the screening was to determine whether a detainee was no longer of "intelligence value" — that is, whether other interrogators had forgotten to ask important questions, or failed to notice inconsistencies in the answers.
In preparation for the screening, interrogators read through the detainees' files, which consisted mostly of notes by other interrogators and any intelligence reports written about the detainee. Detainee Assessment Branch personnel then asked detainees the same basic questions other interrogators had asked, like biographical queries and whether the detainees knew where Saddam Hussein was hiding.
Starting in mid-November, one member of the unit began asking detainees, "How have you been treated since you have been in U.S. custody?" It was intended as a tactic meant to make the detainee feel like the interrogator cared, military intelligence personnel said. But the question soon began eliciting vivid and disturbing answers.
"One guy said he was thrown on the ground and stepped on the head," said one soldier. "That's when I started paying attention to it."
As more abuse reports emerged, members of the unit made the question a formal part of the screening process. In early December, the question was added to a Microsoft Word document of questions for the unit's interrogators to ask detainees, several military intelligence personnel said in interviews.
"We couldn't believe what we were hearing," said one soldier. Two detainees reported having been given electric shocks at other holding facilities before arriving in Abu Ghraib, according to the interviews. One prisoner's file included photographs of burns on his body. "We didn't want people to know that we knew about it and didn't report it," the soldier said.
Names of soldiers responsible for the abuse were not included because most of the time, the detainees could not identify those responsible, according to several interviews. But one soldier said, "There's lots of investigative techniques that could have been used to discover who the culprits were."
The reports of abuse made by the Detainee Assessment Branch were often limited to one or two paragraphs in the "circumstances of capture" section of a memorandum recommending whether detainees should be released. Military officials acknowledged that the memorandums were read by judge advocates.
From there, military officials said, the lawyers reviewed a detainee's file, added some documents and sent it to a three-member Review and Appeal Board made up of General Karpinski, General Fast and a lawyer. Whether the the assessment branch memorandum remained in the file is unclear.
But several military personnel said the policy was for the board to read the assessment memorandum. Once the board reviewed a file, the members voted on whether to release the detainee. At that point, the entire file was returned to the assessment branch with the board's decision stated on a separate form, signed by the board members, said the military intelligence personnel.
"Whether or not they read those things I don't know, but they should have," said one military intelligence soldier who worked closely with the unit. "They were making decisions based on it."
Even I have to admit there is some new information in this article. One or two paragraph references of alleged abuse were buried in a unit's two to five page summaries of exit interviews. (Just like the Slimes' note that the abuses were described in one or two paragraphs was buried at the end of their article) These summaries were supposed to be read before a panel consisting of our good friend, Brig. General Karpinski, Maj. General Barbara Fast, the top Army intelligence officer in Iraq and an unnamed lawyer decided whether to release detainees. Military JAG lawyers allegedly read them.
democrat scumbags say the rules on prisoner abuse are there to protect their "children," because abusing the other side's prisoners supposedly encourages them to abuse American prisoners. So in typical fashion, they want to publicize, ad nauseam, every possible story of abuse in the middle of a war so that the terrorists will have an "excuse" to torture and murder our soldiers. God I hate leftists. I don't even need to ask whose side they are on.
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I was very concerned that our troops and our allies lives were being risked to save the terrorist's 'face' - forsaking the valuable information which the 'detainees' were aware of but refusing to tell us because they will do anything to kill as many of us as possible. Every day I pray that the terrorist and their plots and plans will be revealed so that we may stop them before any harm is done. As the Jordanian authorities used their interrogation techniques to reveal this horrible plan. (see below)We are at war and the way that enemy works leaves no room for the niceties, to risk thousands maybe millions of innocent lives. Anyone who stands in the way of obtaining any pertinent information about these monster's plans when the stakes are so high, are accomplices to any innocent lives, limb, or wealth lost, resulting from the plans not being discovered in time to stop them. Revealing such plans is a worthy cause to sacrifice a brave mans life, let alone a coconspirators in plans to literally destroy any who are not Muslim. Also lets not forget that it was the Red Cross which accepted millions of dollars of donations from the American public who thought that this money was going to help the victims of 9/11, but it was latter revealed that the red cross had no intention of disseminating these funds , but instead had been using the attack as a marketing tool to enlarge their own coffers. It wasn't until Bill OReilly made a huge stink about this that they did finally realize the money to those for whom it was intended. |
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Authorities: Chemical cloud would have been released in Amman
Monday, April 26, 2004 Posted: 3:54 PM EDT (1954 GMT)
MMAN, Jordan (CNN) -- Jordanian authorities said Monday they have broken up an alleged al Qaeda plot that would have unleashed a deadly cloud of chemicals in the heart of Jordan's capital, Amman.
The plot would have been more deadly than anything al Qaeda has done before, including the September 11 attacks, according to the Jordanian government.
Among the alleged targets were the U.S. Embassy, the Jordanian prime minister's office and the headquarters of Jordanian intelligence.
U.S. intelligence officials expressed caution about whether the chemicals captured by Jordanian authorities were intended to create a " toxic cloud" chemical weapon, but they said the large quantities involved were at a minimum intended to create " massive explosions."
Officials said there is debate within the CIA and other U.S. agencies over whether the plotters were planning to kill innocent people using toxic chemicals.
At issue is the presence of a large quantity of sulfuric acid among the tons of chemicals seized by Jordanian authorities. Sulfuric acid can be used as a blister agent, but it more commonly can increase the size of conventional explosions, according to U.S. officials.
Nevertheless, U.S. intelligence officials called the capture of tons of chemicals that together could create several large conventional explosions " a big deal."
The plot was within days of being carried out, Jordanian officials said, when security forces broke it up April 20.
In a nighttime raid in Amman, Jordanian security forces moved in on the terrorist cell. After the shooting stopped, four men were dead. Jordanian authorities said. They said at least three others were arrested, including Azmi Jayyousi, the cell's suspected ringleader, whom Jordanian intelligence alleges was responsible for planning and recruiting.
On a confession shown on state-run Jordanian television, Jayyousi said he took orders from Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a suspected terrorist leader who has been linked to al Qaeda and whom U.S. officials have said is behind some attacks in Iraq.
" I took explosives courses, poisons high level, then I pledged allegiance to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, to obey him without any questioning," Jayyousi said.
Jordanian authorities said Azmi Jayyousi was the suspected ringleader in an alleged al Qaeda plot.
Jordanian intelligence suspects Jayyousi returned from Iraq in January after a meeting with al-Zarqawi in which they allegedly plotted to hit the three targets in Amman.
In a series of raids, the Jordanians said, they seized 20 tons of chemicals and numerous explosives. Also seized were three trucks equipped with specially modified plows, apparently designed to crash through security barricades.
The first alleged target was the Jordanian intelligence headquarters. The alleged blast was intended to be a big one.
" According to my experience as an explosives expert, the whole of the Intelligence Department will be destroyed, and nothing of it will remain, nor anything surrounding it," Jayyousi said.
Details of the alleged plot were shown Monday on Jordanian television, including graphics of how the cell apparently intended to carry out the attack.
In an videotape shown on Jordanian TV, Hussein Sharif said Jayyousi recruited him as a suicide bomber.
" The aim, Azmi told me, was to execute an operation to strike Jordan and the Hashemite Royal family, a war against the crusaders and infidels," Sharif said. " Azmi told me that this will be the first chemical attack that al Qaeda will execute."
Jordanian authorities said the attack would have mixed a combination of 71 lethal chemicals, which they said has never been done before, including blistering agents to cause third-degree burns, nerve gas and choking agents.
In a videotape shown on Jordanian TV, Hussein Sharif said he was recruited as a suicide bomber.
A Jordanian government scientist said the plot had been carefully worked out, with just the right amount of explosives to spread the deadly cloud without diminishing the effects of the chemicals. The blast would not burn up the poisonous chemicals but instead produce a toxic cloud, the scientist said, possibly spreading for a mile, maybe more.
The Jordanian intelligence buildings are within a mile of a large medical center, a shopping mall and a residential area.
" And there is no one combination of antidote to treat nerve agent, choking agent and blistering agent," the scientist said.
Al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian, has been accused of plotting chemical attacks before, and authorities said it would not be his first attempt to strike Jordan.
In 2000, a Jordanian court charged him in absentia with planning to blow up a hotel and attack tourist destinations.
U.S. officials have said he was behind the 2002 assassination of American diplomat Lawrence Foley, who was gunned down outside his home in Amman.
According to the televised confessions, $170,000 came from Zarqawi via messengers from Syria.
In last week's raid, Jordanian forces seized cash, bomb-making equipment and weapons, investigators said.
CNN was not allowed access to any of those arrested. But the videotaped confessions offer a rare glimpse inside an alleged terrorist operation.
The Jordanian government said the videotapes were made with the full cooperation of the suspects and their attorneys.
CNN's John Vause, Henry Schuster and David Ensor contributed to this report.
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_21-3-2004_pg7_5
MULTAN: A seminary student killed his sister with a hatchet because he suspected her of having an affair in Kabirwala on Friday.
Ghulam Mohiuddin, 20, a student of Rizvia Shamsul Aloom, of which his father is the principal, repeatedly hit his sister Sakina Mai, 25, with a hatchet when she was washing dishes. Mr Mohiuddin suspected Ms Sakina of having an affair with a young man. Police arrested Mr Mohiuddin who confessed his crime. ?I am neither ashamed nor afraid of the punishment because I killed my sister for a noble cause. I belong to a religious family which is highly reputed in the area and this had to be done to maintain our status,? Mr Mohiuddin told reporters while in police custody.
Mere Suspicion an affair is apparently a fully justificable reason for murdering somebody in Islamic Societies. Note the apology about this being a Noble Cause, just as Jihad is described in the Quran and about their family being 'religious'. The Student is NOT ashamed because his religious upbringing has taught him that he has done the right thing.
The New York Times is reporting on Abu Ghraib in the manner of their infamous coverage of the Augusta Golf Club controversy...Their "over coverage" became the story...
Didn't read where anyone was decapitated...
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