(COMTEX) B: Bremer First Heard of Abuse in January ( AP Online )
BAGHDAD, Iraq, May 07, 2004 (AP Online via COMTEX) -- U.S. administrator L. Paul Bremer first heard of allegations that troops were mistreating Iraqi captives at Abu Ghraib prison in January, a spokesman said Friday. The Red Cross claimed it had been warning of prisoner abuse throughout Iraq since the very beginning of the U.S.-led invasion.
Bremer's spokesman, Dan Senor, said he did not know when Bremer first saw the photos of abusive acts. It was the pictures, not the initial announcement of the investigation, that ignited international outrage.
In mid-January, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, announced an investigation into allegations of mistreatment of prisoners at a coalition detention facility in Iraq - prompted by complaints of a U.S. guard at Abu Ghraib who told his superiors he could not tolerate abuses he had witnessed.
"Ambassador Bremer was made aware of the charges relating to the humiliations in January 2004," when the investigation was announced, Senor told reporters.
The international Red Cross, meanwhile, said Friday it had warned U.S. officials of abuse of prisoners in Iraq more than a year ago, shortly after the beginning of the U.S.-led invasion.
It continued giving verbal and written reports through to November, including detailed allegations of mistreatment at Abu Ghraib.
Pierre Kraehenbuehl, director of operations for the International Committee of the Red Cross, said the abuse represented more than isolated acts, and the problems were not limited to the Abu Ghraib prison.
"We were dealing here with a broad pattern, not individual acts. There was a pattern and a system," he told a news conference in Geneva.
He confirmed that a leaked ICRC report to U.S. authorities, published Friday by the Wall Street Journal, was genuine.
The newspaper said that the 24-page report described prisoners kept naked in total darkness in empty cells at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison and male prisoners forced to parade around in women's underwear. Coalition forces also fired on unarmed prisoners from watchtowers, killing some of them.
In another episode, nine men were arrested by coalition forces in Basra and beaten severely, leading to one death, it added.
"Ill-treatment during interrogation was not systematic, except with regard to persons arrested with suspected security offenses or deemed to have an intelligence value," the report said, according to the newspaper.
It said that information obtained suggested that ill-treatment "went beyond exceptional cases and might be considered a practice tolerated by" coalition forces.
The report was given to U.S. administrator L. Paul Bremer and military commanders in February but represented a summary of the information given to U.S. authorities during the previous year, Kraehenbuehl told a news conference.
He said some of those discussions earlier were with the commander of the unit in charge of Abu Ghraib prison, the 800th Military Police Brigade, Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski.
She has said since returning to the United States that she knew nothing of the abuses. She said U.S. military intelligence actually controlled the facility where interrogations took place.
The neutral, Swiss-based ICRC is designated by the Geneva Conventions on warfare to visit prisoners of war and other people detained by an occupying power, to ensure countries respect their obligations under the 1949 accords.
President Bush apologized Thursday for the abuse at Abu Ghraib, saying he was "sorry for the humiliation suffered by the Iraqi prisoners and the humiliation suffered by their families." He said the images had made Americans "sick to their stomach."
In Baghdad, Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt on Friday acknowledged it would take "some effort" by U.S. troops to repair the damage caused in relations with Iraqis - particularly after the publishing of pictures. He said that court martial procedures against six soldiers charged in the abuse shown in the photos would be open to the press.
Iraqi anger over the abuse spilled over into the confrontation between the U.S. military and radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, whose militiamen clashed with troops in Najaf and Karbala on Friday.
In a sermon at Friday prayers in a Kufa mosque, al-Sadr rejected Bush's apology for the abuse. And an al-Sadr aide, Sheik Abdul-Sattar al-Bahadli, offered worshippers in Basra up to $350 for the capture of a British soldier - adding that anyone capturing a female soldier can keep her as a slave - apparently in retaliation for the treatment of Iraqi prisoners.
Adel al-Allami, an official at an Iraqi human rights organization, said his group tried for months last year to get an audience with U.S. occupation officials.
He said it wanted to present a list of reported abuses at prisons as well as complaints about mistreatment of Iraqis during U.S. raids on homes in the search for insurgents.
"We knew of many human rights violations and sent a number of memos," al-Allami said, saying the group had reports of detainees being beaten and deprived of sleep.
Iraqi civilians also complain about heavy-handed methods used by soldiers during raids, including the hooding of detainees, damage to homes and theft of property, he said.
In a letter to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Human Rights Watch said the U.S. government should allow human rights organizations to monitor detention facilities in Iraq and elsewhere in order to bring a stop to the mistreatment of prisoners.
"Torture flourishes in the dark," said the organization's executive director, Kenneth Roth. "If the Bush administration really wants to put a stop to torture in U.S. detention facilities, it has to open them up to outside scrutiny."
Rumsfeld apologized for the abuse and told a Senate committee on Friday he favors compensating the victims for their suffering.
Also Thursday, Britain's Ministry of Defense said that it is questioning a soldier who has made new claims that British soldiers abused Iraqi prisoners. The soldier, who was not identified, had gone to British police with allegations of mistreatment. Britain is already investigating published photos allegedly showing its soldiers threatening and urinating on prisoners in Iraq.
The Iraqi rights group, known simply as Human Rights Organization in Iraq, was founded in 1960 but kept a low profile during Saddam Hussein's regime. It asked repeatedly for meetings with coalition officials, but each time officials "would give excuses for not meeting," al-Allami said. The group finally got a meeting three weeks ago, he said.
U.S. officials "have felt that Americans have total protection from any sort of prosecution ... This is the authority of the strong over the weak," he said.
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AP correspondent Alexander G. Higgins in Geneva contributed to this report.
By LOUIS MEIXLER
Associated Press Writer
Copyright 2004 Associated Press, All rights reserved
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