Increasingly it is becoming clear that the US Command in Iraq knew of the prisoner abuse practices in Iraq from reports and complaints by their own interrogation staff, months before their official statements admitting to the abuse. This suggest that the abuse was part of an official policy that was continued until public revelations made these practices no longer possible.
New York Times, June 14, 2004
Unit Says It Gave Earlier Warning of Abuse in Iraq
By ANDREA ELLIOTT
Published: June 14, 2004
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.
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.
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.
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