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| Ex-prisons chief's Iraq role questioned |
| By Associated Press |
| Published: 05/17/2004 |
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A senator last Thursday asked Justice Department officials to explain why they sent a former state corrections chief who had been involved in prisoner mistreatment investigations to Iraq to help set up the prison system. Why Attorney General Ashcroft "would send someone with such a checkered record to rebuild Iraq's corrections system is beyond me," said Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., pointing to a picture of O.L. "Lane" McCotter touring Abu Ghraib with Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz. McCotter was in Baghdad from May to September last year overseeing the reconstruction of Abu Ghraib. He was part of an Ashcroft-picked team. McCotter, in a statement sent to The Santa Fe New Mexican last Monday, condemned the abuses in Iraq. "Like all Americans, I am offended and sickened by the improper actions that have taken place at Abu Ghraib since my departure," he said. "Certainly those who have acted improperly should be fully prosecuted." McCotter said his primary duty in Iraq was to evaluate the structural status of the prisons. No Justice Department personnel or people associated with the department are involved in any aspect of the military detentions, according to a Justice Department statement. Their involvement in Iraq has been limited to civilian, criminal-case prisoners, including some who are held at other sections of the Abu Ghraib prison. McCotter was corrections director in Texas from 1985-87, New Mexico from 1987-91 and Utah from 1992-97. In October 1988, a court-appointed prison monitor accused New Mexico state prison officials of erasing a portion of a videotape of a prison disturbance to cover up acts of brutality. McCotter accused the prison monitor of "fabricating atrocities," and said he believed the tape erasure was accidental. He resigned from his Utah post in 1997, two months after a mentally ill inmate died after spending 16 hours strapped to a restraining chair. After that incident, McCotter went to work for a Utah-based private prison company, Management & Training Corp., before being tapped by Ashcroft to help oversee the rebuilding of the Iraqi prison system. McCotter said he had nothing to do with the training of the soldiers as officers. "At no time did I train or supervise any military personnel working in Iraqi prisons," he said. "There were never any inmates in the Abu Ghraib prison prior to my departure." |
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