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| Officials accuse each other in prison scandal |
| By L.A. Times |
| Published: 07/19/2004 |
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A top military police officer and the commander of military interrogators at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq are blaming each other for improper treatment of prisoners who were stripped, abused and sexually humiliated. Capt. Donald J. Reese, commander of the 372nd Military Police Company, told authorities that he was repeatedly assured by military interrogators that stripping Iraqis of their clothes was an approved tactic they used to "make the detainees uncomfortable." But Col. Thomas M. Pappas of the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade told authorities that stripping detainees was "inappropriate" and that he had personally ordered prison officers supervised by Reese to "have the detainees put their clothes back on." The sworn statements by the two officers, taken separately this year during an Army investigation by Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba, were posted last week on the U.S. News & World Report website. Scenes of nudity, captured in photographs, are at the heart of the widening inquiry into whether military police guarding the prison - seven of whom have been criminally charged - were solely to blame for the abuses or if military intelligence officials, who conducted interrogations of prisoners, were also culpable. An Army decision, expected as early as next month, will determine whether others should be charged and whether more senior officers should be investigated. Reese also portrayed Cpl. Charles A. Graner Jr., one of the military police facing court-martial, whom fellow soldiers have called the ringleader of the officers, as someone who should never have been put in charge of Tier 1A at Abu Ghraib because of his questionable record as a prison officer in Pennsylvania. Reese said Graner "constantly challenges orders and requests from the leadership." After the abuse allegations surfaced, Reese said, he was told that Graner had a "long history" as an abusive officer in civilian life with "an extensive file, rather thick." Had he known that, Reese said, Graner "wouldn't even be in my company.... I wouldn't have put him on a night shift in charge of a wing." Reese said he felt betrayed by Graner and Staff Sgt. Ivan L. "Chip" Frederick II, another officer who once worked in a civilian prison and is also charged in the Abu Ghraib case. "They were specifically put there for that reason," he said. "I trusted them and I was relying on their knowledge and their experience to do the job." Reese and Pappas both have been officially reprimanded for not properly supervising their subordinates at the prison near Baghdad. |
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