4 Navy SEALs Charged With Iraq Inmate Abuse

Four Navy SEALs have been charged with abusing prisoners in Iraq, including one inmate who was beaten and later died at Abu Ghraib prison in November, the Navy said Friday.

The statement did not identify the four sailors who have been charged. They are members of SEAL Team 7, a Coronado, Calif.-based counter-terrorism unit that has operated in Iraq with CIA officers.

The charges are assault, aggravated assault, mistreatment of detainees, failure to report mistreatment of detainees and soliciting others to commit an offense. The Navy did not say how many cases were filed against each SEAL. Nor did it say how many instances of detainee abuse were involved, although it referred to the death of Manadel Jamadi, who was captured Nov. 4 by a SEAL team.

Jamadi was thought to have been connected with an attack on a facility of the International Committee of the Red Cross. In detaining Jamadi, a SEAL subdued him by hitting him on the head with the butt of a gun, according to an August report by the Army.

Two CIA officers brought Jamadi to Abu Ghraib and put him in a shower room with a sandbag over his head. He was dead 45 minutes later. An autopsy determined that he died of a blood clot in his head that was probably the result of being struck with the firearm.

The day after Jamadi died, U.S. personnel sneaked the body out of the prison on a stretcher, disguised so Jamadi would appear to other inmates to have been sick, the Army report said.