Report on Iraqi Prison Found ‘Systemic and Illegal Abuse’

The alleged abuse of Iraqi detainees by U.S. military police at a notorious prison near Baghdad was the result of “systemic” problems that included poorly trained, overextended guards who were encouraged to go outside their proper roles and wear down prisoners before questioning, a military investigation concluded.

Senior officers “failed to comply with established regulations, policies, and command directives in preventing detainee abuses,” Army Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba wrote in the investigative report completed in March. Taguba is deputy commander of coalition support forces.

Several soldiers “committed egregious acts and grave breaches of international law,” he concluded.

A copy of the 53-page report, which is labeled “Secret/No Foreign Dissemination,” first reported in the New Yorker, was obtained Sunday by The Times. The commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, requested the investigation by a ranking officer.

In his report, Taguba recommended disciplinary action against 10 service members, from a brigadier general to a platoon sergeant, and two civilian contractors who dealt with Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib. Separately, the report identified five service members and a civilian translator as possible criminal suspects. Investigators interviewed 48 participants in or witnesses to the events.

The report added some new details about the alleged mistreatment at the prison, which occurred between October and December of last year. For example, it found that female detainees as well as male prisoners were videotaped and photographed in the nude. And it found that male prisoners were forced to masturbate while being photographed or videotaped.

Perhaps more significantly, Taguba attempted to dissect the underlying factors leading to what he called “systemic and illegal abuse” including “numerous incidents of sadistic, blatant and wanton criminal abuses ... inflicted on several detainees.”

Taguba found that military intelligence interrogators, in apparent violation of Army regulations, “actively requested that ... guards set physical and mental conditions for the favorable interrogation of witnesses.”

These instructions were not relayed to the military police guards through their own chain of command, but through “lower levels.” One sergeant told investigators that military intelligence interrogators urged guards to “loosen this guy up for us” and “make sure he has a bad night.”

However, Taguba said Army regulations dictate that the role of guards should be confined to running a detention facility, not conducting or supporting interrogations. The report found no evidence that the military police soldiers had participated in questioning Iraqi prisoners.

Taguba faulted the commanders of both the military police unit and the intelligence unit for failing to ensure adherence to basic international and U.S. military standards for the treatment of captives.

Taguba’s report appeared to undermine an early round of explanations by U.S. officials that the abuses were the isolated acts of a small number of low-ranking soldiers.

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Richard B. Myers, said Sunday that top Pentagon officials had responded to the allegations by ordering a review of conditions and procedures at military detention centers throughout the region.

“We’ve all pushed this to make sure we don’t have a systemic problem,” Myers said on “Fox News Sunday.” “I’ll have to see the reports, see if these are isolated cases.”

Dan Senor, spokesman for the occupation authority in Iraq, said there would be severe consequences for wrongdoers.

“Careers are going to be ended,” he told CNN. “Criminal charges are going to be leveled. But let’s not express frustration with the entire military in the process.”

Disclosure of the alleged abuses has prompted an international furor and damaged the credibility of the U.S. occupation at a dangerous juncture in Iraq. The U.S. is holding to its commitment to return sovereignty to Iraq by June 30, even as insurgents have escalated attacks.

Photographs, first broadcast by CBS’ “60 Minutes II,” show U.S. soldiers smiling next to naked Iraqi prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison, images that have inflamed passions across the Arab world. Abu Ghraib was once used for torture by the regime of deposed dictator Saddam Hussein.

Some senior Democratic lawmakers expressed frustration with the military’s response.

“I don’t get the sense that they understand what an incredible sense of urgency there is to get this straight,” said Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware. “Names, places, times.”

Amnesty International, the human rights group, has called for an independent inquiry.

The report recommended that Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, commander of the Army Reserve’s 800th Military Police Brigade, be disciplined for failing to ensure that guards under her command clearly defined procedures and followed them. It listed 10 other alleged deficiencies in her command. Karpinski has already received a written “admonishment” from Gen. Sanchez.

The worst abuses allegedly were carried out by the 372nd Military Police Company, attached to the 800th.

The report also called for disciplinary action against Col. Thomas M. Pappas, commander of the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade, for not ensuring that his subordinates followed the Geneva Convention on the treatment of enemy prisoners, and other alleged command failures.

Karpinski, who is back from Iraq, said in an interview Sunday evening on ABC News that when she first saw the photos of prisoners being mistreated, “I really had to take a couple of seconds, because I thought that I might really get sick from it.”

She told the Washington Post that she learned of the incidents months after they occurred. She said the prison unit where the alleged abuses took place was under the control of intelligence officers. A message on Karpinski’s answering machine referred calls to her lawyer, who did not respond to requests for comment Sunday.

Taguba reported that he had interviewed Karpinski for more than four hours. She “was extremely emotional during much of her testimony,” he wrote. “What I found particularly disturbing ... was her complete unwillingness to either understand or accept that many of the problems ... were caused or exacerbated by poor leadership and the refusal of her command to both establish and enforce basic standards and principles.”

Pappas, the career military officer in charge of intelligence, could not be reached late Sunday.

The investigative report painted a picture of a prison complex in disarray -- overcrowded, understaffed and run by officers who failed to enforce standard procedures and did not receive adequate training.

Abu Ghraib and other facilities were “significantly over their intended maximum capacity while the guard force [was] undermanned and under-resourced,” the report said, problems that contributed to “poor living conditions, escapes and accountability lapses.”

Army guidelines call for a battalion of guards to handle about 4,000 prisoners. At times, Abu Ghraib had from 6,000 to 7,000 under the supervision of one battalion, the 320th Military Police Battalion. Investigators found 27 instances of escapes or attempted escapes at facilities under the supervision of the 800th, and concluded that several more breakouts went unreported.

Many of the MPs were expecting to go home in 2003. But when the 800th was given the mission of managing the Iraqi prison system, those hopes evaporated and morale plunged, the report said.

Taguba found that superior officers held conflicting views of what the guards’ role should be.

In late August and early September, 2003, a team from the U.S. detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, visited Iraq to see whether it could help U.S. forces there obtain better information from detainees. That team was overseen by Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller, commander at Guantanamo.

Among its recommendations were that military police guards act as “an enabler for interrogation,” Taguba’s report found. But Taguba questioned whether Iraqi detainees should be treated similarly to Al Qaeda suspects in Guantanamo.

“There is a strong argument that the intelligence value of detainees held at [Guantanamo] is different than that of the detainees/internees held at Abu Ghraib and other detention facilities in Iraq,” he wrote.

Taguba seconded the views of another general who had reviewed the situation at U.S.-run detention facilities in Iraq. Maj. Gen. Donald J. Ryder recommended in November 2003 that military police not play even a supporting role in the interrogation of detainees.

“Military police, though adept at passive collection of intelligence within a facility, should not participate in military intelligence supervised interrogation sessions,” Taguba wrote. “Moreover, military police should not be involved with setting ‘favorable conditions’ for subsequent interviews. These actions ... clearly run counter to the smooth operation of a detention facility.”

It is unclear from the report whether the issue of the role of the military police was ever resolved at senior levels. A Nov. 19 order gave the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade, headed by Pappas, chief responsibility for Abu Ghraib. Taguba’s report noted that the worst abuses had already occurred by then.

The ambiguous relationship between military intelligence and military police may have exacerbated the raw reality of life at Abu Ghraib. Taguba brought in Dr. Henry Nelson, a psychiatrist and Air Force colonel, to help him try to understand what happened.

“He determined that the horrific abuses suffered by the detainees at Abu Ghraib were wanton acts of select soldiers in an unsupervised and dangerous setting,” Taguba wrote. “There was a complex interplay of many psychological factors and command insufficiencies.”

In the report, Taguba also noted that “many individual soldiers” and some units in the 800th had “persevered in extremely poor conditions” and upheld “Army values.”

For instance, he commended a Navy dog handler who “knew his duties and refused to participate in improper interrogations despite significant pressure from military intelligence personnel at Abu Ghraib” and two Army military policemen who he said blew the whistle on abuses.

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McDonnell reported from Baghdad. Alonso-Zaldivar and Anderson reported from Washington.