IRAQ: A secret US army report reveals that abuse of Iraqi prisoners by American military personnel was systematic, widespread and encouraged by military intelligence.
Between October and December of 2003 there were numerous instances of "sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses" at Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad, according to the report written by Maj Gen Antonio Taguba.
And in a deepening international embarrassment for the US, the general suspended over the scandal went public yesterday to claim that reservists charged with abuse acted at the behest of military intelligence officers to prepare inmates for interrogation.
Brig Gen Janis Karpinski, who was in charge of US-run prisons in Iraq, said that the high-security cellblock at Abu Gharib was under the direct control of army intelligence officers, not the reservists who staffed the prison.
Her allegations are substantiated in the devastating 53-page classified report written on orders from Lieut Gen Ricardo Sanchez, the senior US commander in Iraq, after photographs of abuse were provided by a soldier.
The report claims that intelligence services urged reservists at the prison "to set physical and mental conditions for favourable interrogation of witnesses," according to extracts published in today's New Yorker.
These included: "the pouring of phosphoric liquid on detainees; the beating of detainees with broom handles and a chair; the threatening of male detainees with rape; allowing a military police guard to stitch the wound of a detainee who was injured after being slammed against the wall in his cell, and the sodomising of a detainee with a chemical light and perhaps a broomstick."
In Washington, Gen Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said yesterday that he had not read the report, though it was prepared in February and it has been widely known for two days that the New Yorker had a copy.
"There is no evidence of systematic abuse at all," said Gen Myers.
Torture was not permitted by international law "and we don't use it", he claimed.
Brig Gen Karpinski, who has returned to her civilian life in South Carolina as a business consultant, told the New York Times yesterday that she knew nothing about the abuse and was "sickened" by the photographs.
She accused professional military commanders of trying to shift the blame to reservists, six of whom face court martial, and away from intelligence officers.
"We're disposable," she said. "Why would they want the active-duty people to take the blame?" They wanted to blame the reserves and hope it would go away, but "it's not going to go away." Brig Gen Karpinski said that the abuses took place in Cellblock 1A, which was ruled off-limits to her and her reserve soldiers by intelligence and CIA officers who conducted the interrogations.
Maj Gen Taguba singled out members of the intelligence services, civilian contractors and soldiers of the 372nd Military Police Company as responsible for the abuses, according to to investigative reporter Seymour Hersh, who obtained the report.
Hersh said that one of the accused, Staff Sgt Ivan Frederick, testified that CIA and other intelligence officers so "stressed out" one prisoner that he died.
His body was packed in ice and wheeled out of the prison on a trolley with an intravenous drip to make it look he was going to hospital, then dumped away from the prison.
In other cases, Sgt Frederick said inmates were left naked in their cells for up to three days "with little or no clothes, no toilet or running water, no ventilation or window".
Brig Gen Karpinski says the scandal was just waiting to happen. "The entire detainee system is broken," she said.
Amnesty International reported last July that former detainees in Iraq said they suffered beatings, prolonged sleep deprivation or deafening noise while in US custody.
Pictures showing naked Iraqi prisoners forced to simulate sexual acts on each other have outraged the Muslim world and deeply shocked Americans.
On Friday after the pictures of abuse were broadcast on CBS, President Bush expressed outrage, saying, "That's not the way we do things in America. I didn't like it one bit."