Witnesses in the trial of a US soldier jailed for eight years for abusing prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq have told the court the CIA sometimes directed abuse and orders were received from military command to toughen interrogations.
Testifying in the court martial of Staff Sergeant Ivan Frederick, Captain Donald Reese, a military police commander at Abu Ghraib, said the CIA was involved in abusing detainees.
US Staff Sergeant Ivan Frederick (38) was sentenced to eight years in prison for sexually and physically abusing detainees at the Abu Ghraib. Judge Colonel James Pohl also sentenced Frederick to a reduction in rank to private, to forfeit pay and a dishonourable discharge from the army.
During the court martial Captain Donald Reese said US civilian "OGA" officials - an acronym meaning Other Government Agency reserved for the CIA - interrogated Iraqi inmates at night, when supervision at the prison was low.
One inmate, who CIA interrogators were depriving of sleep, was suffering from "panic attacks", he said.
"They [CIA] came in at any time of day. They came in through the back door and put (prisoners) in one of the cells. We were told by OGA that they'd be back for them again later," Cpt Reese said via video from the United States on Wednesday.
Sgt Frederick's trial, began on Wednesday at a camp on the outskirts of Baghdad, He pleaded guilty to the five charges against him.
Taking the stand after Cpt Reese, Chief Warrant Officer Kevin Kramer, a military intelligence soldier, said he had received an e-mail in August, before much of the abuse is believed to have occurred, demanding that interrogations be "toughened up".
"We were told we weren't getting the intelligence they expected. Therefore we must not be conducting enough interrogations to get the intelligence," Mr Kramer told the court.
Mr Kramer said the e-mail, read out in court and admitted as evidence, had come from a captain in the US-led command headquarters in Baghdad, and told him and others in similar positions to get interrogators to "take off the gloves".
The evidence from the two soldiers is among the strongest so far in the Abu Ghraib trials pointing to more senior involvement in the abuse and direct orders from above to "soften up" detainees.
Previously, the Pentagon has claimed that the sexual and physical abuse that took place at the prison was the work of a few "bad apples" acting on their own initiative.