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WASHINGTON - Under a barrage of international and domestic criticism, the top U.S. commander in Iraq has barred virtually all coercive interrogation practices, like forcing prisoners to crouch for long periods or depriving them of sleep, the Pentagon said Friday.
Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez will still consider requests to use less severe techniques like holding prisoners in isolation for more than 30 days, a senior Central Command official told reporters Friday. The general has approved 25 such requests since last October, the official said. But the official said that Sanchez would deny requests to use harsher methods.
Fourth soldier to be court-martialedBAGHDAD - A fourth U.S. soldier is to be court-martialed in connection with the abuse of Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib prison.
Cpl. Charles Graner Jr., 35, of Uniontown, Pa., is charged with seven offenses, including dereliction of duty, failing to protect detainees from abuse and cruelty, committing an indecent act, obstruction of justice and assault. The Army also has charged Graner with adultery because of his involvement with a guard charged in connection with the abuse.
Graner was charged after other soldiers identified him as a leader of the abuse, which was photographed one night in November but might have gone on for weeks or months inside the prison wing that housed detainees whom the U.S. military regarded as "high value."
As a civilian, Graner was a corrections officer, most recently at State Correctional Institution Greene, a Pennsylvania maximum-security prison. He was fired from that job for reasons that remain unclear.
Reports say abuse began at detention campWASHINGTON - A U.S.-run detention center outside Baghdad known as Camp Cropper was reportedly the site of numerous abuses of Iraqi prisoners several months before the mistreatment of prisoners unfolded last fall at Abu Ghraib prison, according to documents and interviews.
The detention facility, on the outskirts of Baghdad International Airport, appears to have served as an incubator for the acts of humiliation that were inflicted months later on Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib. At both sites, the mistreatment has been linked to interrogations overseen by the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade.
The alleged abuses at Camp Cropper during last May and June were severe enough to have prompted formal complaints to U.S. commanders from visiting officials of the International Committee for the Red Cross. After several visits to Camp Cropper, where they interviewed Iraqi prisoners, officials of the ICRC in early July 2003 cited at least 50 incidents of abuse reported to have taken place in a part of the prison under the control of military interrogators.
It remains unclear whether any disciplinary action was taken at the time against members of the 205th Brigade.
Newspaper apologizes for running fake photosLONDON - The Daily Mirror apologized Friday for publishing fake photographs of alleged abuse of Iraqi prisoners by British forces, and the editor, Piers Morgan, stepped down.
The move by the newspaper and its owners, Trinity Mirror PLC, came hours after commanders of the Queen's Lancashire Regiment bitterly denounced the pictures and said they had proof the photos - said to be taken in Iraq - had been staged in Britain.