Posted on 05/17/2004 10:36:01 PM PDT by Anti-Bubba182
WASHINGTON — When CIA officers brought the Iraqi detainee to Abu Ghraib prison, his head was covered with an empty sandbag and Army guards were ordered to take him directly to a shower room that served as a makeshift interrogation center at the overcrowded, shell-damaged facility outside Baghdad.
An hour later, in the midst of intensive questioning by military intelligence officials, the prisoner collapsed and died. Only then did interrogators remove the hood to reveal severe head wounds that had never been treated....< SNIP>
Separately, a key defendant in the scandal said in a sworn statement to Army investigators that mistreatment of prisoners was known and condoned throughout Abu Ghraib and no one ordered a halt to the abuses - or to photographing humiliated inmates.
"Everyone in the company from the commander down'' knew what was going on, said Pfc. Lynndie England, the Army soldier seen laughing, smoking and flashing the thumbs-up in front of naked male Iraqis. "The pictures were shown to anyone who wanted to see them. Cpl. (Charles) Graner told me he showed them to his platoon sergeant and platoon leader.''
England said guards forced detainees to crawl on their hands and knees on broken glass, threw a nerf football at handcuffed prisoners and forced male detainees to wear women's sanitary "maxi pads.''....
She also said Graner, her lover with whom she is now pregnant, applied needle and thread to prisoners after beating them.
"Cpl. Graner would personally stitch up detainees if the wound weren't too bad,'' she said. "He would take pictures of his work. One particular incident Cpl. Graner ran a former Iraqi general into a wall and split his lip. Cpl. Graner stitched up his lip.''
England, interviewed at Ft. Bragg, N.C., on May 5, said she did not believe the guards went too far in punishing detainees, and said that much of what happened at the prison's notorious Tier 1A was done in sport.
"We thought it looked funny so pictures were taken,'' she said. It was "basically us fooling around.''......." < SNIP >
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
It looks less and less likely MI ordered this. This is a bunch of Sadists entertaining themselves.
"threw a nerf football at handcuffed prisoners and forced male detainees to wear women's sanitary'maxi pads.'"
The horror. The horror.
I imagine her boyfriend's lawyer did too.
Former guard has a history of complaints
"..inmates at the state prison complained that Graner mistreated them, but none of the charges was upheld in the prison grievance process or in federal court. Still, former death-row inmate Nicholas Yarris maintains that Graner abused his authority.
"Most guards are good people trying to make a living, but Charles took absolute glee in exercising power over inmates," says Yarris, who, after spending 22 years in prison on a murder conviction, was released in January after DNA evidence exonerated him.
Yarris says Graner spat in inmates' food, taunted Muslims about not eating pork, cracked jokes about homosexuals during strip searches and relished withholding privileges such as exercise.
"He was one of a handful of guards who took joy in making it hard on inmates," Yarris says. He says he never saw Graner beat an inmate, but "I did see him and other guards take people into a room, and when the (inmate) came out he'd had his ass whupped."
Prison spokeswoman Sharon D'Eletto says Yarris filed seven grievances during his time at the prison, but none involved Graner beating inmates. Privacy rules prohibit the prison from disclosing how many times inmates accused Graner of abuse. But two grievances led to lawsuits in federal court in Pittsburgh that alleged physical abuse.
In one suit, an inmate accused Graner and other guards of putting a razor blade in his food in retaliation for the inmate testifying against guards in another abuse case. The inmate, who is black, claimed that after he had received a medical exam and while he was handcuffed, Graner lifted him off his feet, slammed his head on the floor and shouted racial slurs at him.
An internal investigation at the prison cleared Graner and other guards, the inmate's lawsuit said. The suit, filed in 1999, was dismissed in 2001 because the inmate did not pursue the case after his release from prison on a burglary charge.
The other lawsuit, filed against 14 prison employees, includes one allegation against Graner: that he forced a handcuffed inmate to the floor during a search. An internal prison investigation cleared Graner. The suit, filed in 2000, was dismissed in 2002.
The fact that Graner had two lawsuits "definitely stands out," says Jere Krakoff, a prisoner-rights lawyer in Pittsburgh. "I'd say very few, if any, guards at (the Waynesburg prison) have had two federal suits filed against them.".."
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