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Baghdad - The commander of the US military prison in Iraq which held former dictator Saddam Hussein has been detained by military police and is under investigation, a military spokesperson said on Thursday. Lieutenant Colonel William Steele will face a hearing before a panel of officers to decide whether he should face a court martial, Lieutenant Colonel Josslyn Aberle told AFP in Baghdad, without specifying the charges. "He has been detained and is now in Kuwait. His current status is that he is in confinement and waiting for his Article 32 hearing. All other details will be released soon, including...

WASHINGTON - The 82nd Airborne Division is sending about 700 soldiers to Iraq to provide extra security for detainees, whose numbers have doubled over the past year, officials said Wednesday. The 1st battalion, 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment, based at Fort Bragg, N.C., has begun preparing to deploy over the next two months. It will be the battalion's second tour in Iraq; the first was from September 2003 to April 2004. Before that the battalion was in Afghanistan from July 2002 to January 2003. An announcement at Fort Bragg on Monday gave no information about the battalion's new mission in Iraq,...

Former Iraqi deputy prime minister Tariq Aziz is unwilling to testify against Saddam Hussein at a future war crimes trial, his lawyer told Agence France-Presse after a four-hour meeting with his client on Thursday at a US base near the capital. "Tariq Aziz told me that he will not take the witness stand against Saddam," said Badi Aref Izzat. The lawyer said that Aziz, who has been in US custody since his surrender in the immediate aftermath of last year's US-led invasion, had had no opportunity to see the ousted president. The 11 senior aides currently in custody were being...

May 15, 2004 Earlier Jail Seen as Incubator for Abuses in IraqBy DOUGLAS JEHL ASHINGTON, May 14 — An American-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...

Now here's a story to shame us all. It's about America's shameful prison camps in Iraq. It's about the beating of prisoners during interrogation. "Sources" may be a dubious word in journalism right now, but the sources for the beatings in Iraq are impeccable and any US military intelligence officers who want to call me a liar can explain how three of their prisoners in the Bagram camp in Afghanistan were murdered during interrogation. This story is also about the gunning down of three prisoners in Baghdad, two of them "while trying to escape". But most of all, it's about...