WAR CRIMES

Those acts that violate the international laws, treaties, customs, and practices governing military conflict between belligerent states or parties.

Iraq Prisoner Abuse Scandal Inquiries and Trials

In a year marred by an overabundance of bad news for the U.S. in the Iraq conflict, perhaps no story has touched nerves and angered more people than the continuing revelations and trials connected with the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal. In addition to the obvious questions about who was responsible and why this conduct was allowed to occur, the scandal and the resulting courts martial of involved soldiers raises issues of just how widespread the abuses have been and whether those higher in the chain of command knew about or even condoned them.

The scandal began in early 2004, when photos leaked to media sources were soon posted on web sites all over the world. The photos seemed to show abuse of Iraqi and other prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, which was under the control of the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade. These shocking pictures depicted mostly nude, hooded detainees subjected to inhumane cruelties and humiliations, including being depicted in mock sexual acts, being thrown into piles, being collared and leashed, being handcuffed to awkward positions, being threatened with attack dogs, and, apparently, being subject to beatings by smiling, joking military police and interrogation specialists.

In the midst of these revelations, the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee ordered an investigation on February 10, 2004. The report was completed and submitted by U.S. Army Inspector General Paul Mikolashek on July 22. It contains details on the deaths of 39 Iraqi detainees. On the same day, the Senate committee held hearings that outlined a total of 94 cases of suspected abuse. Two other high-profile probes were conducted: One was an internal probe centering on the activities of military-intelligence personnel and headed by Army General Paul J. Kern, and one was an independent panel review ordered by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and headed by former Secretary of Defense James R. Schlesinger. Both of these probes reported their results in late August. The Army probe cited 44 instances of abuse, including several instances of outright torture. The Schlesinger probe told of 300 suspected abuse cases, of which 155 had been completed, yielding 66 determinations of abuse in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Both the Army's probe and the Schlesinger probe determined that officials high in the chain of command were to blame for either contributing to the confusion about what constituted acceptable treatment of prisoners or for learning of alleged abused and failing either to report them or to try to stop them. The Schlesinger probe went so far as to place some blame on top Pentagon officials, including Donald Rumsfeld. As the Schlesinger report stated:

"The abuses were not just the failure of some individuals to follow known standards, and they are more than the failure of a few leaders to enforce proper discipline. There is both institutional and personal responsibility at higher levels."

However, neither probe indicated that abusive tactics and torture were part of a governmental "policy of abuse" or that top officials had encouraged them. The Army probe specified that "a small group of morally corrupt soldiers and civilians" had perpetrated the abuses. The Pentagon and the White House backed up this finding, claiming that the abuses were unfortunate but that they had been isolated incidents confined to the Abu Ghraib prison and that they were not indicative of U.S. policy or character. This assertion would soon be challenged by further findings, and by the soldiers brought to trial for the abuses.

Critics of the administration's policies also point out that the Schlesinger report details President Bush's approval of the concept that suspected terrorists detained in U.S. holding facilities would not be subject to all protections of the Geneva Convention. The report also details Rumsfeld's approval of using nudity, intimidation by dogs, stress positions, and isolation as used in the prison at Guantanamo Bay. This creative skirting of what constituted torture and "strengthened counter-interrogation techniques," critics claimed, might have led to an atmosphere that encouraged abuse.

In December 2004, thousands of pages of documents were released to a coalition of four groups, headed by the ACLU, which had sued to recover them under the Freedom of Information Act. The documents showed that the military had literally hundreds of cases of reported abuse on file in all theaters of operation, dating back to detentions at Guantanamo Bay starting soon after September 11, 2001. Amrit Singh, a lawyer for the ACLU, stated that the documents show that military abuse of prisoners was "widespread and systematic." Army spokesperson Colonel Joseph Curtin countered by pointing out that the documents detail probes and investigations designed to find the perpetrators of the abuses, thus proving that the military takes abuse seriously and has undertaken a concerted effort to stop such incidents.

In all, 23 soldiers and four civilian contractors were determined to have been the main culprits. Of those, many did not have cases brought against them because of a lack of hard evidence. Eventually, eight were charged. Of those, five pleaded guilty and were sentenced, and three have had their cases tried before a military court.

The two most high-profile cases have been those of Army Reserve Specialist Charles Graner and Private Lynndie England. One Syrian prisoner named Graner as the "chief torturer" at Abu Ghraib. Graner appeared in several of the infamous photos, including one in which he gives a "thumbs-up" sign over a seemingly dead prisoner. Private England will be forever remembered as the one holding the leash attached to a collar around a nude prisoner's neck. But the soldiers tried in this case have all told a consistent story: that their superior officers ordered them to abuse, and even to torture, prisoners. Graner, who pleaded not guilty, received a sentence of ten years in military prison out of a possible 15 for his role. Graner insisted that he had just been obeying orders. "We were called upon to violate the Geneva Convention," he said in testimony. "I didn't enjoy it. A lot of it was criminal." Graner's mother observed that "He committed a crime for obeying orders, and he would have committed a crime if he didn't obey orders." Specialist Megan Ambuhl, who received a dishonorable discharge but no jail time, testified that female soldiers had been ordered to sexually humiliate male prisoners and that civilian interrogators had told them to "break" others who were uncooperative.

England's case has taken a few unusual turns. England initially pleaded guilty to all the charges, including conspiracy to mistreat prisoners. However, it was not clear that she had believed, at the time when she had held the leash and performed other acts, that her actions were wrong, which is a necessary component of proving conspiracy. England did not work at the prison and was visiting Graner at the time the photos were taken. She testified that she had known that her actions were wrong but that she had held the leash because she had thought that Graner knew what he was doing. When Graner confirmed that he had ordered England to hold the leash, which contradicted her sworn statements, the judge, Colonel James Pohl, declared a mistrial. This is the only case in the abuse scandal still pending, and no new trial date has been set.