Monday, May 17, 2004

The New York Times > International > Middle East > Prisoners: Some Iraqis Held Outside Control of Top General:
"About 100 high-ranking Iraqi prisoners held for months at a time in spartan conditions on the outskirts of Baghdad International Airport are being detained under a special chain of command, under conditions not subject to approval by the top American commander in Iraq, according to military officials."

The unusual lines of authority in the detainees' handling are part of a tangled network of authority over prisoners in Iraq, in which the military police, military intelligence, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency, various military commanders and the Pentagon itself have all played a role. Congressional investigators who are looking into the scandal over the abuse of Iraqi prisoners say those arrangements have made it difficult to determine where the final authority lies.

At least as of February, many of the 100 or so prisoners categorized by American officials as "high value detainees" because of the special intelligence they are believed to possess, had been held since June 2003 for nearly 23 hours a day in strict solitary confinement in small concrete cells without sunlight, according to a report by the International Committee of the Red Cross.

While not tantamount to the sexual humiliation and other abuses inflicted on Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib prison, the conditions have been described by the Red Cross as a violation of the Geneva Conventions, the international treaty that the Bush administration has said it regards as "fully applicable" to all prisoners held by the United States in Iraq.

Under arrangements in effect since October, military officials said at a Pentagon briefing on Friday, explicit authorization from the American commander, Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, has been required in each of about 25 cases in which prisoners have been subjected to isolation for longer than 30 days. But on Sunday, a senior military officer said that statement did not apply to the prisoners being held at the airport, because "we were not the authority" for the high-value detainees.

The officer referred questions about the high-value Iraqi prisoners to the United States Central Command, in Tampa, Fla., where a spokesman said he could not answer them on Sunday.

Defense Department officials said the principal responsibility for the high-value prisoners and their treatment belonged to the Iraq Survey Group, which is headed by Maj. Gen. Keith Dayton of the Defense Intelligence Agency.

The 1,400-person Iraq Survey Group was formed last June, principally to take charge of the hunt for Iraq's illicit weapons, although its mandate has also included gathering information about Iraqi war crimes. The survey group falls under the overall authority of the Central Intelligence Agency, under George J. Tenet, for matters related to the illicit weapons hunt. But on other matters it reports to the Central Command, under Gen. John P. Abizaid.

The so-called high-value Iraqi detainees said by military officials to be held at Camp Cropper on the airport's outskirts do not include Saddam Hussein, who was not captured until December and is being held by the Federal Bureau of Investigation elsewhere in Iraq, American government officials have said. These officials say Mr. Hussein has also been held in isolation.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/17/international/middleeast/17ABUS.html?pagewanted=all&position=

2 comments:

  1. Isn't it interesting,that "high value" detainees, with intelligence value, aren't subject to Abu Ghraib style abuse and Saddam Hussein gets the best treatment of all.

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  2. A lot has been made of how much better "our" abuse in Iraq is, as opposed to conditions under Saddam Hussein.

    The Red Cross has estimated that between seventy and ninety percent of detainees at Abu Ghraib are innocent, guilty of running into nervous americans at the wrong time.

    Isn't it odd that we are treating Saddam Hussein better than anyone else.

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