 The
Geneva Convention matters because there can be no
double standards. Some of what we've heard about
here is not just softening up, it's torture. And in
future, the same methods could be used against our
troops 
[images added by this
website]Sunday, May 16, 2004 The road to
'Camp Redemption' THE
mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners was the result
of a fundamental shift in interrogation policy
but at whose instigation? Julian Coman in
Washington and Philip Sherwell in Baghdad
reveal how - and why - aggressive techniques
from Guantanamo Bay were adopted in Abu Ghraib
IN the front lobby of CACI
International, the Virginia firm that provided US
military forces with contract interrogators for the
notorious Abu Ghraib prison, a flag from the days
of the American rebellion against British rule is
furled discreetly in a corner. Beneath an image of a defiant rattlesnake is an
old anti-colonial slogan that, after the
revelations of the past fortnight, strikes an
unhappy note: "Don't Tread on Me." As the world now knows, "high-security" Iraqi
prisoners in cell blocks 1A and 1B of Abu Ghraib
suffered far worse abuse than being trodden upon,
much of it allegedly at the instigation of at least
one CACI employee. A military
investigation has reported that Stefan
Stefanowicz, one of 20,000 civilian contractors
in Iraq, was instrumental in the mistreatment of
prisoners at the Baghdad prison, which also
involved military police and allegedly military
intelligence officials. But confusion still reigns over what actually
happened in the cell blocks last autumn.  US
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld talks
to Gen. Ricardo Sanchez,
Commander of the coalition forces in Iraq during
his flight
on a C-130 plane from Kuwait City to Baghdad, Iraq,
May 13 CACI refuses to comment on the case. Several of
the seven military policemen and women facing court
martial for prisoner abuse are blaming their
immediate superiors. In Baghdad last Thursday, the
beleaguered US Secretary of Defence, Donald
Rumsfeld, presented the scandal as an isolated,
shameful case involving a handful of military
police. The International
Red Cross, however, has complained for months
about widespread abuse of Iraqi prisoners. To get to the bottom of the Abu Ghraib scandal,
said a Pentagon adviser, it is necessary to go back
to the visit to Iraq of Major General Geoffrey
Miller last autumn. "The foundations were laid back then," said the
adviser. "And they were laid by the most senior
civilians at the Department of Defence." Gen Miller is a straight-talking Texan who
shares the no-nonsense management style of his
boss, Mr Rumsfeld. When he arrived at Abu Ghraib
last September, he had an urgent brief that had
come from the very top of the Pentagon. The Abu Ghraib prison, 20 miles west of Baghdad,
is based in the heart of the viscerally
anti-American Sunni Triangle. Behind high brick
walls, razor wire and sandbags, nearly 4,000
inmates languished in searing heat. Gen Miller
believed that they had secrets to share.  American
soldiers were dying in growing numbers at the hands
of a ferocious Iraqi insurgency, the organisers of
which were proving elusive.
The UN had moved out after the bombing of its
headquarters in Baghdad. No weapons of mass
destruction had been found and Saddam,
months after the end of major combat, had not been
found either. As the situation deteriorated, Mr
Rumsfeld and senior aides decided to act. Gen
Miller, according to the January 13 report
on prison abuse filed by General Antonio
Taguba, left, was given the task of "reviewing
Iraqi Theatre ability to rapidly exploit detainees
for actionable intelligence". He was to ensure that
the prisoners at Abu Ghraib began to talk. He also
had a useful precedent in mind. Previously, the general had been the commandant
at the Guantanamo Bay camp, where more than 600
suspected al-Qaeda sympathisers, captured in
Afghanistan, have been held for two years. The detainees, classed by the Bush
administration as "enemy combatants", are deemed to
fall outside the Geneva
Conventions on the treatment of prisoners of
war. Conditions for inmates are harsh, often
involving hooding and prolonged isolation. Access
to lawyers is denied. Detention for many is
apparently indefinite. The camp represented a historic shift in
Pentagon policy on interrogation and detention
after the attacks of September 11.  According
to Cofer Black, right, now the head
of counter-terrorism at the US State Department,
"after 9/11 the gloves came off". Guantanamo was
largely supported by the majority of Americans, for
whom the fine print of the Geneva Convention was
less relevant than the whereabouts of Osama bin
Laden.
Intelligence-gathering, using techniques many
lawyers judged illegal, such as the placing of
detainees in painful postures for lengthy periods,
was judged permissible in the war against
al-Qaeda. "There was a clear mood-swing after 9/11," said
Charles Smith, who has lectured on Arabic
states at the US army intelligence centre in Fort
Huachuca in Arizona. "The attitude that rules can
be bent, that the end justifies the means, became
prevalent." Iraq is not the only country where rules were
bent. Evidence is emerging that the US military may
have abused prisoners in Afghanistan. Yesterday US spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel
Tucker Mansager said allegations of
mistreatment had been made on Thursday and an
investigation has been launched. It is the second
such investigation in Afghanistan.  Brigadier
General Janis Karpinski, left, who
ran the prison at the time of Gen Miller's visit,
says that Gen Miller told her he intended to
"Gitmo-ize" Abu Ghraib, turning it into a hub of
interrogation.
Gen Miller ordered that control of prisoners be
handed over to military intelligence officers,
aided by contract interrogators such as
Stefanowicz. Low-level military police "grunts"
were to be encouraged to "loosen up" prisoners
before interrogation. Brig Gen Karpinski said that the jail was not
hers to hand over, since it was formally under the
control of the Coalition Provisional Authority.
After clearing the room of observers, Gen Miller
was forthright in his response. "I don't care.
Rick Sanchez [General Ricardo Sanchez,
the commander of US troops in Iraq] said I
could have whatever I want. Look, we can do this my
way or we can do it the hard way." Meanwhile, back in Washington, shouting matches
were taking place within the heart of the Pentagon
itself. Gen Miller's mission had the blessing of
the top civilians at the Pentagon,  Mr
Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz,
right. But within the ranks of military lawyers
employed to give legal advice on army matters,
there was near despair. According to a second
Pentagon adviser: "There was a chasm the size of
the Grand Canyon on this between the civilian
political appointees and the military." The Sunday Telegraph has learned that
eight Pentagon lawyers, in secret, had travelled
from Washington to speak with the head of the New
York Bar Association's committee on international
law, Scott Horton. In the words of Mr Horton, the lawyers were
"apoplectic" at the growing disregard among top
Pentagon civilians for the Geneva Convention. "They made it clear that there was a real push
going on," Mr Horton said. "All the way down from
the top, there was pressure from the civilians at
the Pentagon to open up the range of what was
permissible in intelligence-gathering. They wanted
a much more aggressive approach."  Top
Pentagon civilians, including Doug Feith,
the hardline under-secretary of defence for policy,
approached the military lawyers with drafts of new
"rules of engagement" for interrogations in Iraq,
including the use of military dogs, prolonged
isolation and "stress positions".
The lawyers argued that the tougher methods
violated the Geneva Convention. "After they said
that, they told me that they were just cut out of
the whole process," said Mr Horton. The New York delegation was also incredulous at
proposals to augment the role of civilian
contractors in interrogation and detention
procedures. "They were incandescent," said Mr Horton. "They
said there was 'no legitimate purpose' served by
employing the contractors, but their presence
created a legal ambiguity. If they committed a
crime, who were they accountable to? The relationship with the army was only
contractual. The punishment from civilian
contractors would probably be severance of
contract. The possibility of effective impunity was
being created." 
BY the time Gen Miller arrived at Abu Ghraib, the
dissenters in the Pentagon were no longer being
listened to. Instead, civilian lawyers at the
Department of Defence had approved the new approach
to Iraqi prisoners, which was finalised in a
document entitled "interrogation rules of
engagement", distributed last autumn.
Last week, Mr Rumsfeld told a Senate committee
that all the interrogation techniques permitted in
Iraq had been legally vetted and approved. "That's
just manure," said Mr Horton. "The military lawyers
I spoke to were by-passed." In September, as Gen
Miller landed in Baghdad, CACI was handed a new
contract for interrogation work. By the
beginning of October, Mr Stefanowicz, after a
spell as a military reservist, was also leaving
for Iraq and Abu Ghraib as a CACI employee. The
first batch of the photographs that have
outraged the world were taken on October
3. According to Malcolm Nance, a former US
Navy intelligence officer who taught resistance to
interrogation skills to special forces troops and
now runs a counter-terrorism consultancy in
Baghdad, the new climate was an invitation to
abuse. And the rot had set in from the top of the
military hierarchy. "This came down from the leadership after 9/11,"
he said. "They gave the message that the Geneva
Convention was flexible and that our troops are
here because of 9/11. These kids think they are
hunting down al-Qaeda." Most inmates of Abu Ghraib are small-time
criminals. According to the Red Cross, between 70
and 90 per cent of inmates in a recent survey are
innocent of any charges -- a figure hotly disputed
by the Coalition Provisional Authority.  Last
week, it was somewhat surprisingly announced that
Gen Miller would take charge of the reform of Abu
Ghraib. On Friday, 293 detainees were released, as
part of an accelerated processing period announced
after the scandal broke. A further 500 are to be
freed on May 21, reducing inmates to Gen Miller's
new target of 3,000.
Another of Gen Miller's opening moves was to
announce that a section of Abu Ghraib was now to be
called Camp Redemption, as guards and inmates
attempt to put the past behind them. For Mr Nance, it may be too late. "I love my
country and the US military and it pains me to see
it dishonoured like this. I didn't spend 20 years
of my life fighting to defend American values just
to see those values thrown out like this," he
said. "The Geneva Convention matters because there can
be no double standards. Some of what we've heard
about here is not just softening up, it's torture.
And in future, the same methods could be used
against our troops."  Copyright of
Telegraph Group Limited 2004
Lawyer for One
Guard Claims Picture Shows His Client Taking Orders
From Others - Will Generals Take the Stand?
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