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Children said among Abu Ghraib prisoners
(Agencies)
Updated: 2005-03-12 09:23 Children held by the U.S. Army at Iraq's Abu
Ghraib prison included one boy who appeared to be only about 8 years old, the
former commander of the prison told investigators, according to a transcript.
"He looked like he was eight years old. He told me he was almost 12," Brig.
Gen. Janis Karpinski told officials investigating prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib.
"He told me his brother was there with him, but he really wanted to see his
mother, could he please call his mother. He was crying."
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In this undated photo, a hooded Iraqi detainee
appears to be cuffed at the ankle and chained to a door handle. It also
appears he is is being made to balance on two boxes at the Abu Ghraib
Prison in Baghdad. [AP]
| Karpinski's
statement is among hundreds of pages of Army records about Abu Ghraib the
American Civil Liberties Union released Thursday. The ACLU got the documents
under a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit seeking records about abuse of
detainees in Iraq.
Karpinski did not say what happened to the boy in her interview with Maj.
Gen. George Fay. Military officials have previously acknowledged that some
juvenile prisoners had been held at Abu Ghraib, a massive prison built by Saddam
Hussein's government outside Baghdad.
The transcript released Thursday is the first government document indicating
that a child no older than 11 was held prisoner at Abu Ghraib.
Military officials have said that no juvenile prisoners were subject to the
abuses captured in photographs from Abu Ghraib. However, some of the men shown
being stripped naked and humiliated had been accused of raping a 14-year-old
prisoner.
The documents released Thursday offer rare details about the children the
U.S. military has held in Iraq. Karpinski said the Army began holding women and
children in a high-security cellblock at Abu Ghraib in the summer of 2003
because the facility was better than lockups in Baghdad where they had been
held.
The documents also include statements from six witnesses who said three
interrogators and a civilian interpreter at Abu Ghraib got drunk one night and
took a 17-year-old female prisoner from her cell. The four men forced the girl
to expose her breasts and kissed her, the reports said. The witnesses — whose
names were blacked out of the documents given to the ACLU — said those
responsible were not punished.
Another soldier said in January 2004, troops poured water and smeared mud on
the detained 17-year-old son of an Iraqi general and "broke" the general by
forcing him to watch his son shiver in the cold.
On another subject, Karpinski said she had seen written orders to hold a
prisoner that the CIA had captured without keeping records. The documents
released by the ACLU also quote an unnamed Army officer at Abu Ghraib as saying
military intelligence officers and the CIA worked out a written agreement on how
to handle unreported detainees. An Army report issued last September said
investigators could not find any copies of any such written agreement.
The Pentagon has acknowledged holding up to 100 "ghost detainees," keeping
the prisoners off the books and away from humanitarian investigators from the
International Committee of the Red Cross. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld
has defended the practice, saying he authorized it because the prisoners were
"enemy combatants" not entitled to prisoner of war protections.
The ACLU sued Rumsfeld earlier this month on behalf of four Iraqis and four
Afghans who say they were tortured at U.S. military facilities. Rumsfeld and his
spokesmen have repeatedly said that the defense secretary and his aides never
authorized or condoned any abuses.
Six enlisted soldiers have pleaded guilty to military charges for their roles
in abuses at Abu Ghraib, and Pvt. Charles Graner Jr. was convicted at a
court-martial earlier this year and sentenced to ten years in prison.
Karpinski — one of the few generals to be criticized in Army detainee reports
for poor leadership — quoted several senior generals in Iraq as making callous
statements about prisoners.
Karpinski said Maj. Gen. Walter Wodjakowski, then the No. 2 Army general in
Iraq, told her in the summer of 2003 not to release more prisoners, even if they
were innocent.
"I don't care if we're holding 15,000 innocent civilians. We're winning the
war," Karpinski said Wodjakowski told her. She said she replied: "Not inside the
wire, you're not, sir."
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