May 12 2004 at 09:48AM
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Washington - The United States general who was in charge of Iraqi prisons last year when detainees were abused at Abu Ghraib said she resisted handing control of the facility to military intelligence but was overruled by superiors, The Washington Post reported on Wednesday.
A detailed account given to Army investigators by Brigadier General Janis Karpinski places Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, commander of ground forces in Iraq, and the new US prison chief, Major General Geoffrey Miller, at the heart of command decisions that have come under fire in the Iraq prison abuse scandal, the newspaper reported.
Karpinski's account appears in the classified annex to the Army's own investigation of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib and was described by a US government official to The Washington Post and confirmed by her attorney, the newspaper said.
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Karpinski also said she resisted a decision to authorise the use of lethal force as a first step in keeping order at the overcrowded and understaffed prison, according to the Post account.
| Guards at Abu Ghraib would be freer to use lethal force |
According to the newspaper, Karpinski told investigators that the decision about transferring control of Abu Ghraib to military intelligence officials came up at a September, 2003, meeting with Miller, who was then in charge of the American prison camp for suspected "terrorists" at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.
Karpinski recalled that Miller told her he wanted to make the prison like the one in Cuba or "Gitmo-ise" it, the newspaper said.
Miller had been dispatched to Iraq at the insistence of top officials in the Pentagon, who were frustrated by the meagre intelligence coming from Iraqi prisoners, The Washington Post said.
Miller told the newspaper through a military spokesperson that he did not recall using the word "Gitmo-ise."
According to Karpinski's account, it was Sanchez who decided in November 2003 to loosen the military's rules of engagement so that guards at Abu Ghraib would be freer to use lethal force at the outset of a disturbance, the newspaper said.
Sanchez gave a different account of a meeting with Karpinski that took place against the backdrop of a prison riot, the Post reported.
The general who investigated mistreatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib told a Senate hearing on Tuesday that the abuse reflected a failure of leadership in the US armed forces. Major General Antonio Taguba said he found no evidence that American soldiers had acted on direct orders of higher-ups.
But he also said Karpinski was the highest ranked officer he had interviewed.
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