Army told of violations at Abu Ghraib prison last fall
WASHINGTON – An Army general who visited Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq last fall complained that the military was violating international war standards by incarcerating common criminals along with insurgents captured in attacks against U.S.-led forces.
It was one among dozens of observations in a still-classified report, obtained Tuesday by the Associated Press, portraying an overcrowded, dysfunctional prison system lacking basic sanitation and medical supplies.
“Due to operational limitations, facility limitations and force protection issues, there are criminal detainees collocated with other types of detainees, including security internees,” wrote Maj. Gen. Donald Ryder, the Army’s provost marshal general. “However, the Geneva Convention does not allow this.”
Ryder warned that mixing such prisoners “invites confusion about handling, processing and treatment.”
Article 84 of the Fourth Geneva Convention prohibits housing prisoners of war and “persons deprived of liberty for any other reason” with general criminal populations. The rules also require that enemy prisoners be kept in facilities “affording every guarantee of hygiene and healthfulness.”
Ryder’s 64-page report, dated Nov. 5, states at the outset that investigators found no evidence of “inappropriate” treatment of Iraqi detainees by military police. It does not detail any efforts to find evidence of the abuse that occurred at Abu Ghraib around the time he visited the prison – except to note that his team found a “wide variance” of detention practices at Coalition Provisional Authority facilities, including “flawed or insufficiently detailed use of force and other standing operating procedures or policies.”
Widely circulated photos have shown U.S. soldiers abusing prisoners.
An Army spokesman declined to comment on the report. Ryder’s mission in Iraq was to assess the capabilities of the country’s prison system – not at a specific prison. The report was assigned by Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the chief of U.S. forces in Iraq.
Other senior Army officials, including Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba, who was appointed in January to investigate allegations of abuses and whose report found them widespread, also have complained separately about the mingling of prison populations in Iraq.
But none so explicitly acknowledged that the Army’s procedures might have violated international law.
The report described a chaotic prison system, with staff lacking “basic necessities” such as food, cleaning supplies and hygiene items, and carrying little accountability for providing adequate health care.
At some facilities, contractors were allowed to use “unsecured” and “unsupervised” tools, while soldiers carried weapons when interacting with detainees – “an unacceptable risk inside a confinement facility,” according to the report. The report does not specify what the tools were.