WASHINGTON – Lawmakers have issued a subpoena seeking Pentagon information on a soldier who says he suffered retaliation for reporting abuses at Abu Ghraib prison.

The subpoena from the House Committee on Government Reform seeks all communications relating to information provided by Army Specialist Samuel Provance about the Iraq prison, where American mistreatment of detainees caused an international uproar.

It also seeks information on the interrogation of an Iraqi officer there, identified by Specialist Provance as General Hamid Zabar. Specialist Provance had helped interrogate General Zabar’s 16-year-old son and was later told the boy had been captured and abused to compel the general to give information, Specialist Provance said in testimony prepared for Congress.

The subpoena, issued Friday before the long holiday weekend, was necessary because lawmakers got no response from a March 7 letter to Defense Secretary Rumsfeld requesting the information, said a statement from the chairman of the panel’s national security subcommittee, Rep. Christopher Shays, a Republican of Connecticut.

“If the department won’t even return a call, after three months … we really have no choice but to subpoena the material and compel their attention to our request,” added committee chairman Rep. Tom Davis of Virginia, who signed the subpoena.

A Defense Department spokesman, Lieutenant Colonel Mark Ballesteros, said yesterday that he had no immediate information on the subject.

Specialist Provance has said his rank was reduced for disobeying orders not to speak about mistreatment he saw at Abu Ghraib. He was one of five government whistleblowers who testified before Congress in February, saying they faced retaliation for calling attention to alleged government wrongs.