Orders Said ‘Go To Outer Limits’ in Interrogations

NEW YORK – An Army document summarizing 62 allegations of detainee abuse in Iraq and Afghanistan was circulated two weeks before the public release of pictures of abuse at Abu Ghraib prison, according to government records released Tuesday by a civil rights group.The American Civil Liberties Union, which released the information paper, said it proves military leaders were aware of widespread abuse before a public outcry over the release of the photos in spring 2004.The paper was among thousands of pages of records that the ACLU obtained from the government in March and April as part of a Freedom of Information request and published on its Web site Tuesday.The ACLU also released a Defense Intelligence Agency document dated May 19, 2004, in which a military officer said his team of interrogators was to follow a 35-page order spelling out rules of engagement.The officer said the interrogators were encouraged to “go to the outer limits to get information from the detainees” by “LTG Sanchez,” a reference to the top Army general in Iraq at the time of the prisoner abuses, Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, the ACLU said.General Sanchez has been faulted by some for leadership failures but has never been accused of ordering or sanctioning any prisoner abuse. A message seeking comment from the Defense Intelligence Agency was not returned.The April 2, 2004, information paper, “Allegations of Detainee Abuse in Iraq and Afghanistan,” described the status of 62 investigations of detainee abuse.The ACLU said the paper included allegations that soldiers sexually assaulted a female detainee, threatened to kill an Iraqi child to “send a message to other Iraqis,” and threw rocks at handcuffed Iraqi children.It also described allegations that military personnel assaulted, punched, kicked, stripped, and beat detainees, shocked them with a blasting device, choked them with scarves and interrogated them at gunpoint, the ACLU said.A staff attorney with the ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project, Amrit Singh, said the information paper provided some of the strongest proof yet that the abuse was widespread and that military leadership was aware of it.“For the government to continue to pretend that the detainee abuse was the work of rogue soldiers is entirely disingenuous, and it’s blatantly contradicted by this document,” she said.An Army spokesman, Paul Boyce, said that more than 600 investigations have been conducted on allegations of detainee abuse and that so far at least 259 military members have been courtmartialed or otherwise punished.Mr. Boyce said that he did not know about the specific document referred to by the ACLU, but that documents summarizing abuse allegation investigations have routinely been distributed to key law enforcement personnel within the Army.Mr. Boyce said that just over 1% of the deployed force has been implicated in allegations of abuse. “Obviously, the detainee abuse is very serious, and we have taken it so,” he said.

Orders Said ‘Go To Outer Limits’ in Interrogations

Orders Said ‘Go To Outer Limits’ in Interrogations

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