Judge raps US over abuse probe delays
A military judge hearing pre-trial evidence in the alleged abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison pressed the US government today to speed up its investigations, warning that delays could derail the case against at least one of the accused soldiers.
At a hearing at a US military base in Germany, Judge Colonel James Pohl issued a September 10 target for the government to complete three investigative reports so they can be used as evidence in hearings of soldiers charged with the abuse.
Pohl expressed particular displeasure after being told that a lone Army criminal investigator was reviewing thousands of pages of records of a secret computer server at Abu Ghraib.
Turning to the military prosecutor, Pohl said he wanted to have the report on the server inquiry available by December 1.
But he added he would “seriously revisit” a defence motion to dismiss the case against Specialist Charles Graner at the next hearing in October in Baghdad if there was no sign of progress by then.
“The government has to figure out what they want to do with the prosecution of this case,” the judge said testily.
Pohl also voiced frustration at the pace of other military investigations.
The reports include one launched by US Major General George Fay that examined the role of military intelligence, including the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade, the unit that was in control of interrogations at Abu Ghraib. That report had been expected to be finished in July.
The US Navy’s inspector general is due to present one on practices in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay.
Graner, identified in previous evidence as the alleged ringleader of the abuse, had his case heard for several hours today at a heavily secured US military base in the west German city of Mannheim – the first of four US soldiers facing hearings there this week.
In a morning of legal sparring, his lawyers suggested Graner had been too tired to make a clear decision about his rights when he allowed investigators to take a laptop and CDs from his quarters at the prison in January.
But Pohl rejected a defence request to bar anything found on the laptop as evidence.
Graner appeared calm and listened intently to the proceedings. When he testified, he suggested he had little choice but to agree when investigators confronted him with the search request in the middle of the night of January 14.
Graner, 35, said he had been in Iraq for months on an extremely stressful assignment when he was woken up after no more than 1 1/2 hours of sleep and told by the Army investigating agent, Manora Iem, that he could not return to his quarters until it had been searched. He said he signed the search order because he thought it was a “done deal”.
Iem testified that Graner had appeared to understand his rights. “He was alert, he was very cooperative,” but feared he was being made a “scapegoat,” Iem said.
When computer specialists looked at the laptop and 11 CDs found in the search, they discovered “numerous, dozens of pictures related to the investigation,” another investigating agent, Tyler Pieron, told the hearing.
Graner’s civilian lawyer, Guy Womack, maintained that his client was simply doing what he was told to do by superiors.
Graner and others questioned their command, “but they were consistently told to follow those orders,” Womack told reporters outside the courtroom.
The Abu Ghraib scandal broke in April when photographs of hooded and naked prisoners were made public, touching off furious international criticism. Defence lawyers have suggested that the soldiers were following orders.
Graner, of Unionstown, Pennsylvania, became known worldwide from the picture of him posing for the camera with his thumbs up behind a pile of naked prisoners.
He has been accused of jumping on prisoners as they lay on the ground, stomping on the hands and bare feet of several prisoners, and punching one inmate in the temple so hard that he lost consciousness.
Additionally, he faces adultery charges for having sex with Private. Lynndie England, who is now pregnant with his child and is currently facing a pre-trial hearing in Fort Bragg, North Carolina.
Later, Judge Pohl cut short a hearing of Specialist Megan Ambuhl because it emerged that some of the abuse-related charges against her were filed after her so-called Article 32 investigation, the military equivalent of a US grand jury hearing.
Pohl ordered her Article 32 hearing reopened in Baghdad to determine whether the additional charges against Ambuhl, of Centreville, Virginia, are warranted.
