Top US general 'saw prison abuse', lawyer told
The commander of the military police company assigned to the notorious Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad is prepared to testify that the top US general in Iraq was present during some interrogations at the prison and witnessed some of the abuse, it is reported today.
The Washington Post, in a story first released on its website, said a military lawyer stated at an open hearing on April 2 that Captain Donald Reese told him that Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez and other senior military officers were aware of the abuse at the prison.
The military lawyer, Captain Robert Shuck, is assigned to defend Staff Sergeant Ivan “Chip” Frederick of the Army Reserve’s 372nd Military Police Company.
Frederick is one of seven members of that company facing criminal charges for abusing Iraqi inmates. Reese is the company commander.
The Post said a transcript of the April hearing at Camp Victory in Baghdad shows Captain John McCabe, the military prosecutor, asking Shuck: “Are you saying that Captain Reese is going to testify that General Sanchez was there and saw this going on?”
“That’s what he told me,” Shuck replied, according the transcript cited by the Post. “I am an officer of the court, sir, and I would not lie. I have got two children at home. I’m not going to risk my career.”
Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt, the senior military spokesman in Iraq, told the Post that Sanchez was unavailable for comment but would respond later.
The transcript marks the first allegation that Sanchez or other senior military officers were aware of the prisoner abuse while it was happening.
Prison officials have blamed the abuse on low-level military police, some of whom have maintained they were just following orders.
Shuck also said at the April hearing, according to the Post, that Captain Carolyn Wood, supervisor of the military intelligence operation at Abu Ghraib, was ”involved in intensive interrogations of detainees, condoned some of the activities and stressed that that was standard procedure, what the accused was doing”.
