FBI role in interrogations probed

WASHINGTON -- The Justice Department inspector general is investigating whether FBI agents abused detainees at a US military prison in Iraq and at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

There has been no evidence made public that FBI agents did anything at Guantanamo other than observe prisoner interrogations that a Justice Department official called ''highly aggressive." The agents described the questioning in memos, and a high-ranking FBI official complained to Defense Department lawyers in January 2003 about a pattern of abusive techniques. The FBI has not been implicated in allegations of abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

But in a Jan. 4 letter to Democratic legislators on the House Judiciary Committee, Glenn Fine, the inspector general, said his office has ''begun examining the involvement of Federal Bureau of Investigation staff in either observing or participating in the alleged abuse of detainees at the Guantanamo facility and at Abu Ghraib."