US charges 6 soldiers in prison assaults
BAGHDAD -- The US military charged six American soldiers yesterday with indecency and assaulting Iraqi prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison, the former Iraqi torture center now used as an allied military detention facility.
The assaults allegedly occurred in November and December, said Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt, deputy director of coalition operations. Fewer than 20 Arab prisoners were abused, the general said, adding that the inquiry continues.
"Even though it was a very small number, that's the kind of cancer you have to cut out completely," he said.
Commanders were short on details, promising more today, but charges included indecent acts with another person, assault, cruelty, and maltreatment, as well as conspiracy and dereliction of duty. It was not clear what punishment they would face, if convicted.
The military's manual for courts martial says that " `indecent' signifies that form of immorality relating to sexual impurity which is not only grossly vulgar, obscene, and repugnant to common propriety, but tends to excite lust and deprave the morals with respect to sexual relations."
Conviction on that charge can carry a maximum of five years in prison.
The general refused to characterize what the military policemen allegedly did to their captives. He also would not identify the accused soldiers, their units, or their ranks, saying "they are still innocent until proven guilty."
Although the charges suggest something sexual in nature, the Uniformed Code of Military Justice has specific articles alleging rape and sodomy, and they were not among the five violations filed against the MPs yesterday.
Word of the charges did not immediately reach Iraqis, but they are sure to cause a stir. During Saddam Hussein's day, the Abu Ghraib prison on Baghdad's western outskirts was notorious for torture and killings of political prisoners, who were sometimes buried in unmarked graves.
Abu Ghraib was abandoned, and looted, by the time allied forces secured it in the early days of the year-old US-led invasion. US troops now hold about 15 percent of the coalition's 9,500 prisoners there.
Amnesty International has been critical of the coalition's treatment of detainees. International Red Cross delegates inspect the prison regularly, said Kimmitt, defending a policy of preventing reporters from visiting prisoners because, although they are detainees, the military is treating them like enemy prisoners of war and shielding them from "public curiosity and humiliation."
Yesterday's charges were the first public disclosure of results from parallel criminal and internal prisoner-abuse investigations that began on Jan. 14 by order of Lieutenant General Ricardo S. Sanchez, commanding general of ground troops in Iraq.
Seventeen soldiers were suspended but are still in Iraq for the investigation.
