US: The Pentagon has acquired another compact disc with new pictures documenting abuse of Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Senator John Warner, disclosed yesterday.
Speaking as the committee prepared to question three top US generals about the abuse, Senator Warner said that the pictures would be shown to members of Congress privately later this week.
General John Abizaid, head of US Central Command, admitted to the committee, "We understood there were problems in the detainee system linked to the intelligence system." But he insisted that the images of ill treatment and humiliation of prisoners "was not the kind of thing we thought was happening". More embarrassing revelations on abuse appeared in the US media yesterday. The New York Times reported that the army responded to a Red Cross report on abuse late last year by trying to curtail the agency's future access to prisons.
The Wall Street Journal disclosed that staff officers with Lt Gen Ricardo Sanchez, the top US commander in Iraq, were among senior military officials to review a Red Cross report detailing horrific abuse, but he did not launch an inquiry until pictures emerged in mid-January.
Meanwhile Reuters revealed that three Iraqi employees and another Iraqi journalist working for NBC News were seized for no reason in early January by the US military and taken to a prison near Fallujah where they were subjected to physical and sexual abuse.
Reuters Baghdad bureau chief Andrew Marshall said cameraman Salem Ureibi, freelancer Ahmad Mohammad al-Badrani and driver Sattar Jabar al-Badrani were abused for several hours after he had informed the 82nd Airborne Division that they were Reuters staff.
The three men, who had cameras and press passes, were beaten for several hours and forced to perform such acts as insert a finger into their anus and lick it. The US military in Baghdad took no action over the complaint.
General Sanchez told senators yesterday that if the abuse scandal went up the chain of command, senior officers might face criminal charges.
Colonel Mark Warren, a military lawyer, told the Senate hearing that a controversial sheet titled "Rules of Engagement" in Abu Ghraib was posted by a captain.
General Sanchez said he had neither seen nor approved it in advance. However, last week Lt Gen Mark Alexander, the army's senior intelligence officer, told the committee that the guidelines were official policy within General Sanchez's command.
"How can you explain the culture of abuse that was allowed to develop in a prison system under your ultimate command?" Senator Robert Byrd asked General Abizaid.
"I don't believe that the culture of abuse existed in my command," he replied. They were "isolated incidents".
The hearing provoked an open split among Republicans who control Senate and House committees.
Congressman Duncan Hunter, who chairs the House armed services committee, accused his Senate counterpart of holding sessions that were "disserving our military operation" in Iraq by taking military commanders away from the battlefield.