THE US: The Pentagon has suspended the general who was officially in charge of prison guards at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, just hours after she publicly accused the senior US commander in Iraq of knowing more about the abuse at the prison than he admitted.
Brig Gen Janis Karpinski, a reservist who commanded the 800th Military Police Brigade, now faces administrative punishment or criminal charges arising from an army investigation into the ill-treatment and photographing of Iraqi detainees.
Yesterday, however, Gen Karpinski, who is now back in the United States, said she was being scapegoated for the scandal and she sought to implicate the top American general in Iraq, Lieut Gen Ricardo Sanchez.
Gen Sanchez visited the prison three times in October when the worst of the abuses was taking place, she said in media interviews.
Gen Sanchez has testified to the US Senate that he did not learn of the abuses until January 14th, and in turn blames a small group of soldiers at the prison under Gen Karpinski's nominal command.
Gen Karpinski also alleged that Gen Sanchez's top deputy, Maj Gen Walter Wojdakowski, was present at a discussion in late November of a Red Cross report that cited specific cases of abuse, implying that he should have known then what was going on.
A Washington Post report on Sunday also linked Gen Sanchez more closely to the abuse. It cited testimony from Capt Donald Reese, who was based at the prison, that Gen Sanchez was present at the scene of some "interrogations and/or allegations of the prisoner abuse" by duty officers. A spokesman for Gen Sanchez denied the story or that the commander knew of the abuse before an inquiry began in mid-January, 2004.
Gen Karpinski, who supervised 16 prisons in Iraq, was admonished by Gen Sanchez in January for alleged leadership failures after photographs of the abuse were provided to the army.
She claimed army intelligence ordered the guards to "prepare" detainees for interrogation and that she had been "sickened" by the photographs. She told USA Today that Gen Sanchez did not contact her when he was shown the photographs on January 13th and she only became aware of them in an e-mail from a military investigator three days later. "Why didn't he summon me the minute he saw the photographs?" she asked.