Nation & World News
U.S. officials face allegations of prisoner abuse
Contrarily, a U.S. civilian's
escape from Iraqi captors
provides an uplifting story
By Deborah Horan
Chicago Tribune (KRT)
BAGHDAD, Iraq — American
Thomas Hamill, the truck driver ab
ducted in early April and shown in
footage released by his captors, was
found alive Sunday by U.S. soldiers
on patrol north of Baghdad after ap
parently escaping from his captors.
The good news came on an other
wise grim day elsewhere in Iraq, as
nine soldiers were killed in three inci
dents, and controversy grew over al
leged prisoner abuse by U.S. soldiers,
as the overseer of guards at U.S.-run
prisons in Iraq, who is under investi
gation, lashed out at her superiors in
published reports.
West of Baghdad, six soldiers were
killed and 30 were wounded in a mor
tar attack on a military base outside the
flash-point city of Fallujah, a Marine
spokesman said. He declined to give
further details, and it was unclear
whether the soldiers were Marines.
In Baghdad, two soldiers were
killed when a pre-dawn roadside
bomb detonated as their convoy
passed, a military spokesman said. A
few hours later, another soldier was
killed and 10 were wounded when a
bomb exploded near their military
base in the northern city of Kirkuk,
the spokesman said.
On Saturday night, Shiite militia
men attacked a U.S. convoy with
small arms fire and rocket-propelled
grenades near the southern city of
Amarah. Two soldiers were killed, the
military said.
The violence came as the Marines
continued to recruit Iraqis, many of
them former members of Iraq's for
mer army, to a new security force set
to patrol Fallujah amid hope that a
fragile cease-fire might hold.
Last week, the Marines agreed to al
low former senior commanders who
served under Saddam Hussein to take
charge of the Fallujah Brigade in a
shift in strategy that the Bush admin
istration hopes will curb an insur
gency that has fueled weeks of fight
ing in the city.
At least one Saddam-era officer,
Gen. Jassim Mohammed Saleh, was
named in early reports as a possible
top commander of the unit. But a sen
ior military official in Baghdad said
Sunday that the makeup of the top
leadership is under discussion. The
brigade is likely to be commanded by
another Saddam-era general, Mo
hammed Latif, the official said, and
Saleh may be installed as commander
of the brigade's 1st battalion.
But Gen. Richard Myers, chairman
of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, cast doubt
on whether either Iraqi general
would hold a top position in the
new Fallujah force, telling several tel
evision networks that neither one
was formally approved.
'They have not been vetted; they have
not been put in charge," Myers said.
Fallujah, the scene of heavy fighting
since Marines entered the city on April
5, has been relatively calm since the
Marines negotiated a deal with the
town's tribal and ex-military leaders
last week.
On Sunday, the city remained
quiet, as Marine's continued to pull
back from front-line positions in the
southern part of the city, Arab news
channels reported. In Baghdad, mili
tary officials remained cautiously op
timistic that calm might continue.
"Perhaps the belligerents in Fallu
jah are playing wait and see," a top
commander said. "They don't know
what to make of this (agreement)."
Hamill was discovered late Sunday
morning when members of the 2nd
Battalion, 108th Infantry Regiment,
spotted the 43-year-old civilian con
tractor while patrolling an oil pipeline
near Balad, 35 miles south ofTikrit, a
military official said.
Hamill identified himself to the
soldiers and then led them to the
house where he was held captive, the
official said. Soldiers detained two
Iraqis found inside, one armed with
an assault rifle.
Hamill was taken by helicopter to a
nearby military base and then moved
to Baghdad, according to a statement
from the 1st Infantry Division. A gun
shot wound to his arm, apparently re
ceived during the initial kidnapping,
was infected, the military said. He
otherwise was not injured and was re
ported in stable condition.
"He has spoken to his family," said
Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, a top mili
tary commander in Iraq. "He is now
ready to get back to work."
Meanwhile, outrage over pictures of
Iraqi prisoners apparendy being bru
talized by U.S. soldiers in a Baghdad
prison continued to grow.
According to Newsweek, Brig. Gen.
Janis Karpinski, the commander of
the Army Reserve's 800th Military Po
lice Brigade in charge of Iraq's prison
guards, lambasted coalition com
mander Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez for
dumping the blame for the treatment
of the prisoners on her and other
Army reserves.
"Holding me responsible for what
happened at the squad level is absurd,"
Karpinski said in tin exclusive interview
published in this week's issue. "Why
not hold Sanchez responsible?"
(cj 2004, Chicago Tribune.
Distributed by Knight Ridder/
Tribune Information Services.
Chicago Tribune foreign
correspondent Evan Osnos
contributed to this report.
Officials: Episodes of prisoner abuse in Iraq ‘isolated’
The military says the claims
were reported and handled
internally by U.S. officials
By Stephen J. Hedges
Chicago Tribune (KRT)
WASHINGTON — Facing a grow
ing international uproar over photo
graphs that show the abuse of Iraqi
prisoners held inside a U.S. military
detention facility near Baghdad, the
nation's top general said Sunday that
the ill treatment of those detainees
was isolated, and not representative
of the U.S. military prisons elsewhere
in the country.
"The pictures we've seen, the ac
tions that we saw on those photo
graphs, that is appalling behavior, not
acceptable behavior by any stan
dards," said Gen. Richard Myers,
chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
"It's important to realize that it was
American soldiers that turned these
people in, and that as soon as we
found out about it, we took very quick
action to investigate that situation."
Myers, appearing on CBS' "Face the
Nation," said an investigation is
under way, at the direction of Deputy
Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, to
determine whether abuse also oc
curred in other facilities. But he
stressed that an investigation of the
Abu Ghraib prison incidents suggests
that it is limited to a single unit.
"Where a handful of people can
sully the reputation of hundreds of
thousands of people that are over
there trying to give a better life to 50
million people, it's a big deal, be
cause we take this very seriously,"
Myers said. "Our code of conduct,
our ethics, our values, I think, it's
known in society are very solid,
among the highest standards of any
organization, any group."
Myers comments came as human
rights groups suggested that the mis
treatment of prisoners by the U.S.
military has occurred in other places,
and is not limited to a single cell
block inside Abu Ghraib, a sprawling
compound that was known as Iraq's
most notorious prison during the
reign of deposed Iraqi leader Sad
dam Hussein.
The military began to investigate re
ports of abuse by guards inside the
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"Where a handful of
people can sully the
reputation of hundreds of
thousands of people that
are over there trying to
give a better life to 50
million people, it's a big
deal, because we take
this very seriously.... Our
code of conduct, our
ethics, our values... are
very solid, among the
highest standards of any
organization, any group."
Gen. Richard Myers
Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff
i
prison in January, and in March it an
nounced that it had recommended
charging six military police officers
and suspended another 11 as a crimi
nal investigation continued. One of
ficer has so far been recommended
for court-martial.
The Geneva Conventions prohibit
"outrages upon the personal dignity,
in particular humiliating and degrad
ing treatment" of prisoners.
The impact of the Abu Ghraib alle
gations erupted with new force last
week, when the CBS program "60
Minutes II" released photographs tak
en by guards of Iraqi prisoners forced
into humiliating poses.
The prisoners were naked and
hooded, and were forced to kneel in
a human pyramid or stand in sexually
suggestive positions. One photograph
shows a dead Iraqi prisoner.
Pressure for a broader, public
inquiry in the United States is
building. Five Democratic senators
asked for a review into the use of
private contractors in Iraq, includ
ing those used in prisons. Sen.
Joseph Biden, a Delaware Democ
rat and ranking member of the Sen
ate Foreign Relations Committee,
said Sunday that the Bush adminis
tration will have to move quickly to
limit the damage caused by the
prisoner abuse revelations.
"We should demonstrate to the
Arab world that this is urgent,"
Biden said on the "Fox News Sun
day" show. "This is the single most
significant undermining act that's
occurred in a decade in that region
of the world, in terms of our stand
ing, in my view."
(c) 2004, Chicago Tribune.
Distributed by Knight Ridder/
Tribune Information Services.
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