Officer Criticizes Detainee Abuse Inquiry
By ERIC SCHMITT
Published: September 28, 2005
WASHINGTON, Sept. 27 - An Army captain who reported new allegations of detainee abuse in Iraq said Tuesday that Army investigators seemed more concerned about tracking down young soldiers who reported misconduct than in following up the accusations and investigating whether higher-ranking officers knew of the abuses.
The officer, Capt. Ian Fishback, said investigators from the Criminal Investigation Command and the 18th Airborne Corps inspector general had pressed him to divulge the names of two sergeants from his former battalion who also gave accounts of abuse, which were made public in a report last Friday by the group Human Rights Watch.
Captain Fishback, speaking publicly on the matter for first time, said the investigators who have questioned him in the past 10 days seemed to be less interested in individuals he identified in his chain of command who allegedly committed the abuses.
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In the months before, Captain Fishback said he had seen at least one interrogation where prisoners were being abused and was told about other ill treatment of detainees by his sergeants. But he said his commanders left the impression that the United States did not have to follow the Geneva Conventions when dealing with prisoners in Iraq, so he did not report the incidents.
That changed, he said, after he heard Mr. Rumsfeld testify to Congress after the Abu Ghraib abuses became public that the Conventions did apply in Iraq. But when he took his complaints to his immediate superiors, Captain Fishback said his company commander cautioned him to "remember the honor of the unit is at stake." He said his battalion commander expressed no particular alarm.
As he moved up his chain of command, he said no one could give him clear guidance on how the Geneva Conventions applied in Iraq.
"We did not set the conditions for our soldiers to succeed," said Captain Fishback, who has served combat tours in Afghanistan and Iraq. "We failed to set clear standards, communicate those standards and enforce those standards. For us to get to that point now, however, we have to come to grips with whether it's acceptable to use coercion to obtain information from detainees."
By this summer, Captain Fishback had met with Human Rights Watch researchers several times. He gave the organization the names of other members of his unit who could support his allegations.
Captain Fishback said that when his command learned about 10 days ago that he was preparing to speak to Senate aides about his concerns, they directed him to talk to criminal investigators, which he said he did for 90 minutes on Sept. 19. But when he refused to divulge the sergeants' names, he said, investigators told him there wasn't much they could do immediately.
But last Thursday, a day after Human Rights Watch notified the 82nd Airborne that it would be releasing a copy of its report outlining the allegations, Captain Fishback said he was summoned back to Fort Bragg from field training for six hours of questioning by investigators.
The report was made public last Friday, and Captain Fishback said investigators had questioned him for about an hour on Monday and again on Tuesday. "They're asking the same questions over and over again," he said. "They want the names of the sergeants, and they keep asking about my relationship with Human Rights Watch."
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/28/international/middleeast/28abuse.html