WASHINGTON (Agencies)
A court-martial will start on Monday for a U.S. Army intelligence officer charged with prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib prison, where he headed the interrogation center, the Army said on Saturday.
The trial of Lieutenant Colonel Steven Jordan will be convened at Fort Meade, Maryland, outside Washington, the Army said.
Jordan is charged with cruelty and maltreatment of detainees as well as making false statements and obstruction of justice, disobeying a superior officer and failure to obey orders.
He is accused of forcing prisoners to strip naked before threatening them with attack dogs and of lying to investigators that he had not witnessed any abuse or naked inmates at the prison Jordan faces a maximum of 16 and a half years in prison.
The charges stem from the release of snapshots more than three years ago of Iraqi prisoners humiliated by prison guards at Abu Ghraib, where Jordan was officially responsible for the interrogation center.
The pictures showed naked prisoners piled in pyramids, tied to each other with electric wire, threatened by dogs, wearing women's undergarments on their heads and forced to parade naked before female guards.
An investigation of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib carried out by Army Major General Antonio Taguba in 2004 described Jordan as one of several directly or indirectly responsible.
Among the higher ranks, former general Janis Karpinski, prison commander in Iraq at the time of the scandal, was sanctioned with a demotion, but was never put on trial.
After shedding her uniform, Karpinski said in a book published late 2005 that the Abu Ghraib abuses "were the result of conflicting orders and confused standards extending from the military commanders in Iraq all the way to the summit of civilian leadership in Washington."
Only 11 soldiers have been convicted so far in the scandal. They have received sentences from a few hours of community work to 10 years behind bars. Most said they were simply following orders.
In 2006, U.S. President George W. Bush admitted the Abu Ghraib scandal was the biggest mistake his government made in Iraq.
Jordan's case has drawn little attention by US media, which in just a few articles describe him as a scapegoat in the scandal. |
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A scapegoat Lieutenant Colonel Steven Jordan According to American author Tara McKelvey the people that are truly to blame for the degrading treatment of Iraqi prisoners in Baghdad's infamous jail remain in the shadows, while such abuses continue unchecked and unseen.
McKelvey sought to uncover the truth behind the 2004 scandal in her book "Monstering: Inside America's Policy of Secret Interrogations and Torture in the Terror War."
McKelvey believes the abuse was more widespread than was ever revealed and is probably still continuing in other places and situations but the difference is "people aren't taking pictures" anymore.
She also added "what you saw in the pictures was really only a fraction of the abuse that was taking place and certainly not the worst of it."
McKelvey also made references to a memo by John C. Yoo, a lawyer in the office of legal counsel at the Justice Department.
"In that memo, he defines torture to allow all sorts of abuse and techniques, and that was one of the key points in this entire debate," McKelvey said adding that the biggest problem is that allowances have been made for torture and abuse to occur. |
