Friday, September 10, 2004
Ghost Detainees
Can someone tell me how this is a good idea? It's certainly not a way to put a good face on the "War on Terror". I thought only the Soviets had secret prison/prisoners.
We didn't go as far as the Germans during World War II to hide the prisoners and their conditions, but I don't like the way this is headed.
Note: I'm not comparing hiding up to 100 prisoners to the Nazi concentration camps.
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Army jailers in Iraq, acting at the Central Intelligence Agency's request, kept dozens of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison and other detention facilities off official rosters to hide them from Red Cross inspectors, two senior Army generals said Thursday. The total is far more than had been previously reported.
An Army inquiry completed last month found eight documented cases of so-called ghost detainees, but two of the investigating generals said in testimony before two Congressional committees and in interviews on Thursday that depositions from military personnel who served at the prison indicated that the real total was many times higher.
"The number is in the dozens, to perhaps up to 100," Gen. Paul J. Kern, the senior officer who oversaw the Army inquiry, told the Senate Armed Services Committee. Another investigator, Maj. Gen. George R. Fay, put the figure at "two dozen or so," but both officers said they could not give a precise number because no records were kept on most of the C.I.A. detainees.
Under the Geneva Conventions, the temporary failure to disclose the identities of prisoners to the Red Cross is permitted under an exemption for military necessity. But the Army generals said they were certain that the practice used by the C.I.A. in Iraq went far beyond that.
We didn't go as far as the Germans during World War II to hide the prisoners and their conditions, but I don't like the way this is headed.
Note: I'm not comparing hiding up to 100 prisoners to the Nazi concentration camps.
