Prison commander not punished

WASHINGTON — Military investigators examining al- leged abuse of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, say they found treatment such as leashing a terror suspect and forcing him to behave like a dog. But they say they found no evidence that there was torture or that senior leaders imposed faulty interrogation policies.

A few individual interrogators and military personnel are facing punishment, but a recommendation by investigators to admonish the former prison commander because of the treatment of one prisoner was overruled by a senior general.

In all, the findings track what the Bush administration has said, and what subsequent military self-investigations have found: The excesses with prisoners were the work of a few mid- or low-level personnel acting beyond their authority.

Investigators assigned to look into FBI agents' allegations of abuse at Guantanamo presented their findings to the Senate Armed Services Committee Wednesday.

They were unsatisfactory to some Democrats and human rights groups.

"I am deeply concerned about the failure — indeed, outright refusal — of our military and civilian leaders to hold higher-ups accountable for the repeated reports of abuse and torture of the prisoners at Guantanamo," said Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass.

But other senators saw little use in the investigation. James Inhofe, R-Okla., said the few infractions uncovered made him "wonder if we're really getting the most out of these detainees."

He also said, "What damage are we doing to our war effort by parading these relatively minor infractions before the press and the world again and again and again while our soldiers risk their lives daily and are given no mercy by the enemy?"

The FBI's allegations came to light last year when the American Civil Liberties Union released e-mails obtained under the Freedom of Information Act in which the bureau accused interrogators of abusive treatment.

The chief investigator, Air Force Lt. Gen. Randall M. Schmidt, wanted Army Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller to be reprimanded for failing to oversee the interrogation of prisoner Mohamed al-Qahtani, a Saudi who was captured in December 2001 along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

Al-Qahtani, according to Schmidt, "admitted to being the 20th hijacker, and he expected to fly on United Airlines flight 93," the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania. "He proved to have intimate knowledge of future plans."