From Deseret News archives:
Attorney to tell of abuse of prisoners by U.S.
"I think that President Bush and Secretary Rumsfeld misrepresented what they knew about the abuse of prisoners," Jaffer said Tuesday from his office in New York. "It's impossible to believe that Bush wasn't informed that this wasn't a bigger problem."
At 7:30 p.m. Thursday at Westminster College, the public is invited to listen to the latest information Jaffer has found through his use of the Freedom of Information Act. His FOIA requests and the many released documents that have been redacted, or had information blacked out, also have resulted in a lawsuit pitting the American Civil Liberties Union against the Department of Defense.
"Those documents show that the abuse of prisoners was widespread," said Jaffer, a graduate of Cambridge University and Harvard Law School.
This week Jaffer's speech, "Torture and the Rule of Law: Three Narratives About Abu Ghraib," will focus on what the Bush administration has been saying about past prisoner abuse, how military leaders justify their interrogation techniques and what government officials have written about detainee treatment in more than 100,000 documents Jaffer has been sifting through.
Jaffer points in particular to an "information paper" dating back to April 2004 that shows Army leaders were aware of 62 abuse allegations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Those cases involved accusations of physical assault, death threats and mock executions. And there were 14 prisoners, Jaffer noted in the document, whose deaths while in prison could not be connected to natural causes.
The information paper, Jaffer said, was dated three weeks before the release to media of photos taken at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Many of those photos depicted bloodied, sometimes naked Iraqis who appeared to have been subjected to beatings and intimidation by an unmuzzled dog.
Jaffer said only underlings, namely nine Army reservists, have been held accountable and punished for the abuse documented at Abu Ghraib.
Senior military officials, however, either endorsed the abuse, tolerated it or turned a "blind eye," Jaffer said. "What you'll see is that those people have been nominated and confirmed to higher posts," he said.
Jaffer said government documents have shown that interrogation methods later termed as abuse were the result of policies developed at the "highest levels."
Jaffer said he would like people who are paying attention to the subject of prisoner abuse to contact their elected representatives in Congress, which has the authority to convene an independent investigation into what's happening inside U.S. military prisons.
E-mail: sspeckman@desnews.com
