WASHINGTON, 4 May 2004 — The US general in charge of the prison where Iraqi prisoners allegedly faced humiliation and abuse, Janis Karpinski, yesterday defended herself against charges that she failed in her leadership.
Saying she was “sickened” by photographs showing US military police mistreating Iraqi prisoners, Karpinski told ABC television she asked herself how the alleged abuses could have occurred on her watch.
“I did not know anything about it,” she said. “Had I known anything about it I certainly would have reacted very quickly.”
“The cell blocks were actually in operation for the interrogation and the isolation under the military intelligence control,” she said. Karpinski also noted that there were 32 boots — 16 soldiers — shown in the photographs, more than the six under her command who have been reprimanded.
Asked if she meant CIA or military intelligence officials, Karpinski responded, “I’m saying other people than the military police.”
Karpinski argued that the abuses were not the result of a leadership problem in the military police, but rather an “interrogation and isolation procedure issue, and that was run and orchestrated by a separate command from the military police brigade.”
Last week, US media broadcast pictures of inmates at Abu Gharib prison outside Baghdad, some naked, in humiliating, sexually suggestive poses. Other prisoners were paraded hooded with electrical cables attached to their bodies. Some of those images also showed US military personnel pointing and laughing at prisoners.
In Baghdad, a coalition official said yesterday on condition of anonymity that six US Army officers have received the highest letter of reprimand over the prison scandal, effectively ending their military careers.
Besides the officers, six US prison guards have been charged with criminal conduct for abusing detainees and four more guards are still under investigation.
Coalition military spokesman, Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt told CBS News that he did not believe that soldiers would be able to defend the charges by claiming they doing as they were told.
“Well, nobody condones and nobody has to accept an order — an illegal order, something they know is wrong. And clearly what we saw in those pictures was wrong,” he told CBS.
“Whoever told them to do it, they are being investigated as well. But I’m not certain that the excuse that, ‘I was told to do this,’ is going to pass muster,” he said.
Kimmitt also said that the leadership would be held responsible.
“It’s more than just giving orders, giving training,” he said. “It’s also supervising, it’s also overwatching, it’s also checking, double-checking and rechecking, and it’s also having the guts to stand up when you find something’s wrong, to stand up and say, ‘That’s wrong and we need to fix it.’”
For her part, Karpinski suggested that responsiblity goes to the top of the chain of command.
“I think that there’s others responsible for here, not limited to one person or an individual or a command. But there is a shared responsibility in this,” she said.
