WASHINGTON, 13 May 2005 — The commander of a US intelligence brigade has been reprimanded and fined for dereliction of duty for authorizing the use of dogs in interrogating a prisoner at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, army officials said Wednesday.
No decision has yet been made whether to relieve Col. Thomas Pappas of command of the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade despite the verdict, an official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Pappas was responsible for the military intelligence personnel who conducted interrogations at the Iraqi prison during late 2003 and early 2004 when American guards were photographed abusing and sexually humiliating prisoners.
Military police guards implicated in the scandal have said interrogators encouraged them to soften up the inmates. Newspaper photographs printed around the world showed US guards holding unmuzzled army dogs close to reeling inmates.
Major General Bennie Williams on Tuesday found Pappas guilty of two counts of dereliction of duty at the end of a hearing at Kaiserslautern, Germany in which the Col. presented evidence in his defense, the officials said.
“The action alleged that Col. Pappas failed to ensure that subordinates were adequately informed of, trained upon and supervised in the application of interrogation procedures,” according to an army summary.
“He was also alleged to have failed to obtain the approval of superior commanders before authorizing a non-sanctioned interrogation technique, specifically, the presence of military working dogs during the questioning of a detainee,” it said.
Williams “found that Col. Pappas had committed both offenses as alleged.”
Pappas received a written reprimand, which was placed in his permanent file, and made to forfeit $4,000 in pay a month for two months.
The decision came just days after the army demoted and relieved of command Brigadier General Janis Karpinski, who commanded the prison. She was found guilty of dereliction of duty for general leadership failures and for shoplifting at a US base, but not for specifically contributing to the abuses at the prison.
Karpinski, who has said she was being made a scapegoat for actions of the military intelligence unit at the prison, is the highest-ranking US military officer punished so far in the Abu Ghraib scandal.
Elsewhere, army reservist Sabrina Harman pleaded not guilty yesterday to charges in the Abu Ghraib scandal, which include allegations she posed before a pyramid of naked Iraqi prisoners.
Harman, who holds the rank of specialist, was charged with conspiracy, dereliction of duty and maltreatment of subordinates. She faces as much as six and a half years in prison if convicted on all charges, which also include attaching wires to an Iraqi and telling him he would be electrocuted if he stepped off a box.
