Red flags raised months ago by prison guards at other facilities in Iraq

Friday, May 14, 2004
USA TODAY

(snip)

The missed warnings include reports by the International Committee of the Red Cross and at least one letter from a U.S. senator, concerns raised by military law specialists and commanders, and letters and phone calls from the relatives of U.S. troops serving at other prisons in Iraq.

Last May, eight high-ranking military lawyers voiced concerns to Pentagon officials and the New York State Bar Association that new interrogation policies developed after the Sept. 11 attacks could lead to prisoner abuses. Scott Horton, former head of the New York Bar's committee on international law, said yesterday that the Army and Navy lawyers told him the new interrogation rules were "frightening" and might "reverse 50 years of a proud tradition of compliance with the Geneva Conventions."

Horton said the lawyers came to him because they had been locked out of policy debates while the secret rules were being drafted. "It was a five-alarm fire," Horton said.

Family members of guards at the Camp Bucca prison in southern Iraq told CBS' "60 Minutes II" that they called Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's office repeatedly last year and wrote letters to the White House to complain of conditions at the prison.

http://www.tucsoncitizen.com/index.php?page=national&story_id=051404b1_iraq_warnings



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