General in Iraq prison scandal had promised better

BAGHDAD - Last August, US Brigadier General Janis Karpinski gathered journalists at Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad, notorious for torture under Saddam Hussein, and announced proudly that the bad old days were over.

Nine months on, she is at the centre of a deepening abuse scandal in which six of her soldiers face criminal charges for cruelty and mistreatment at Abu Ghraib and six more have been reprimanded for misconduct.

It is a marked turnaround for the military police commander, with the events that took place on her watch now threatening to further undermine the US-led occupation at a point when it is already deeply unpopular with frustrated Iraqis.

Karpinski, a reservist, has left Iraq as part of a troop rotation, but she was in charge when the abuses are alleged to have taken place last November and December.

This week, she appeared on US television to defend her actions and even pointed the finger at more senior US commanders, including Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, saying they bore responsibility for the abuse, not her.

Pictures of the cruelty, first broadcast last week, show naked and hooded prisoners piled on top of one another and a detainee with wires attached to his body who was told he would be electrocuted if he stepped off a box.

Almost as disturbing in some cases are the smiling faces of male and female soldiers as the abuses were carried out.

It is all in contrast to the pledges Karpinski made nine months ago when the prison was first opened to the press. That day, she touted it as a model facility that would be a welcome change for Iraqis after decades of torture under Saddam.

The same day -- August 4, 2003 -- it was announced that the jail's name had been changed, from Abu Ghraib, with its echoes of evil for all Iraqis, to the Baghdad Central Penitentiary.

MODEL PRISON

Addressing around 30 journalists before taking them on a tour, Karpinski explained how Abu Ghraib had been Saddam's preferred torture facility, with perhaps tens of thousands of people put to death during his dictatorship.

She said military police in her unit had spent months repainting and remodelling the jail -- including providing new beds, blankets and pillows for prisoners -- and were proud of their role in making the new Iraq a better place.

"We've had to start from scratch, with the prisons completely unserviceable," Karpinski, who was put in charge of all Iraq's prisons while on duty in the country, said that day.

"We're slowly getting on top in an uphill battle."

Afterwards she joined journalists as they were shown a newly painted wing and the rooms where Saddam's henchmen carried out executions, including one where two thick ropes were tied to a steel bar with trapdoors underneath -- the hanging chamber.

Soldiers in Karpinski's brigade, all reservists, served iced water and cookies to the media and talked about how weird it was to be living and working in a place where so many people had been tortured and abused under Saddam.

Cameramen and photographers were restricted in what they could film, with military police explaining they did not want prisoners' rights under the Geneva Convention to be violated.

As journalists were driven out of the facility, hundreds of men jailed in a razor-wire pen outside in the 50 degree Centigrade heat pushed up against the wire and chanted "Freedom, freedom" as their jailers looked on.

Inside the prison, Arabic writing on a sign in one of the newly renovated wings had been crossed out and the words "Death Row" written in its place.

- REUTERS

Herald Feature: Iraq