Torture reports were passed on to military officials months before the abuses became known

NEW YORK, June 14 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - A small group of U.S. military interrogators wrote reports passed on to superiors describing the ongoing abuses at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison months before the abuses became known, the New York Times reported Monday, June 14.

The abuses included the beatings of five blindfolded Iraqi generals in late November after a prison riot, according to the newspaper, citing interviews with military personnel who worked in the prison.

Top U.S. officials have said the prison abuses were isolated and emerged only after soldiers came forward with photographs earlier this year.

"We were reporting it long before this mess came out," one of several military intelligence soldiers interviewed told the NY Times.

The two to five-page documents the interrogators wrote were sent to a panel that included Brigadier General Janis Karpinski, the commander of the 800th Military Police Battalion that was running the prison, and Major General Barbara Fast, the top Army intelligence officer in Iraq , the paper reported.

The Washington Post said Saturday, June 12, that top U.S. commander in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, gave free reign to U.S. officers in charge of Abu Ghraib prison to adopt various torture and abuse tactics used at the U.S. detention center in Guantanamo.

The American New Yorker magazine also disclosed on May 16 that the torture at Abu Ghraib was Okayed by U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

Stand Naked

Cases of abuse that were reported include a detainee who was shoved to the ground before a soldier stepped on his head; a man was forced to stand naked while a female interrogator made fun of his genitals, and a woman who was repeatedly kicked by a military police guard, according to the NY Times.

The five generals were reportedly punched and beaten as they were being taken to an isolation cell handcuffed and blindfolded, the paper added.

On their way to the prison's isolation unit after a revolt in November, the captives were stopped by the soldiers. Then the guards attacked the prisoners with a barrage of punches, beating them until they were covered in blood.

By mid-December, those people said, two separate reports of the beating had been made - one by the assessment branch and one by a military intelligence analyst. The analyst asked a former general at the end of an interrogation what had happened to his nose - it was smashed and tilted to the left, and a gash on his chin had been stitched, according to the paper.

The prisoner, in his 50's, told the story of the beating, which he said had occurred about a week earlier. His account closely matched that given independently to a Detainee Assessment Branch by another former general around the same time.

The military intelligence analyst alerted his sergeant, but the sergeant said the prisoners "probably deserved it," a person with first-hand knowledge of the investigation was quoted by the NY Times as saying.

The analyst also cited the beating in his interrogation notes, stored in an electronic file accessible to several of the prison's intelligence units. Typically, these notes were routinely read by analysts in several units.

The beating of the former generals, which had not been disclosed, is being examined by the Pentagon as part of its inquiry into abuses at Abu Ghraib, according to people knowledgeable about the investigation.

This came one day after The Observer reported that the U.S. and its allies are running a wanton global network of detention camps allowing the U.S. to fly so-called terror suspects to other countries where they are tortured for information

Major General Antonio M. Taguba said in a report that he found evidence of "sadistic, blatant and wanton criminal abuse" at the prison.

The U.S.-led forces announced Sunday, June 13, they plan to keep between 4,000 and 5,000 prisoners in its custody after it partially hands over power to an Iraqi government on June 30.