Karpinski was reportedly surprised to know about the presence of Israeli interrogators in Iraq

CAIRO , July 4 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – Israeli interrogators are working in tandem with the US-led occupation troops in detention facilities across Iraq , a senior US officer revealed Saturday, July 4.

Brig Gen Janis Karpinski, the US officer at the heart of the Abu Gharib prison scandal, said she herself met an Israeli interrogator at a secret intelligence center in Baghdad .

"I saw an individual there that I hadn't had the opportunity to meet before, and I asked him what did he do there, was he an interpreter - he was clearly from the Middle East ," she told BBC Radio 4’s Today program.

"He said, 'Well, I do some of the interrogation here. I speak Arabic but I'm not an Arab; I'm from Israel .'"

Karpinski was in charge of the military police unit that ran Abu Ghraib and other prisons when the abuses were committed. She has been suspended but not charged.

Photographs of naked Iraqi detainees being humiliated and maltreated first started to surface in April, sparking shock and anger across the world.

Karpinski has said she was being made a "convenient scapegoat" for abuse ordered by others.

The American New Yorker magazine dropped a bombshell May 16, saying the torture was Okayed by Defense Secretary Rumsfeld.

Intelligence Agents

The New Yorker journalist, who took part in exposing the Abu Ghraib scandal, told the program his sources confirmed the presence of Israeli intelligence agents in Iraq .

Seymour Hersh said that one of the Israeli aims was to gain access to detained members of the Iraqi secret intelligence unit, who reportedly specialize in Israeli affairs.

Hersh further unveiled on June 22 that Israeli intelligence and military operatives were now quietly at work in northern Iraq , providing training for Kurdish commando units and running covert operations inside Kurdish areas of Iran and Syria .

The report added that Mossad operatives work undercover in northern Iraq as businessmen and in some cases do not carry Israeli passports.

"Before the war, Israel was active in Kurdistan , and now it is active again. This is very dangerous for us, and for them, too. We do not want to see Iraq divided, and we will not ignore it."

He quoted current and former Israeli intelligence officials that it is not strange that Israel is quite active in the region.

"Look, Israel has always supported the Kurds in a Machiavellian way—as balance against Saddam. It’s Realpolitik," an intelligence officer told the American magazine.

"By aligning with the Kurds, Israel gains eyes and ears in Iran , Iraq , and Syria ," he added.

The report deeply panicked Turkey, which fears since the start of the US-led invasion of Iraq in March last year that the Kurds, encouraged by the US occupation, would establish an independent state in northern Iraq.

This, Ankara fears, might encourage similar separatist aspirations from its own Kurdish community.

Tons of expired Israeli foodstuffs had flooded Iraqi markets since the first days of US-led occupation, Iraqi Health Ministry sources confirmed last September.

A center of the Washington-based and Mossad-linked Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) was opened in Baghdad , in a provocative move seen by Iraqi academics as the beginning of an Israeli scheme to infiltrate Iraqi society.