Investigating Iraq Detainee Abuse

The abuse of was done in our names as we still continue to condemn others for exactly same!

May 30, 2011 - This article was reported in partnership with The Investigative Fund at The Nation Institute, with support from The Fund for Constitutional Government.

  Most days in 2005, a small group of agents with the Detainee Abuse Task Force (DATF) trickled into their one-room office at Camp Victory, part of the sprawling Victory Base Complex surrounding Baghdad's airport. The camp's centerpiece is Saddam Hussein's glitzy Al-Faw Palace, which once hosted Baath party loyalists before serving as coalition headquarters, but the DATF was housed in a far more modest one-story building nearby. In a room next to their fellow agents in the Army's Criminal Investigation Command, known as CID, DATF agents investigated hundreds of cases of alleged detainee abuse.

 

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It was tedious, frustrating work. The days sometimes began as early as 6 am and could stretch until 6 pm. Agents' desks were cluttered with stacks and stacks of case files, some of which had been opened as early as 2003 but remained unresolved more than two years later. Much of the agents' time was spent trying to locate victims, perpetrators and eyewitnesses.

Eventually T-shirts were made for the agents. The front displayed the unit's name and DATF motto: Do What Has To Be Done. The back read Detainee Abuse Task Force 2005 and listed the agents' names along with a dark inside joke about the daunting task before them: An Unknown Subject Assaulted an Unknown Victim, at an Unknown Time and Location. Investigation Continues.

A year earlier, in April 2004, searing photos of detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib were broadcast around the world, shocking the public. Political and military leaders condemned the abuse and promised swift action and accountability. President Bush pledged that the United States would "investigate and prosecute all acts of torture and undertake to prevent other cruel and unusual punishment in all territory under our jurisdiction." Within two years, the Defense Department announced it had opened 842 criminal inquiries or investigations into allegations of detainee abuse.

As part of this response, the military produced thirteen comprehensive reports, the FBI produced two reports, and the CIA produced at least one. Also in 2004, according to a senior Army official with knowledge of the DATF, the Army's top CID officer, Maj. Gen. Donald Ryder, initiated a task force to manage what the official called the "volatility" and "sensitivity" of the detainee abuse issue. The task force was run by CID, and it periodically interfaced with the FBI and other federal agencies, as well as Army public affairs, operations and the Congressional liaison office. As part of this effort, in July 2004, the Army created an on-the-ground investigative team in Iraq, the CID's Detainee Abuse Task Force, which in 2004 consisted of agents from the 78th Military Police Detachment and in 2005 agents from the 48th. {continued}