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Internal US Navy documents released Tuesday showed that the prisoner abuses in Iraq by US troops stretched beyond the Abu Ghraib prison, listing a series of abuse cases by US Marines including firing a pistol in a mock execution and shocking a prisoner with an electric transformer.
The documents detailed a number of cases being investigated by the Naval Criminal Investigative Services. They were released by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and other organizations, which obtained them under the Freedom of Information Act.
Those documents were written on July 16, weeks after the Abu Ghraib scandal was reported and triggered a worldwide furor. Most of the abuse cases dated back to the early months of US invasion of Iraq.
The Marine Corps said 13 Marines were sentenced to up to 15 months for involving in 10 "substantiated" abuse incidents. Other cases were closed after investigators concluded the allegations of abuse were "unsubstantiated."
In a June 2003 case, Marines in Adiwaniyah "ordered four juvenile Iraqi looters to kneel beside a shallow fighting hole and a pistol was discharged to conduct a mock execution."
Two Marines in the case were convicted of dereliction of duty and sentenced to 30 days of hard labor, while another was reduced in rank and got 14 days of restricted movement. Charges against the fourth were withdrawn.
In another case in April 2004 at Al Mamudiyah, five Marines were alleged to have shocked an Iraqi detainee with an electric transformer, holding wires against the shoulder area of the detainee till he "danced as he was shocked."
One Marine was found guilty of assault, cruelty and maltreatment, and was sentenced to a year in prison. Another was sentenced to eight months. The cases of the three others are pending, according to the documents.
"This kind of widespread abuses could not have taken place without a leadership failure of the highest order," said ACLU Executive Director Anthony D. Romero.
The Pentagon, which has insisted that the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal was "aberrational," said all cases of abuse are taken seriously.
"The fact that their cases have been investigated underscores the point that we've been making, which is when we have credible allegations of abuse we take them seriously and investigate them," said Maj. Michael Shavers, a Pentagon spokesman.
(Xinhua News Agency December 15, 2004)
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