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Soldier Who Uncovered Iraq Abuse Sent to Psychiatrist

HeadlineMar 07, 2005

Now to the ongoing prisoner abuse scandal. Internal Army records released on Friday show that an Army intelligence sergeant who accused fellow soldiers in Samarra, Iraq, of abusing detainees in 2003 was in turn accused by his commander of being delusional and ordered to undergo a psychiatric evaluation in Germany. This despite a military psychiatrist’s initial judgment that the man was stable. According to The Washington Post, the soldier had angered his commander by urging the unit’s redeployment from the military base to prevent what the soldier feared would be the death of one or more detainees under interrogation. He told his commander three members of the counterintelligence team had hit detainees, pulled their hair, tried to asphyxiate them and staged mock executions with pistols pointed at the detainees’ heads. In another case detailed in the Army files, soldiers in a Florida National Guard unit deployed near Ramadi in 2003 compiled a 20-minute video that depicted a soldier kicking a wounded detainee in the face and chest in the presence of 10 colleagues and soldiers positioning a dead insurgent to appear to wave hello. The video was found in a soldier’s computer files under the heading “Ramadi Madness,” and it initially prompted military lawyers to recommend charges of assault with battery and dereliction of duty for tampering with a corpse. These cases were among 13 described in more than 1,000 pages of Army criminal records released at the Pentagon under the order of a New York federal judge. They detail the Army’s investigations of other allegations by U.S. military personnel in Iraq of abuse, rape and larceny by fellow soldiers.

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