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Pentagon Files Reveal More Allegations of Abuse in Iraq
Documents contain descriptions of severe detainee mistreatment beyond Abu Ghraib.

WASHINGTON — Pentagon documents released Monday disclosed that Iraqi prisoners had lodged dozens of abuse complaints against U.S. and Iraqi personnel who guarded them at a little-known palace in Baghdad converted to a U.S. prison. Among the allegations was that guards had sodomized a disabled man and killed his brother, whose dying body was tossed into a cell, atop his sister.

The documents, obtained in a lawsuit against the federal government by the American Civil Liberties Union, suggest for the first time that numerous detainees were abused at Adhamiya Palace, one of Saddam Hussein's villas in eastern Baghdad that was used by his son Uday. Previous cases of abuse of Iraqi prisoners have focused mainly on Abu Ghraib prison.

A government contractor who was interviewed by U.S. investigators said that as many as 90 incidents of possible abuse took place at the palace, but only a few were detailed in the hundreds of pages of documents released Monday.

The documents also touch on alleged abuses in other U.S.-run lockups in Iraq. The papers include investigative reports linking some abuses to ultrasecret Pentagon counter-terrorism units.

The latest allegations add to a pattern that human rights activists said suggested systematic abuse of prisoners at U.S. military detention facilities across the globe. ACLU officials, who have obtained and released thousands of documents in recent months, on Monday accused the Pentagon of a "woefully inadequate" response to hundreds of incidents of alleged abuse.

"Some of the investigations have basically whitewashed the torture and abuse," said the group's director, Anthony D. Romero. "The documents that the ACLU has obtained tell a damning story of widespread torture reaching well beyond the walls of Abu Ghraib."

Responding to the latest allegations, U.S. military officials maintained that a few low-level troops had committed the abuses, independent of senior commanders. They noted that more than 300 criminal investigations had examined allegations of prisoner mistreatment and subjected 100 soldiers to court-martial proceedings and administrative punishments.

"The Army and Department of Defense have aggressively investigated all credible allegations of detainee abuse and held individuals accountable," said Lt. Col. Gerard Healy, an Army spokesman.

Few of the alleged abuses at the Adhamiya palace have previously received attention from Pentagon investigators or human rights groups. The palace is a prison overseen by the U.S. Army's 1st Cavalry Division, with interrogations conducted at least in part by members of the 5th Special Forces Group of Ft. Campbell, Ky.

The alleged abuse at the palace included forced sodomy, electric shocks, cigarette burns and severe beatings. Some allegations by prisoners were corroborated by U.S. civilian military contractors hired to help interrogate detainees, according to the Pentagon documents.

One prisoner held at the palace during 2004 said an Iraqi security officer had burned him with cigarettes and struck him repeatedly, the documents state. Another said Iraqi interrogators had pinched his nose and poured water in his mouth, raped him with a wooden stick and shocked his testicles.

In one of the more detailed cases, Iraqi security troops arrested several members of a family accused of supplying arms and money to members of the fedayeen, paramilitaries who had been allied with Hussein's regime.

A woman whose name was blacked out from the documents claimed in interviews with U.S. Army investigators that the bloody, bruised body of her brother had been tossed into her cell on top of her sister. Her brother died shortly afterward, according to her account.

Another brother, who is disabled, said guards pulled him around by his penis. The guards forced a water bottle up his rectum, he told investigators....