BlogWood: MT Archives

The Ghost Detainees of Abu Ghraib

Via Billmon, a must read:

But the most chilling revelation doesn't have anything directly to do with either the known atrocities or the slapstick soldiering within the prison. The scariest figures described in Taguba's report are the ghosts - specifically, the ghost prisoners:

The various detention facilities operated by the 800th MP Brigade have routinely held persons brought to them by Other Government Agencies (OGAs) without accounting for them, knowing their identities, or even the reason for their detention. The Joint Interrogation and Debriefing Center (JIDC) at Abu Ghraib called these detainees “ghost detainees.”

On at least one occasion, the 320th MP Battalion at Abu Ghraib held a handful of “ghost detainees” (6-8) for OGAs that they moved around within the facility to hide them from a visiting International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) survey team. This maneuver was deceptive, contrary to Army Doctrine, and in violation of international law. (Findings and Recommendations, Part II, No. 33)

This suggests the existence of an entirely off-the-books detention system within Iraq, run by the CIA, (or some other "other government agency") and kept secret not just from the American and Iraqi publics but from the International Red Cross as well.