What are the allegations of abuse elsewhere in Iraq?
Recent headlines told the story of three former members of the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division, who say members of their battalion in Iraq beat and abused prisoners to help gather intelligence and to amuse themselves. These allegations were included in a Human Rights Watch report released Sept. 24, 2005. The report did not identify the soldiers, but one is Capt. Ian Fishback, who presented his allegations in letters to Congress. One unnamed sergeant, a guard, said he beat prisoners at the direction of military intelligence personnel. The soldiers alleged that systematic abuses of prisoners took place at Camp Mercury, near Fallujah between September 2003 and April 2004 and included beatings, exposure to extremes of hot and cold, stacking them in human pyramids and sleep deprivation. Several U.S. soldiers have told FRONTLINE that the abuse is more widespread than has been previously reported. “It’s all over Iraq,” Spc. Tony Lagouranis (Ret.), a former Army interrogator at Abu Ghraib told F
