Posted on Fri, Aug. 20, 2004
By Elise Ackerman
Knight Ridder Newspapers
WASHINGTON - Army investigators believe that some of the military interrogators who were implicated in the abuse scandal at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq were involved in earlier deaths and abuses of detainees held by U.S. forces in Afghanistan.
Yet even as investigators were uncovering troubling evidence of prisoner abuse in Afghanistan, orders were cut to transfer the military intelligence company involved to Iraq and to Abu Ghraib. And within weeks of the deaths of two Afghan detainees, the officer in charge at the Bagram Collection Center, where the men died and where others are thought to be mistreated, was awarded her first of two Bronze Stars for "exceptionally meritorious service."
To date, no one has been formally charged with a crime in the Afghan abuse case despite investigators' belief that charges are warranted against six interrogators.
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The Army refused to release details of the investigation into the deaths of the two Afghan detainees, who died in December 2002, because they say the inquiry is continuing. However, three senior intelligence officials who are familiar with the investigation or the circumstances of the deaths spoke to Knight Ridder. Key aspects of their accounts were later confirmed by Army public affairs.
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http://www.kentucky.com/mld/kentucky/news/special_packages/iraq/9455653.htm