The Washington Post has obtained new information that U.S. generals in Iraq were warned last year–more than a month before the Abu Ghraib scandal emerged–that detainees were being beaten and abused in Iraq. The Post has obtained a confidential report from last December that was sent to Army Generals in Iraq warning that an elite military and CIA unit–known as Task Force 121 — was abusing Iraqis and hiding some detainees in secret facilities. The report also found that the US was carrying out illegal arrests and that the US policy of mass arrests was helping to fuel the Iraqi resistance. In particular the report criticized the US policy of arresting the relatives of wanted men. During house raids, the military would often detain the relatives of wanted persons if they could not capture their actual target. The relatives would then be jailed until the target turned himself in. The author of the report, Stuart Herrington wrote that the practice “has a 'hostage' feel to it.”