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General at Gitmo Was Also Key Figure Abu Ghraib

HeadlineJul 14, 2005

But reports are now emerging that that commander, Major General Geoffrey Miller, is linked to the abuse at both Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib. The Washington Post reports that months before the world learned of the abuse and torture at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, interrogators at Guantanamo forced a prisoner to wear women’s underwear on his head, confronted him with snarling military working dogs and attached a leash to his chains. The paper cites the newly released military investigation. The techniques were approved by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld for use in interrogating Mohamed Qahtani — the alleged “20th 9/11 hijacker” as part of a special interrogation plan aimed at breaking down the silent detainee. The Post says that the report’s findings are the strongest indication yet that the abuse seen in photographs at Abu Ghraib were not the invention of a small group of thrill-seeking military police officers. The report shows that they were used several months before the United States invaded Iraq. The investigation also supports the idea that soldiers believed that placing hoods on detainees, forcing them to appear nude in front of women and sexually humiliating them were approved interrogation techniques for use on detainees. Major General Geoffrey Miller commanded the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay and later helped set up U.S. operations at Abu Ghraib. Miller traveled to Iraq in September 2003 to assist in Abu Ghraib’s startup, and he later sent in “Tiger Teams” of Guantanamo Bay interrogators and analysts as advisers and trainers. Within weeks of his departure from Abu Ghraib, military working dogs were being used in interrogations, and naked detainees were humiliated and abused by military police soldiers working the night shift. Miller would have been the highest-ranking officer to face discipline for detainee abuses so far, but Gen. Bantz Craddock, head of the U.S. Southern Command, declined to follow the recommendation.

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