Prison abuses linked to Camp Cropper near Baghdad

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http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0515iraq15.html

WASHINGTON - A U.S.-run detention center outside Baghdad known as Camp Cropper reportedly was the site of numerous abuses of Iraqi prisoners several months before the mistreatment of prisoners unfolded last fall at Abu Ghraib prison, according to documents and interviews.

The detention facility, on the outskirts of Baghdad International Airport, appears to have served as an incubator for the acts of humiliation that were inflicted months later on Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib. At both sites, the mistreatment has been linked to interrogations overseen by the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade, based in Wiesbaden, Germany.

The abuses at Camp Cropper during last May and June were severe enough to have prompted formal complaints to U.S. commanders from visiting officials of the International Committee for the Red Cross. After several visits to Camp Cropper, where they interviewed Iraqi prisoners, Red Cross officials in early July 2003 cited at least 50 incidents of abuse reported to have taken place in a part of the prison under the control of military interrogators.

In one example cited to U.S. officers in Baghdad that month by the committee officials, a prisoner said he had been beaten during interrogation as part of an ordeal in which he was hooded, cuffed, threatened with torture and death, urinated on, kicked in the head, lower back and groin, "force-fed a baseball, which was tied into the mouth using a scarf, and deprived of sleep for four consecutive days."

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