WASHINGTON, April 5: CIA interrogations may have played a role in the deaths of several detainees in Iraq, as Bush administration lawyers were advocating an aggressive interrogation policy that critics say led to torture, military documents and officials say.
US officials have formally disclosed the death of only one person interrogated by the CIA in Iraq — Manadel al-Jamadi, an unregistered “ghost” prisoner at Abu Ghraib who died on Nov 4, 2003, while handcuffed in a prison shower room.
But sworn statements provided to Army investigators by military intelligence and police at Abu Ghraib contain at least four references to CIA detainees dying during interrogations that do not correspond with the al-Jamadi case.
The documents, obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union, were collected for an Army investigation that first disclosed the presence of unregistered CIA detainees at Abu Ghraib last September.
The documents were posted on the ACLU’s website at www.aclu.org last month. The Army used the acronym “OGA” for “other government agency” to refer almost exclusively to the CIA.
One document refers to an “OGA” detainee dying under interrogation in September 2003, two months before al-Jamadi.
Another suggests a death occurred in October, while a third said a detainee died while chained in the prison shower. A fourth document refers to a detainee dying from heart problems during interrogation.
The allegations are based on what soldiers say they heard and offer no substantiation. They provide few details and have been redacted to delete the names of the witnesses, their colleagues and superiors.
Intelligence officials dismissed the statements as unsubstantiated hearsay or garbled references to al-Jamadi, who the government says died from wounds received during capture by a Navy SEAL unit.
But they acknowledged that the CIA may have played a role in the case of an Iraqi military official who died during military interrogation in western Iraq in November 2003.
Maj-Gen. George Fay, who helped lead the Army investigation at Abu Ghraib, told Reuters that al-Jamadi was the only interrogation-related death confirmed at the prison.
But his team turned up reports of at least three other deaths elsewhere in Iraq that may have involved the CIA.
“There were allegations of at least three,” Fay, an assistant deputy chief of staff for Army intelligence, said in an interview. “There may have been more. OGA may or may not have been involved — yet to be determined.”—Reuters
