Doubts mount over US prison tactics

By Jonathan Marcus
BBC diplomatic correspondent

There are concerns over US prisoner treatment around the world

Brigadier General Karpinski has been suspended from duty and is clearly trying to present her own actions or inactions in the best possible light.

But she seems to be correct when she implies, as if the graphic photographs of sexual humiliation and intimidation by dogs were not enough, that a lot more information is still to come out about the events at Abu Ghraib.

Organisations like the International Red Cross and Human Rights Watch have made well-documented allegations about the wide-spread abuse of prisoners, not just in Iraq but at other facilities as well, notably in Afghanistan and at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

They have also raised concerns about prisoners who have disappeared into other detention facilities so secret that their location is not even known.

The Pentagon's position is that there is no systemic problem.

These are simply the actions of a small number of bad individuals, operating outside the rules, compounded by poor supervision and control by officers like General Karpinski.

Mounting evidence

But more and more worrying documents are surfacing in the US press suggesting clear systemic problems.

There are, for example, a series of official legal position papers that explore how far the boundaries of interrogation techniques might be pushed while still falling short of treatment that could legally be classified as torture.

Members of Karpinski's brigade have been accused of abuse

Other documents, cited by the Washington Post newspaper, indicate that some of the controversial practices used at Abu Ghraib were approved by senior officers and could be applied without obtaining specific permission.

Reports are also surfacing suggesting that there were warnings about abuses at Abu Ghraib as far back as November 2003.

How far these proceeded up the chain of command is unclear, but no action was taken.