By DPA
Fort Meade (Maryland) : As the trial of the only US officer charged in the Abu Ghraib detainee abuse scandal nears a verdict, key questions remain unanswered.
Army reservist Lieutenant Colonel Steven L. Jordan clearly faced a rough assignment when he went to head the interrogation centre at the prison outside Baghdad, a position he held for two crucial months starting mid-September 2003.
But how much authority he had – or should have exercised – is in dispute. Also unresolved at his court martial is Jordan’s reported claim that pressure to extract better intelligence from detainees came all the way from the White House.
Jordan, 51, faces up to eight-and-a-half years in prison if convicted of mistreatment, dereliction of duty and disobeying orders. He has denied wrongdoing, claiming in a newspaper interview that he is a scapegoat.
With the trial’s first week over, prosecutors and defence were expected to make final arguments Monday before a panel of 10 higher-ranking officers who will decide Jordan’s fate.
Yet more than four years after the invasion of Iraq, debate in the US is fixated on whether to pull US troops out, not on Abu Ghraib.
The notorious images of detainee abuse – a pyramid of naked Iraqis, detainees forced into simulated sex acts and US soldiers apparently enjoying the show – were snapped in the fall of 2003 under Jordan’s watch.
Eleven lower-ranking US soldiers were convicted for the abuses, which caused outrage worldwide. But Jordan was charged for a November 2003 incident when he allegedly failed to stop abusive strip-searches and the unauthorized use of dogs during a roundup of Iraqi guards at the prison.
Prosecutors also allege that leadership failures by Jordan led to a climate that encouraged detainee abuse.
Much of the case mirrors conclusions reached in August 2004 by a US military investigation into the Abu Ghraib scandal.
The report said Jordan was a “poor choice” for the job because he had no interrogation background. But it also faulted a higher-ranking military intelligence officer whom the Army later reprimanded, fined and granted immunity from prosecution to testify against Jordan.
Chilling moments from Abu Ghraib were revived since Monday – probably for the last time in a courtroom – at this lush, green military base north of Washington where deer and geese roam free.
Getting Jordan there took time. The Army charged him in April 2006. By the time the jury panel was seated Tuesday, eight of the 12 counts against him had been dropped.
Three days of testimony yielded conflicting views of Jordan. He created “an atmosphere of breakdown of discipline,” the prosecution charged.
But a defence witness called him a “soldier’s soldier” who battled to improve “horrific” conditions for US troops at the prison and had no command authority over interrogations.
Trial testimony indicated that the military interrogators, private contractors, military police and CIA agents at Abu Ghraib faced pressure from above to squeeze more knowledge out of detainees to stop deadly Iraqi insurgent attacks on US troops.
Jordan told Army investigators in 2004 he understood that some of that pressure came directly from White House staff, US media reported at the time. But the allegation was not explored at his court-martial.