Dogs, Detainees and Justice (?)

On Monday, March 13, the court-martial of Military Working Dog Handler Army Sgt. Michael Smith begins at Ft. Meade in Maryland.  Smith has been charged with cruelty and maltreatment and dereliction of duty for his role in the use of dogs during interrogation of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.  

 

Human Rights First will be monitoring this important court martial and blogging from the proceedings.

 

Smith and another dog handler Sgt. Santos A. Cardona, whose court-martial for similar conduct has been scheduled for May 22, have long maintained that the use of dogs in interrogations was authorized by their superiors.  

 

This is the claim that has been made by lower level soldiers in other prosecutions, both at Abu Ghraib and in the cases of abuses elsewhere in Iraq and in Afghanistan.   Such arguments may explain in part both the lack of prosecutions as a whole and the many lenient sentences.  But the "following orders" defense may have greater resonance and receive more in depth exploration at this court-martial than in previous cases because the military intelligence commander at Abu Ghraib, Col. Thomas Pappas, is expected to testify in exchange for a grant of immunity.   Pappas has told investigators that Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller , "said they used military working dogs, and that they were effective in setting the atmosphere for which, you know, you could get information."  T he Joint Chiefs of Staff, with the encouragement of then U ndersecretary of Defense for Intelligence Stephen Cambone, had sent sent Miller to Iraq from Guantanamo Bay in August 2003.  Col. Pappas also said that the idea of using dogs "came from Guantanamo Bay and my discussions during the General Miller visit."  Similarly, the head military police officer at Abu Ghraib in 2003, Maj. David DiNenna, testified at Sgt. Smith's preliminary hearing that he understood Miller had been sent by the Secretary of Defense to " Gitmo-ize" – "to take their interrogation techniques they used at Guantanamo Bay and incorporate them into Iraq." 

 

Pentagon officials and Maj. Gen. Miller have maintained that Miller "recommended dogs as beneficial for detainee custody and control" but not for interrogations.  But this distinction may have been of little consequence as Miller's fundamental recommendation to U.S. Army commanders in Iraq was to "integrate" and "synchronize" detention and interrogation functions.   Miller's own official report on detention and interrogation operations in Iraq included the following recommendations: "the detention operations function must act as an enabler for interrogation." (Miller report, 2); "Dedicate and train a detention guard force . . . that sets the conditions for the successful interrogation and exploitation of internees/detainees"; and "Detention operations must be structured to ensure detention environment focuses the internee's confidence and attention on their interrogators."   Dogs were in fact authorized and used at Guantanamo as part of interrogations. 

 

In any case, it is clear that Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez then signed off on the use of dogs in interrogations in Iraq in at least three different memos, the first written immediately after Maj. Gen. Miller had visited Iraq to assess detention and interrogation operations there.   Read the memos here, here, and here.

 

Gen. Miller has invoked his right not to incriminate himself in the dog handler cases and will not testify.  Responding to this decision, Senators on the Armed Services committee have asked the Army to put a hold on Miller's retirement, pending their review of his testimony before Congress in May of 2004 and the completion of the dog handler cases to ensure that Miller did not perjure himself.

 

Sgt. Smith told investigators that he was asked by military intelligence personnel to use his dog, a Belgian shepherd named Marco, to induce fears in detainees, bringing the dog within half a foot of detainees.  In some instances the dogs were known to have bitten detainees.   Other military personnel have alleged that Smith and Cardona had a competition to see how many detainees they could cause to urinate or defecate out of fear of the dogs.  One of the key questions of the court martial, and one of the most troubling, is simply whether Sgt. Smith's actions fell within his orders or was he acting outside the scope of his duties.  It's a frightening question to have to be asking.

 

It is good to see that prosecutions are going forward.  A court of law presents an important opportunity to both provide justice and accountability, and to ferret out the truth.   It will be fascinating and we hope illuminating to hear what Col. Pappas says under oath.  But Maj. Gen. Miller's silence on the matter may sound just as loudly.