Abed Hamed Mowhoush

Abed Hamed Mowhoush turned himself over to U.S. forces in Iraq on November 10, 2003, about a month before U.S. forces captured ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, and at a time when pressure on Army intelligence to produce information was at its height. At Forward Operating Base (“FOB”) Tiger, where Mowhoush appeared, the U.S. Army had set up a base camp and prison operations earlier in the year; the facility was near the town of Al Qaim at the western edge of Anbar province, about a mile from the Syrian border. By mid-October 2003, FOB Tiger was staffed with about 1,000 soldiers from the 1st Squadron of the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment (“ACR”), based in Fort Carson, Colorado Springs, Colorado. Their mission included the detention and interrogation of captured prisoners, a mission that took on added importance that November, as U.S. forces picked up Iraqi men
and boys in the region in an effort to quell a rising insurgency.
           
According to Chief Warrant Officer Lewis Welshofer, who was deployed to Iraq in March 2003 as part of the military intelligence company of the 3rd ACR, guidelines on how to conduct prisoner interrogations at FOB Tiger were sparse. Welshofer described a captain’s memo he had received in late August 2003, which stated that there were no specific rules of engagement for interrogations in Iraq, and that U.S. Army Central Command officials were still struggling with the basic definition of a “detainee.” Although specific rules were hard to come by, command was clear that intelligence to date was inadequate and, as Welshofer put it: “[t]hey were looking for ideas outside the box.” In the meantime, captured detainees were to be considered “unprivileged combatants” – a status that the Bush Administration had separately suggested meant detainees were not to be afforded the protections of the Geneva Conventions. Welshofer understood this guidance to include detainees like Mowhoush, a former uniformed Major General in the Iraqi Army, and a soldier whom in past conflicts the United States would have considered presumptively under Geneva protections.
           
Soon after, a September 10, 2003 memo from Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, then U.S. Army Commander of the Coalition Joint Task Force in Iraq, underscored with new specificity the confusion over the applicability of Geneva protections in Iraq. Even as he recognized that other countries might view certain practices as inconsistent with the Geneva Conventions, General Sanchez authorized such harsh interrogation techniques as sleep and environmental manipulation, the use of aggressive dogs, and the use of stress positions. Welshofer testified later that the meaning of “stress positions” had never been explained in his Army training back in the States; Welshofer was left largely to his own devices to fill in the meaning of the term. According to Welshofer, the Sanchez memo (disclosed publicly for the first time in January 2006) was the only guidance on permissible interrogation techniques in Iraq he ever received.

The Interrogations

By the time Mowhoush, 57, arrived at FOB Tiger in mid-November, his four sons had been in U.S. custody for approximately 11 days, held in a prison outside Baghdad. According to one of them, Hossam, U.S. forces made clear to the sons in the course of interrogations that they had been arrested for the purpose of making sure General Mowhoush turned himself in. According to the son, Mowhoush arrived at the base expecting that he would be able to set his sons free. But Mowhoush’s sons remained in detention; one of them would later play a part in U.S. efforts to extract from their father what information they could.

Chief Welshofer was among the first interrogators Mowhoush would see. According to Welshofer, his interrogation of Mowhoush on the day of Mowhoush’s arrival on November 10 was limited to direct questions – a two-hour affair that passed with little of consequence. By the end of that week, though, Welshofer had begun to take a different approach. Welshofer took Mowhoush, his hands bound, before an audience of fellow detainees and slapped him – an attempt, according to Welshofer, to show Mowhoush who was in charge.

Still unsatisfied with Mowhoush’s answers in interrogation, Welshofer’s unit brought Mowhoush with them when they moved a few days later from FOB Tiger to a converted railroad station called the Blacksmith Hotel. The “Hotel” was a makeshift facility, set up to handle an influx of Iraqi prisoners anticipated from sweeps intended to stop the growing insurgency. There, on November 24, Welshofer called in interrogation reinforcements. According to military documents and trial testimony, Welshofer engaged CIA and possibly Army Special Forces personnel – together with a “Scorpion” team of Iraqi paramilitary forces on the CIA payroll – to ratchet up the pressure. Three separate soldiers eventually recounted what they saw and heard. The new team beat Mowhoush with sledgehammer handles; as one soldier testified, eight to ten of the non-military forces “interrogate[d] Mowhoush and ‘beat the crap’ out of him.” Specialist Jerry Loper, a guard at the Blacksmith Hotel, was standing outside the interrogation room the night of November 24 when some of the beatings were going on, and described hearing the thudding sound of Mowhoush being hit. “It wasn’t like they were hitting a wall,” said Loper, “[t]here were loud screams.” After Mowhoush’s death, an Army autopsy revealed the effects of the beatings: Mowhoush had “massive” bruising and five broken ribs.

The next day, Welshofer interrogated Mowhoush again, this time on the roof of the interrogation building. Here, in the absence of any more specific instructions for interrogation techniques, Welshofer reached back beyond his basic training in the Army, to his own service as a trainer at a military school in Hawaii where U.S. service members are coached on what they might face if there were to fall into enemy hands. The military’s “SERE” courses (standing for Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape) were based on studies of North Korean and Vietnamese efforts to break American prisoners; the courses aimed to subject trainees to the brutal detention conditions they would have faced at the hands of the United States’ former enemies. Among other things, the courses put troops through prolonged isolation, sleep deprivation, and painful body positions; studies of the effects on troops subjected to these techniques showed most suffering from overwhelming stress, despair, and intense anxiety, and some from hallucinations and delusions as well. Internal FBI memos and press reports have pointed to SERE training as the basis for some of the harshest techniques authorized for use on detainees by the Pentagon in 2002 and 2003. When Welshofer was asked during his court martial whether anyone told him that SERE techniques were not to be used in Iraq, Welshofer was unequivocal: “No sir.”

With these techniques in his interrogator’s mind, Mowhoush’s next session included having his hands bound, being struck repeatedly on the back of his arms, in the painful spot near the humerus, and being doused with water – all these, according to Welshofer and others who later testified, drawn from the lessons of techniques learned in SERE. Later that evening, Chief Welshofer arranged for a short meeting between Mowhoush and his youngest son, Mohammed, then 15 years old; Welshofer hoped the meeting would compel Mowhoush to convey more useful information. He later described Mowhoush as being moved to tears upon seeing his son. According to Mohammed though, the meeting was more than a conversation; in interviews with Human Rights First, Mohammed explained that U.S. personnel made Mowhoush believe his son would be executed if he did not speak to their satisfaction, and soldiers fired a bullet into the ground near Mohammed’s head within earshot but just beyond the eyesight of Mowhoush. Mohammed reports this was the last time he saw his father alive.

By November 26, Welshofer was ready to try yet another technique – stuffing his subject into a sleeping bag until Mowhoush was prepared to respond. Welshofer had already proposed the sleeping bag technique to his Company Commander, Major Jessica Voss, who authorized its use. Much later, trial testimony would make clear that the technique had been used on at least 12 detainees. It proved catastrophically ineffective in Mowhoush’s case. During his final interrogation, Mowhoush was shoved head-first into the sleeping bag, wrapped with electrical cord, and rolled from his stomach to his back. Welshofer sat on Mowhoush’s chest and blocked his nose and mouth. At one point, according to Loper, Mowhoush started to clinch and kick his legs, “almost like he was being electrocuted.” It was at this point Mowhoush gave out, dying (according to the autopsy report) of asphyxia due to smothering and chest compression.

The day after his death, the U.S. military issued a press release stating that Mowhoush had died of natural causes.

Taking Account

Despite the brutality of Mowhoush’s death, and the likely involvement of officials from the CIA, only one individual, Chief Welshofer, has faced court martial for his actions. Over the course of a 6-day trial in Colorado, more than two years after Mowhoush’s final interrogation, a 6-member Army jury heard testimony that civilian leaders in the Administration had instructed that Geneva Convention protections against cruel and inhuman treatment would not apply in this conflict; that the U.S. commanding general in Iraq, General Sanchez, had authorized “stress positions” in interrogation; and that, according to Welshofer and his own commanding officer, Major Voss, stuffing a detainee in a sleeping bag was widely understood to fall within that general authorization. Jurors also heard testimony, some closed to the public, of the involvement of the CIA and Special Forces, as well as of the Iraqi paramilitary group, the “Scorpions.” Secret Army documents had long noted this involvement: “[T]he circumstances surrounding the death are further complicated due to Mowhoush being interrogated and reportedly beaten by members of a Special Forces team and other government agency (OGA) employees two days earlier.” And jurors heard Welshofer’s own tearful testimony – that he was trying to be a loyal soldier, and trying to do his job.

Although he was originally charged with murder, Welshofer was convicted of lesser charges: negligent homicide and negligent dereliction of duty. That conviction carried a possible sentence of more than three years in prison, but Welshofer received a far more lenient sentence from the Army jury: a written reprimand, a $6,000 fine, and 60 days with movement restricted to his home, base, and church.

The others implicated in Mowhoush’s death have faced less. Chief Warrant Officer Jefferson Williams and Specialist Jerry Loper, who were present during Mowhoush’s interrogation, were originally charged with murder, but the charges were later dropped. In exchange for testimony against Welshofer, Williams will receive administrative (not criminal) punishment, and Loper will be tried in a summary proceeding rather than a full court martial. Another soldier, Sgt. 1st Class William Sommer, had his murder charge dropped as well and may receive nonjudicial punishment. No charges have been brought (nor are charges expected to be brought according to law enforcement and intelligence officials) against CIA personnel, and Special Forces Command determined (without public explanation) that none of their personnel were guilty of wrongdoing. Major Voss, the officer who commanded the Military Intelligence unit responsible for interrogating Mowhoush, was reprimanded for her failure to provide adequate supervision, but she was not charged in the death. The commander of the 3rd ACR from 2002-2004 (including the period of Mowhoush’s death) was Colonel David A. Teeples. At a preliminary hearing in Welshofer’s case, Teeples testified to his belief that the sleeping bag technique was approved and effective; Teeples was reportedly “reluctant” to press charges against Welshofer, despite the view of military lawyers that Welshofer should be prosecuted. Teeples does not appear to have been disciplined in connection with Mowhoush’s death.

Source: Command's Responsibility: Detainee Deaths in U.S. Custody in Iraq and Afghanistan (2006)