US general denies urging use of dogs in interrogations

Photos released in 2004 called US treatment of inmates at Abu Ghraib into question. Picture / Reuters

FORT MEADE, Maryland - The highest ranking officer to testify in the Abu Ghraib prison scandal has denied suggesting using military dogs in interrogations of Iraqi prisoners.

Major General Geoffrey Miller was called as a defence witness by a military police dog handler charged with using his dog to abuse prisoners at the jail outside Baghdad.

"We discussed using dogs only for control - not for interrogation," Miller said under cross-examination.

But General Miller's testimony appeared to undercut the defence of Sergeant Santos Cardona, 32, of Fullerton, California, who argues that he was acting with the consent of superior officers.

He is charged with dereliction of duty and assaulting and threatening Iraqi detainees with his Belgian shepherd.

General Miller was sent to Baghdad in 2003 to improve intelligence gathering from prisoners there.

Colonel Thomas Pappas, the commander at Abu Ghraib at the time of the alleged abuse, testified that talks with General Miller about dogs were in general terms.

"It was a general discussion about military working dogs, that they were an effective tool at Guantanamo Bay because Arabs feared dogs," he said.

"But there was no really specific guidance in, 'Have them here, use them this way.'

"General Miller didn't really direct anything. He said, 'This is how we do it at Guantanamo Bay'," Colonel Pappas said.

Sergeant Cardona and another dog handler, Sergeant Michael Smith, allegedly played a "game" in which they tried to scare prisoners so badly they urinated and defecated on themselves.

Sergeant Michael Smith was convicted on similar charges in March and sentenced to 179 days in prison.

The two were allegedly part of a pattern of abuse of Abu Ghraib prisoners that included terrifying inmates with snarling, unmuzzled dogs and subjecting them to sexual and other forms of humiliation.

Prosecutors called Sergeant Cardona and his colleagues on the night shift at Abu Ghraib "corrupt cops".

Ten US soldiers have been convicted of abuse at Abu Ghraib in late 2003 and early 2004, the months after General Miller was sent to to Iraq.

- REUTERS