GIs Charged With Detainee's Murder

Four soldiers accused of smothering an Iraqi general during an interrogation last fall have been charged with murder, bringing the total number of U.S. troops charged with murder in Iraq to at least 10.

The soldiers could get life in prison without parole if convicted in the Nov. 26 death of Maj. Gen. Abed Hamed Mowhoush, 57, at Qaim, Iraq. The Army said Mowhoush died of asphyxiation from chest compression and from being smothered.

The handling of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. troops has become a worldwide scandal, fed by images from the Abu Ghraib prison. But Mowhoush's case is rare, said Christopher Wilson, a former military prosecutor now in private practice in California.

"I don't know of any other case where a major general died of asphyxiation during interrogation. I doubt that this has happened in the past 50 years," he said.

The Army gave no details on what the soldiers are alleged to have done. But The Denver Post, citing unidentified military documents, reported earlier this year that Chief Warrant Officers Lewis E. Welshofer Jr. and Jefferson L. Williams slid a sleeping bag over Mowhoush's head and rolled him from his back to his stomach while asking questions. Also charged in the death were Sgt. 1st Class William J. Sommer and Spc. Jerry L. Loper.

Mowhoush, a member of the Republican Guard's air defense branch, was captured in a raid in Qaim. A U.S. military spokeswoman said at the time that Mowhoush was believed to have been financing attacks on American forces.

All four soldiers charged were assigned to the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, based at Fort Carson, at the time of Mowhoush's death and have since returned to the United States. Williams has transferred to the 513th Military Intelligence Brigade at Fort Gordon, Ga.

None of the soldiers has been jailed, officials said. Their ages and hometowns were not immediately available. They could get life in prison without parole if convicted.

Welshofer, whose mother said he is married with three children and grew up in Middletown, Ohio, did not immediately return a call for comment. The three others did not have listed numbers.

A decision on whether to court-martial the men will be made after an Article 32 hearing, which is similar to a preliminary hearing in civilian court.

Four soldiers from Fort Riley, Kan., were charged last month with murder in the deaths of four Iraqi civilians in two incidents. A soldier from 1st Armored Division in Germany has been charged with murder in the fatal shooting of a badly wounded driver for militant cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

Another soldier was sentenced to 25 years in prison last month after pleading guilty to murder in the death of an Iraqi National Guard member. His unit was not identified.

Two other Fort Carson soldiers face courts-martial on manslaughter charges in connection with an unrelated death in Iraq — that of the drowning of an Iraqi civilian in the Tigris River.

Seven members of a separate military police unit face charges in the Abu Ghraib cases, including Pfc. Lynndie England — the female soldier seen in several of the infamous photographs —l who will be court-martialed in January.

In addition to the suspicious deaths in Iraq, the U.S. military is investigating several detainee deaths in Afghanistan.

An official said in September that the military was probing whether American soldiers abused an Afghan detainee so badly that he died last year at a special forces base in southeastern Afghanistan.

The military was already looking into at least three deaths in U.S. custody in Afghanistan, dating back to December 2003. It has yet to release the results of any of the investigations.

But a CIA contractor has been charged in the United States with using a flashlight to beat a prisoner who later died in the eastern town of Asadabad in June 2003.

The charges of abuse by U.S. forces in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere triggered several investigations and spurred a debate over whether the mistreatment was the work of a few rogue soldiers, or the result of policies decided at higher levels.

Maj. Gen. George Fay, who investigated military intelligence officers at Abu Ghraib, identified 27 people attached to an intelligence brigade — both soldiers and contractors — who are accused of complicity in the abuses.

The Fay report assessed the performance of commanders and senior staff officers higher up the chain of command and attributed the abuse to personal misconduct and, in some cases, confusion and inadequate supervision — rather than orders from above or Pentagon policy.

Their findings followed an independent panel's report blaming senior leaders, including Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Richard Myers, for lax oversight of military-run prisons in Iraq.

However, the panel, led by former Defense Secretary James R. Schlesinger, found no policy of abuse and concluded that the problems were directly the fault of the soldiers who committed violence against the prisoners, and their immediate supervisors.

Critics say fault may ultimately rest with White House and Pentagon leaders for creating confusion when they decided in early 2002 that terrorist suspects at Guantanamo Bay did not fall under Geneva Conventions and then sought to redefine longtime rules of detention, interrogation and trials to suit the counterterrorism war.

In a memo written in August 2002, the Justice Department appeared to justify the use of torture in the war on terror and argued that the president's wartime powers superseded anti-torture laws and treaties. The Justice Department has disavowed that memo.

Other documents have emerged showing that Rumsfeld authorized guards to strip detainees and threaten them with dogs. Later Rumsfeld issued a scaled back list of procedures — still in effect this year — which includes isolation, sleep adjustment and "false flag," in which interrogators pretend to be from a country other than the United States.