Abuse Video Shows POW Torment

Pentagon: 33 Prison Deaths In Iraq, Afghanistan Under Investigation

(CBS/AP)  The Pentagon has begun criminal investigations of at least 37 deaths involving detainees held by U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, officials said Friday. There are 33 cases involved, the officials said, eight more than the military reported two weeks ago.

The officials said they could not immediately say for sure the exact number of deaths involved.

Eight pending cases have been classified as homicides involving suspected assaults of detainees before or during interrogation sessions, a senior military official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

At the same time the U.S. military launched investigations into the prisoner deaths, the first video evidence of prisoner mistreatment has emerged, and shows abuse inside the walls of Abu Ghraib prison was rampant.

The video, obtained by The Washington Post, shows an American soldier striking a prisoner in the face. The soldier then drags another prisoner by his handcuffs across the floor then returns to begin organizing naked prisoners into the pyramid that was one of the original images to come to light in the prison scandal.

The abuse began last October and continued through December. CBS News National Security Correspondent David Martin reports much of the mayhem occurred on a single night when inmates who had rioted in another part of the prison were brought into the cellblock known as the hard site.

Martin reports the video footage shows Spc. Charles Graner Jr. -- the ringleader of the abuse -- as he cocks his fist to punch a shackled Iraqi prisoner

As bad as the pictures are, sworn statements the prisoners gave to investigators describe worse, Martin reports.

According to those statements, American soldiers urinated on prisoners, sodomized one with a chemical light stick and took pictures as a translator raped a 15-year-old boy.

Although the guards claim they were just following orders to soften up prisoners for interrogation by military intelligence, the investigation has found that many of the abused prisoners were simply criminals who had no information of any value, Martin reports.

Their statements catalogue punishments that can only be described as sadistic. One statement reads: "He cuffed my hands … behind my back to the … window to the point my feet were off the ground and I was hanging there for about five hours. He started beating me with the chair until the chair was broken. After that they started choking me … they took a little break and then they started kicking me very hard with their feet until I passed out."

Of the total number of cases of prisoner death being probed, 30 were inside U.S.-run detention facilities and three were outside. Fifteen of the 30 cases were declared by U.S. authorities to be deaths by natural cause or of undetermined cause, the senior official said.

Of the 15 other cases that happened inside detention facilities, four were categorized as justifiable homicides, two as homicides, and nine were still under active investigation, the official said. Eight of those nine have been classified as homicides involving suspected assaults on detainees before or during questioning.

Six of the nine unresolved cases happened in Iraq — including two at Abu Ghraib prison — and three were in Afghanistan.

The 33 total cases date from December 2002 to the present.

Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman, said members of Congress were briefed on the 33 cases Friday.

In addition to the 30 cases involving deaths inside U.S.-run detention facilities, there were three cases involving detainees who were outside. One was a death involving a soldier who shot and killed an Afghan who had lunged toward a weapon, the senior military officer said.

Another was an Iraqi who drowned after he was forced off a bridge by a U.S. soldier. In the third case, a U.S. soldier shot and killed an Iraqi when he lunged at another U.S. soldier, the official said.

In the four cases of justifiable homicide, there were a total of eight detainee deaths. Three of the four cases were at Abu Ghraib prison. In one of them, in November 2003, four Iraqis were killed. An April 2004 case at Camp Bucca in southern Iraq resulted in two deaths. There also were cases at Abu Ghraib in April 2003 and March 2004 that each involved one death.