Non-Iraqi captives singled out for harsh treatment, records say

[shraby]

Late last year, U.S. officers at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison sought approval to use extreme interrogation tactics on a captive said to have information that "could potentially save countless lives of American soldiers." The captive wasn't an Iraqi general or an al-Qaeda leader. He was a Syrian implicated in a bombing attempt against U.S. troops.

"Detainee can provide information related to safe houses, facilitators, financing, recruitment and operations of foreign fighter smuggling into Iraq," the top military intelligence officer at Abu Ghraib, Col. Thomas Pappas, wrote in a secret memo that sought to exempt the captive from normal interrogation rules.

The memo, obtained by USA TODAY, went to Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the top U.S. commander in Iraq. It laid out a plan to "fear up" the Syrian by throwing tables and chairs, yelling at him and interrogating him "continuously" for 72 hours. During that time, he would be stripped, hooded, bound in "stress positions" and permitted only brief intervals of sleep.

Sanchez testified to Congress in May that he never saw the request. But that may not have mattered: The Syrian, identified as Juwad Ali Khalif, 31, is among several non-Iraqi nationals who were allegedly beaten and sexually abused by U.S. soldiers at the prison, according to statements to investigators in a report on Abu Ghraib by Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba.

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