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Intel Soldier Recounts Abuse at Abu Ghraib

One intelligence soldier at Abu Ghraib is talking...and not only describing the abuse of prisoners, but naming another intelligence soldier involved in the abuse:

U.S. Army Spc. Israel Rivera had just returned to duty at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq last October after minor surgery to remove shrapnel from his face. He was checking his e-mail, he recalls, when another military intelligence soldier approached. "Hey Izzy, did you hear about those detainees that raped that one kid?" asked the other soldier, Spc. Armin J. Cruz.

Izzy hadn't, so Cruz took him over to the cell block:

In a telephone interview with The Times, Rivera described his involvement in the case for the first time, saying that he visited the cellblock largely out of curiosity and that he was stunned by what he saw: detainees being stripped naked, made to crawl on their stomachs and chained into a ball of limbs and flesh on the prison floor. Rivera, 20, is the first military intelligence soldier to come forward publicly and say that he witnessed a fellow intelligence soldier, Cruz, taking part in the abuse of prisoners in the isolation cellblock at Abu Ghraib. Cruz has also been cited in testimony by Sgt. Samuel J. Provance III, another intelligence officer, who said Cruz "was known to bang on the table, yell, scream, and maybe assaulted detainees during interrogations in the booth."

Then, the cover-up:

Rivera said that as he got ready to leave the cellblock amid anguished pleas for help from the prisoners, Cruz stopped him to make sure he didn't plan to talk. "Before I walked out of that bay, he looked at me and asked me, 'Izzy, you're not going to tell anybody, are you?' " Rivera said, speaking by telephone from Baghdad this week. "And I looked at him and I said: 'No, absolutely not, Cruz. You have nothing to worry about.' " Rivera said he never informed his superiors and still hasn't shared his account with military investigators.

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