[wvns] Abu Ghraib Soldier Tells All
Joe Darby tells of his agonising decision to report fellow soldiers
for abuse at Abu Ghraib, knowing his life would be in danger for ever
Why I had to tell the world what they'd done
Joe Darby
The Sunday Times
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article2198100
I was posted to Iraq in May 2003. Abu Ghraib was in a shambles. Three
of the prisons hadn't been finished yet. The local people had come in
and looted everything; they'd stripped the electrics out, they'd
ripped buildings apart. There was nothing left when we got there.
The first time we got attacked was on our second night there. We were
told we couldn't leave our compound after dark so we were getting
mortared and we couldn't do anything about it. All of us were very
disgruntled. We had done six months in al-Hillah – and our orders were
only for six months. But when we got to Kuwait we were told that we
were going to Abu Ghraib. So you had a lot of pissed-off soldiers.
Within a month of taking over the prison, I saw a disturbing picture.
It was 4am, because I worked a weird shift and the guys on the hard
site were coming back, and Charles Graner walked up to me and said,
"Hey, Darb, check this out" – he showed me this picture and it had a
prisoner chained to a cell, naked from the waist down with a hood on
his head and the floor was all wet around him. He looked at me and
said, "Darb, you know the Christian in me knows this is wrong, but the
corrections officer in me can't help but love to make a grown man piss
himself."
And I looked at him and said, "Graner, you're screwed up." He laughed
and went into his room and I went to work. I didn't think anything of
it because there was a thing of water there and it could have been
something Graner staged – a little shock-factor photo for him to take
home with – so I didn't think anything about it, but that was the
first instance where I started to question what was going on.
In December, after I had come back from leave, I heard there'd been a
shooting. I asked if anyone had any pictures and everybody kept saying
`Talk to Graner, Graner probably does."
So one night, sitting in the cyber cafe – where I volunteered so
people could call home and use the internet – Graner came in and
handed me two discs. I downloaded both discs, gave them back and he
left. It was three in the morning so I went to bed.
The next evening, I'd finished most of my work and at one o'clock at
night I went through the first CD and it was all pictures of
al-Hillah, pictures of the green zone, and the next folder was all the
prison abuse photos. The first picture I saw I laughed because it was
just a pyramid of naked people – I didn't know it was Iraqi prisoners.
I've seen soldiers do some stupid things but as I got into the photos
more I realised what they were.
There were photos of Graner beating three prisoners in a group, there
was a picture of a naked male Iraqi standing with a bag over his head
holding the sand-bagged head of a male Iraqi kneeling between his legs.
The most pronounced woman in the photographs was Lynndie England and
she was leading prisoners around on a leash, giving a thumbs-up
standing behind the pyramid and posing with one of the Iraqi prisoners
who had died.
England was Graner's girlfriend from the time when we were in Fort
Lee, Virginia. She would have done anything to make Graner happy. She
was an administration clerk. She would get off work and then go and
stay with him when he was on shift. Graner had a weird and
manipulative personality. He could be very religious in one minute and
very racial about the Iraqis the next.
I looked through every photo, shut down my computer, went outside and
smoked probably about six or seven cigarettes because I had no idea
what to make of it. I went back and I looked at them again. They
bothered me because morally they went against everything I knew to be
right. These prisoners weren't being held because they had attacked
Americans, they hadn't killed Americans or dragged them through the
streets like the guys in Falluja. These guys – most of them were
picked up at the beginning of the war and were there because
intelligence wanted to talk to them.
It was unbelievable at first. I couldn't believe they would do this
and take photos of it. Why would you take pictures of doing something
that you blatantly know is illegal? How could they be this stupid?
Then I tried to figure out what to do. I thought about it and thought
about it. I talked to people – I talked to my room mate, who was my
counterpart in operations, I talked to my mentor, who had just got to
the facility. I just asked obscure questions: if you had knowledge of
someone doing something to prisoners that was illegal, what would you do?
I got the answers I expected to get from myself. You have a duty to do
something about it – you're an MP, it's your job. But it wasn't as
easy a decision as that. My grandfather had been a 25-year veteran of
the army in the Vietnam and Korean wars. My uncles had been in the
army. My stepfather had been in the marine corps.
I first thought: maybe if I don't say anything, someone else will find
out. Or maybe if I give someone else a copy of the CD, they'll do it
and I won't have to. It took me about two and a half to three weeks to
make the decision. I expect most people in my unit did not agree with
me turning in the other soldiers because these were very popular guys
– a lot hung out with them. I was expecting a backlash from other
soldiers in a combat environment where your life relies on the guy
next to you.
I typed up a letter on the computer and printed it out, untraceable,
and made a copy of the pictures off my computer. I went to try to find
CID (the army's criminal investigation division). Special agent Pearon
answered the door and I handed him the envelope and I said, "This was
left in our office. It just says `Give to CID' on it, so here you go."
I don't think it was 15 minutes before he was sitting next to me in my
office, questioning me on where the CD came from.
Later I gave a statement. But while I was there the individuals were
being rounded up by agents. So I was in a room and they were in a
hallway behind a door behind me. The only exit I knew of was right
past them. So the CID agents covered me in blankets and made them
stand and face the wall and shuffled me out of the door. All you could
see was three inches of my boot as they pushed me out and got me to
the truck.
I felt no guilt. I felt relief that I'd finally done it because it had
been weighing on me. I knew something had to be done. But I was afraid
of retribution, not only from them but from other soldiers. They had
their weapons and at night when I was asleep they were less than 100
yards away – and I didn't even have a door in the room I slept in. I
had a raincoat hanging up for a door. They could reach their hand
through the door and cut my throat without making a noise and I was
scared of that.
Five weeks later I was sitting in the dining facility in Camp Anaconda
in Iraq when a press conference came on that was the live feed from
the congregational hearings about Abu Ghraib. There was an
announcement that secretary Rumsfeld was thanking me for turning in
the photos and allowing the investigation to go forward – thanking me
by name. I was eating with four soldiers and I just stopped mid-bite.
One of the guys looked across and said, "Darb, we need to leave", and
so we put our trays up and walked out. Within 72 hours everyone in my
unit and my home town knew I'd been the one to turn them in.
My wife had known the night I turned them in that I was doing
something and people were going to be arrested, but she found out with
the rest of the country. She took emergency leave of absence from work
and tried to escape to her sister's house. Her sister's house was
spray-painted with "Iraq" all over it – spelt "Iroc".
I received a letter from Rumsfeld saying he had no malicious intent
and was only doing it to praise me, but I find it hard to believe the
secretary of defence of the United States had no idea about the star
witness from a criminal case being anonymous.
I was told to pack my stuff and that I was getting on a plane in two
hours. I did what I was told and turned my gear in, packed my own bag
and got on a plane. While I was sitting there I was trying to figure
out from the map they gave me before I left exactly where the bus
station was so I could get a bus home.
And the plane landed – it didn't even taxi, it stopped on the runway
and a protection team came on and got me off. There was a
lieutenant-colonel standing there who saluted me and said, "Son, get
in the car, your family's waiting."
When I was asked where I wanted to go, I said, "I want to go home."
And he said, "No, you don't understand son, you can't go home. You'll
never be able to go home."
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