U.S. soldier describes more abuses in Iraq

"WASHINGTON A U.S. Army captain who has reported new allegations of detainee abuse in Iraq has met with Senator John McCain and staff aides on the House Armed Services Committee and given them additional accounts of abuse in Iraq that other soldiers had sent him in recent days, according to congressional aides.

In a brief interview after his half-hour meeting with McCain on Tuesday, the captain, Ian Fishback, declined to describe the new information he gave the senator or, in a separate meeting, to the House aides. But Fishback said that since he and two other former members of the 82nd Airborne Division accused soldiers in their battalion in Iraq last month of routinely beating and abusing prisoners in 2003 and 2004, several other soldiers had contacted him and asked him to relay to lawmakers their own experiences.

McCain, an Arizona Republican on the Armed Services Committee, said nothing in a statement about new reports of abuse, saying only, "I'm even more impressed by what a fine and honorable officer he is."

But a senior House aide who met with Fishback said the officer read a letter from a sergeant describing detainee abuse in Iraq and allowed the staffers to read the document before taking it back.

The aide, who asked not to be identified because Fishback told them the information in confidence for use in a possible congressional investigation, declined to give details of the abuse.

In separate statements to the organization Human Rights Watch, Fishback and two sergeants recounted how members of the First Battalion, 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment, had repeatedly beaten Iraqi prisoners, exposed them to extremes of hot and cold, and stacked them in human pyramids at Camp Mercury, a forward operating base near Falluja.

The abuses reportedly took place from September 2003 to April 2004, before and during the abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad."
Herald Tribune