Abuse rare, report says

WASHINGTON — A high-level Army investigation of prisoner interrogation techniques in Iraq has found no evidence that abuse by U.S. military police or intelligence officers is widespread, officials said Sunday.

The review continues, however, and the Army has not determined whether all six soldiers charged with abusing Iraqi prisoners will face a military trial.

The investigation, led by officials in the office of the Army’s deputy chief of staff for intelligence, is looking broadly at interrogation methods in Iraq. It is not a criminal investigation of the cases that occurred in the fall involving the Army Reserve’s 372nd Military Police Company, officials said.

Amnesty International, the London-based human rights group, said it has uncovered a "pattern of torture" of Iraqi prisoners by coalition troops. The group called for an independent investigation into the claims of abuse and said it received "scores" of reports of ill treatment of detainees.

Dan Senor, spokesman for the U.S. occupation authority in Baghdad, said the reported abuse is being aggressively investigated by the military.

"Careers will be ended and criminal charges are going to be leveled," he told CNN’s "Late Edition."

Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said he was confident that the vast majority of American soldiers involved in the Iraqi prison system are acting properly and that the abuse is not widespread.

"There is no, no evidence of systematic abuse in this system at all," Myers said.

The Joint Chiefs chairman said that as soon as the initial allegations came to light, an investigation team was sent to Iraq at the request of Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz. The central focus has been the Abu Ghraib prison west of Baghdad, but Myers said the investigation is looking at prisons throughout Iraq to determine the extent of abusive or illegal handling of prisoners.

"The report back is that it is not systematic, but that work is still ongoing," he said.

Of the six soldiers in the 372nd who were charged in March with physical and sexual abuse of 20 prisoners at Abu Ghraib, one has been referred to court-martial. The rest are in various stages of a military proceeding, known as an Article 32 hearing, that will determine whether they face trial.

Two of the five have completed their hearings but no decisions have been made final, one is in the midst of a hearing and the hearings for the two others have been delayed at the request of their defense lawyers, a senior defense official said Sunday, speaking on condition of anonymity.