Testimony of Major David DiNenna, U.S. Army, Sabrina Harman Courts-Mar

ABSTRACT

Major David DiNenna, U.S. Army, was called as a witness on May 16, 2005 for the defense, was sworn, and testified as follows: Q

For the record state your rank, name, and unit of assignment?

Major David DiNenna, Senior, currently assigned to the 220th MP Brigade.

Sir, can you tell us about the conditions that you found at Abu Ghraib when you got there?

The conditions were, for lack of a better term, deplorable. When we first arrived—when the 72^nd MP Company was present in Abu Ghraib operating Camp Vigilant and a couple hundred prisoners, within the four walls of Abu Ghraib itself was trash, debris, glass, metal, rubble, packs of wild dogs, rodents. It had been looted by the civilian populous after the Regime released all the prisoners so it was in a—it was total disarray and trash.

And, sir, can you tell us about the hygienic conditions or lack of hygienic conditions there?

Whenever a soldier or a unit arrived at Abu Ghraib, most of the soldiers came down with vomiting, diarrhea as a result of the—just the filth, the trash that existed. They would be like that for a couple of days and then get over it. Some would get it again, and some wouldn’t. The lucky ones wouldn’t get it at all, which was very few. So identically it was pretty much a trash hole, it was filthy.

Did you have enough medical personal, sir, to take care of these soldiers who were getting sick?

We were extremely limited on medical personal throughout the entire time. Basically between battalion medics and battalion field surgeons, including the other medics from all the other units created an aide station, so to speak. But between—we had to serve the soldiers as well as the prisoners. So we—bottom line we didn’t have the enough medical personal.

And would the prisoners have many medical difficulties, sir.

Extremely. They—we had a lot of diabetes, TB. Based on their diet change their health went down very quickly. Towards the end we were doing two to three MEDVACs a day for heart conditions, diabetics, I think, stuff as well. A lot of amputees, and wounded prisoners came in. So they had a great deal of problems.

And what was the danger level at Abu Ghraib in the middle of all of this, sir?

It was extremely high. We had a very high threat external as well as internal, we’d have between 7 and 9,000 prisoners and they have a hundred soldiers per shift to watch them all. WE had to deal with that as well as the constant mortar attacks and RPGs and small arms fire, and then the IEDs picked up.

And did you have enough soldiers to deal with all of these attacks, sir?

No. The misconception is that when you guard soldiers you simply stand there and watch—or when you guard prisoners you stand there and just watch them. That is not the case. WE averaged probably between a 100 and 150 prisoners per soldier. We didn’t have near enough military police so lots of personal were required for extra security for the MPs to run three different facilities as well as escorts, and QRF, and the list is just endless. WE were probably about a battalion and a company short of personal.

And how was the stress level there then, sir, for you and other soldiers?

Well it was extremely high. Soldiers were probably worked between a 12 and 16 hour day. We would try to give them at least a half of day or a day off so they could do laundry. But besides that—between that and the attacks—when you guard prisoners and you’re attacked you just don’t seek safety for yourself, you also have to keep guarding the prisoners because they’ll attempt to escape which they tried many times when we were attacked. So it’s kind of two full missions when you’re a soldier guarding prisoners, which made the stress level extremely high.

Did you have many occasions of escape, sir?

We had—in the outside facilities we had 11 prisoners escape. In the outside facility we had a couple escape but they were usually aided by the Iraqi Correctional Officers would take them on a detail and then let them go. But due to the lack of lighting and soldiers it was very difficult to keep 8,000 prisoners confined.

Sir, you just mentioned lack of lighting, could you tell us about that?

Well obviously when you guard prisoners you need lights at night. Lighting was an issue the entire time. We—you know, generators were—or lights would go down either from mortars or just that kind of deficiencies, we couldn’t get them replaced. There was an Army contract to install permanent lighting in the outside facilities but it was never finished and to this day I still don’t know why. So there were times when we had to bring in vehicles around the compounds just to add enough lighting to keep it on the prisoners at night.

How often would say that occurred?

At the beginning it was quite a few times at Camp Vigilant. Ganci was a very large facility that even the truck lighting wouldn’t help that much. And then the hard site prison itself, the generators just wouldn’t continue to run so that becomes a very dangerous situation. The other confines themselves they have the capability of taking apart the bunks and developing—making weapons out of the metal. So the lighting for the entire times was an issue, discredited—we never resolved it.

Sir, can you explain to us how the—how did—people taking apart these bunks and making weapons?

Prisoners had nothing to do all day but come up with ideas of how to make weapons. They—when they built the hard site prison, they didn’t use proper—they didn’t—well the bunks, they didn’t use proper cement when they put in the bars on the windows. It was basically just a—they wanted to get it done quick. CPA wasn’t really there to supervise them, they actually didn’t get there until December, it was their facility to run. So when the prisoners figured out that they could just chip away at the cement on the bars, they would take them out and they could basically just bend the bunks until the metal broke which they did in quite a few of the tiers when they had uprises.

And, sir, can you tell us about these uprisings in the tiers?

In the hard site prison?

Yes, sir.

Most of the uprisings were a result of the food, overcrowded, being detained for a lengthy periods of time where they either were not interrogated by MI or they didn’t receive timely court dates. So even though they’re locked down in a cell so to speak, there’s six to eight prisoners per cell. We also let the Iraqi Correctional Officers, and the Iraqi Warden attempt to handle the uprisings, but the result was—we would then take over the operation from them, bring in the internal reaction force for cell detractions. The problem was that if—you could hear it throughout the entire hard site prison so if one tier erupted then another tier would be erupt and at the time we only had 8 to 10 MPs in the entire hard site to work the facility because that was all the soldiers we had left.

And how many prisoners would you have in the entire hard site with these 8 to 10 soldiers?

Towards the end they would bring us around 1,500 to 2,000 throughout the whole hard site.

And, sir, you talked about the fact that food was a factor in the uprising. Could you tell us a little bit more about the food issues at Abu Ghraib?

Initially we started with MREs for the prisoners. When a contract was set up through a local Iraqi Company, it was actually subcontracted, was set up through a local Iraqi Company it was actually subcontracted to a hotel in Baghdad, and then subcontracted to another company that would deliver the food. The food was usually undercooked, it was dirty, it had debris, the food had rodent, feces, and glass. At times for their evening meal they would receive a boiled egg and two pieces of cheese which obviously the prisoners didn’t appreciate. IT got to the point where they were either throwing stones or rocks at the vendors themselves or throw the food back at the MPs.

We had medics, field medicine, and field surgeons and everybody evaluating, include looking on it every time it came in. So a lot of the times we would just throw the vendors out the gate, so to speak, and give the prisoners the MREs which made them very happy.

And, sir, what kind of issues did you have with giving the prisoners the MREs, did that cause issues for the soldiers?

Well, midway through some—around the November timeframe we were directed not to purchase any more MREs.

Directly from who, sir?

Major General Orfakawski at the CGTS center. They wanted to use humanitarian meals which we couldn’t—they couldn’t give us enough because we were well over capacity. However, we did have some MREs on hand that are kept for the prisoners because we knew that the Iraqi Food Contract was going to continue, so it would be an issue. The other thing was we’d have to take out the warming products, good serving work products. We also had to take out the Tabasco sauce and a lot of things that they could use to make weapons which they would use the Tabasco sauce for. So to feed 6,000 prisoners on the outside, on the outside compounds as well as the ones on the inside of the hard site, MREs was a lengthy process because you had to sit there and trip their MREs. It took quite a bit of time which made the prisoners pretty upset which then puts more stress on the soldiers because they had to deal with that issue.

And you said that there was some issue about overcrowding in the hard site. Can you tell us about that, sir?

Yes, actually overcrowding existed everywhere. You know basically our mission—entire mission we should have seven MPs on the gate so to speak for 500 prisoners and as well as the tower guards. So it would be approximately 10 or 11 MPs per 500 prisoners. You do the same ratio—in a hard site facility it’s different, that’s basically a corrections operation, which is entirely different than the internment resettlement operation, so the issue we ran in to at the hard site when they put a lot of the Iraqi Civilian Criminals in there is they just kept opening tiers and kept putting them in, but we didn’t get an increase in soldiers and they did the same on the outside at Ganci and at Camp Vigilant as well.

And could you tell us about the issues you had with detainees being kept in custody longer than those who were—not having court dates?

Well it existed both for the—well they labeled security detainees, which was attacks on coalition forces and it was the same case for the civilian detainee—the criminal detainees which was Iraqi on Iraqi violations. Every time a new sweep—or operation would come in and those who were to be interrogated would be pushed on the back burner and these new ones coming would then be interrogated. Well if you multiply this by six months you have a prisoner that was there for six months and never spoken to either by MI or the same would happen with the civilian courts, they were just standing them up. So civilian criminals that were there for—in the beginning would be there towards the end as well ----

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Testimony of Major David DiNenna, U.S. Army, Sabrina Harman Courts-Martial

ABSTRACT