WASHINGTON — When CIA officers took the Iraqi detainee to Abu Ghraib prison, his head was covered with an empty sandbag and Army guards were ordered to take him directly to a shower room that served as a makeshift interrogation center at the overcrowded, shell-damaged facility outside Baghdad.
An hour later, during intensive questioning by intelligence officers, the prisoner collapsed and died. Only then did interrogators remove the hood to reveal severe head wounds that had not been treated.
The dead prisoner, whose identity has not been made public, would become famous around the world through a photograph of a body wrapped in plastic sheeting and packed in ice -- among the most indelible images yet made public in the Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal.
An account of his final hours, and of the failure to provide medical attention to a severely wounded prisoner, is contained in sworn statements provided to Army investigators by military police guards at Abu Ghraib.
After the man died, the documents say, officials argued over who was responsible for the body. Eventually, the body deteriorated to the point that it had to be disposed of.
The official documents describing the episode, obtained Monday, were based on testimony at a secret military court hearing last month on the charges against Sgt. Javal S. Davis, one of seven members of the 372nd Military Police Company accused of beating and humiliating Iraqi detainees.
"He wasn't dead at first," Spc. Jason A. Kenner said of the unidentified detainee, adding that guards were told not to remove the prisoner's hood when they took him to the shower room.
"We didn't know how much he was injured. He went into the showers for interrogation, and about an hour later he died on them. I was sent to find out what was going on. Later that day, they decided to put him on ice....
"After he passed, the sandbag was removed and I saw that he was severely beaten on his face," Kenner testified. "At the time, they would interrogate people in the shower rooms. He was shackled to the wall.... The shower room was just used because there was no other space available."
Another guard in the 372nd, Spc. Bruce Brown, said, "I heard of a dead detainee being stored in the hard site. We would spray air freshener to cover the scent.... They finally took the body away."
