As the Iraqi insurgency intensified in early 2004, an elite Special Operations unit converted one of Saddam Hussein's former military bases near Baghdad into a top-secret detention center. There, American soldiers made one of the former Iraqi government's torture chambers into their own interrogation cell. They named it the Black Room.
In the windowless room, some soldiers beat prisoners with rifle butts and spat in their faces, and, in a nearby area, used detainees for target practice in a game of jailer paintball. Their intention was to extract information to help hunt down Iraq's most-wanted terrorist, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, according to Defense Department personnel who served with the unit or were briefed on its operations.
The Black Room was part of a temporary detention site at Baghdad International Airport's Camp Nama, the secret headquarters of a military unit known as Task Force 6-26.
Placards posted by soldiers at the detention area read, "NO BLOOD, NO FOUL." According to Pentagon specialists who worked with the unit, prisoners at Camp Nama often disappeared into a detention black hole, barred from access to lawyers or relatives, and confined for weeks without charges. "The reality is, there were no rules there," another Pentagon official said.
The following account of Task Force 6-26, based on documents and interviews with more than a dozen people, offers the first detailed description of how the military's most highly trained counterterrorism unit committed serious abuse.
It adds to the picture of harsh interrogation practices at some American military prisons as well as at secret CIA detention centers. The account reveals the extent to which the unit members mistreated prisoners months before and after the abuse at Abu Ghraib was made public in April 2004, and it helps belie the Pentagon assertions that abuse was confined to a small number of reservists at Abu Ghraib.
Abuse at Camp Nama continued despite warnings beginning in August 2003 from an Army investigator, and U.S. intelligence and law enforcement officials in Iraq. The CIA barred personnel from Camp Nama that August.
For an elite unit with roughly 1,000 people at any given time, Task Force 6-26 seems to have had a large number of troops punished for detainee abuse. Since 2003, 34 task force members have been disciplined for mistreating prisoners, and at least 11 members have been removed from the unit. Five Army Rangers in the unit were convicted three months ago of kicking and punching three detainees in September 2005.
