US general denies urging use of dogs in interrogations

FORT MEADE, Md, May 25 (Reuters) U S Army Maj Gen Geoffrey Miller, the highest ranking officer to testify in the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, said he never suggested using military dogs in interrogations of Iraqi prisoners.

Miller was called yesterday to testify as a defense witness by a military police dog handler charged with using his dog to abuse prisoners at the jail outside Baghdad, one of a number of low-ranking troops prosecuted for ill-treatment of prison inmates.

But Miller's testimony appeared to undercut the defense of Sgt.

Santos Cardona, 32, of Fullerton, California, who argues that he was acting with the consent of superior officers. He is charged with dereliction of duty and assaulting and threatening Iraqi detainees with his Belgian shepherd.

Miller is a former commander of the Guantanamo prison on Cuba, which houses suspects caught in President George W Bush's declared ''war on terrorism'' and was sent to Baghdad in 2003 to improve intelligence gathering from prisoners there.

He had avoided testifying in previous Abu Ghraib abuse trials but his retirement has been held up until he clears up outstanding legal matters.

In about 40 minutes of testimony yesterday, he denied recommending the use of military dogs to threaten interrogation subjects.

''We discussed using dogs only for control -- not for interrogation,'' Miller said under cross-examination.

Col Thomas Pappas, then the commander at Abu Ghraib, testified that talks with Miller about dogs were in general terms.

NO SPECIFIC GUIDANCE ''It was a general discussion about military working dogs, that they were an effective tool at Guantanamo Bay because Arabs feared dogs,'' he said. ''But there was no really specific guidance in, 'Have them here, use them this way.' ''Gen Miller didn't really direct anything. He said, 'This is how we do it at Guantanamo Bay','' Pappas said.

In 2004, Pappas wrote a memo calling for an end to the use of dogs to intimidate inmates and recommended that dog handlers not be disciplined for abusing detainees.

Cardona and another dog handler, Sgt Michael Smith, who was convicted on similar charges in March and sentenced to 179 days in prison, allegedly played a ''game'' in which they tried to scare prisoners so badly they urinated and defecated on themselves.

The two were allegedly part of a pattern of abuse of Abu Ghraib prisoners that included terrifying inmates with snarling, unmuzzled dogs and subjecting them to sexual and other forms of humiliation.

Prosecutors called Cardona and his colleagues on the night shift at Abu Ghraib ''corrupt cops.'' Ten U S soldiers have been convicted of abuse at Abu Ghraib in late 2003 and early 2004, the months after Miller was sent to try to improve information gathering as an Iraqi insurgency intensified after the March, 2003 invasion.

Treatment of inmates in U S military prisons abroad has been an embarrassing issue for the United States since 2004, when photographs were leaked showing prisoners being abused and sexually humiliated by U S military personnel.

REUTERS DH RN0718