Prison Abuse Figure Blames ‘Secret Services’

U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Ivan “Chip” Frederick II, who agreed last week to plead guilty to some charges in the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal, said in an interview published Sunday that American “secret services” in the jail outside Baghdad had encouraged the humiliation of detainees.

But Frederick said he was taking responsibility for what he had done and urged other defendants to do the same.

“I will answer for my acts in court, but I hope that others will take my example.... There are certainly more people responsible for what happened in Abu Ghraib, and many of them are not yet charged,” Frederick told the German magazine Der Spiegel.

Frederick said in the interview that the abuse was already going on at Abu Ghraib prison when he and his unit arrived, and that they were told that military intelligence wanted it done that way.

“The people from the secret services were always praising us -- they said, ‘Do more like that, you’re doing good work,’ ” Frederick said in the interview. “The secret services had simply set no boundaries. They were looking for concrete results and were not interested in how they were achieved.”

An Army investigation released last week said an unidentified civilian contractor worked with and encouraged abuse by Frederick.