Washington – The Army plans to charge Lt. Col. Steven Jordan, the former head of the interrogation center at Abu Ghraib prison, with dereliction of duty, lying to investigators and conduct unbecoming an officer, his lawyer said Tuesday.
Jordan would be the highest-ranking officer at Abu Ghraib to face criminal charges in connection with the abuses at the prison.
Ten low-ranking soldiers who served at the prison outside Baghdad have been convicted.
To date, the highest-ranking officer convicted in relation to any of the prisoner abuses in Iraq and Afghanistan is Army Capt. Shawn Martin, who was found guilty in March 2005 of kicking detainees and staging the mock execution of a prisoner.
He was sentenced to 45 days in jail and fined $12,000. Other more senior officers have been reprimanded, fined and relieved of command.
Samuel Spitzberg, a former Army lawyer who served as Jordan’s attorney in Baghdad in 2004, said a military lawyer for the Military District of Washington had alerted him to the impending charges, but he had not seen the exact details.
“We’ve not had an opportunity to review the evidence, and look forward to doing that and determining whether there is a direct link with the abuses at Abu Ghraib,” Spitzberg said.
Jordan, a reservist who has remained on active duty for three years, is stationed in the Washington area, said Spitzberg, who added that the officer was not making any public statements.
Army spokesman Maj. Wayne Marotto said in an e-mail message: “The disposition of alleged offenses against LTC Jordan are still under consideration by the chain of command.”
If Jordan is charged, the next step would be the military equivalent of a grand-jury hearing to determine whether he would face court-martial, administrative punishment or no penalty at all.
Jordan was the director of the Joint Interrogation and Debriefing Center at Abu Ghraib, from the time it was established in September 2003 to December 2003, as demands for better intelligence to combat the rising insurgency were growing both in Washington and at the American military headquarters in Baghdad.
By his own account, Jordan was ill- equipped to oversee the interrogations task force at Abu Ghraib. He was a civil-affairs officer by training, and his assignment had been to set up a database at the interrogations center for tracking information gleaned from the prisoners.