Inquiries Into CIA Killing of Detainee Suggest Coverup

Hundreds of pages of documents, obtained by TIME, shed new light on how a CIA prisoner died at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

Military police at Iraq's notorious Abu Ghraib prison dubbed him the Iceman; others used the nickname Mr. Frosty, TIME's Adam Zagorin reports. The prisoner is listed as Manadel al-Jamadi in three official investigations of his death while in U.S. custody, a death that was ruled a homicide in a Defense Department autopsy. Photographs of his battered corpse-iced to keep it from decomposing in order to hide the true circumstances of his dying-were among the many made public in the spring of 2004, raising stark questions about America's treatment of enemy detainees, TIME reports.

Some clues as to how al-Jamadi died are contained in hundreds of pages of records of three inquiries into al-Jamadi's death conducted by the CIA, Army and Navy. While the documents, obtained by TIME, suggest a story more of recklessness than of outright savagery, the way al-Jamadi's death was handled after the fact raises questions about whether the CIA is under adequate legal oversight. This comes at a time when the government is hotly debating what restrictions to place on how U.S. security forces treat enemy detainees. Republican Senator John McCain has pushed through the Senate an amendment that would ban “torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment” by any U.S. personnel, a measure President Bush has threatened to veto. Vice President Dick Cheney is lobbying to exempt the CIA from the amendment, TIME reports.

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