SAN DIEGO - Charges against seven Navy SEALs accused of abusing Iraqi prisoners, including one who died at Abu Ghraib prison, were initiated by a disgraced former member of the unit who was trying to save his own career, lawyers for two of the accused said Wednesday.
One of the defense attorneys said the Iraqi who was found dead in November in a shower at Abu Ghraib was in good condition until the CIA took custody of him.
Cmdr. Jeff Bender, a spokesman for Naval Special Warfare Command in Coronado, the SEALs' headquarters, said it was inappropriate to comment on an ongoing investigation. A CIA spokeswoman declined to comment.
Members of a Sea-Air-Land, or SEAL, unit known as SEAL Team-7 are facing military charges including aggravated assault, obstruction of justice and conduct unbecoming an officer. Members of Seal Team-7 were part of a special operations-CIA unit hunting targets in Iraq, according to an Army report on Abu Ghraib.
The names of the accused SEALs have not been released.
Milt Silverman, a civilian lawyer in San Diego representing one of the accused sailors, said the accusations of prisoner abuse were made by a SEAL who earned the nickname "Klepto" for stealing a fellow SEAL's body armor in Iraq.
"Klepto" made the allegations of prisoner abuse while appealing a decision to kick him out of the SEALs for the theft, Silverman wrote in an opinion piece published Wednesday in The San Diego Union-Tribune.
Silverman was out of town Wednesday and could not be reached by telephone, but John Tranberg, a civilian defense attorney for another defendant, supported Silverman's account in an interview. The accuser is no longer a SEAL but remains in the Navy, Tranberg said.
Some of the accused SEALs were implicated in the death of Manadel al-Jamadi, whom Silverman described as a terrorist bomb supplier who worked for Saddam Hussein.
Al-Jamadi was thought to have been connected with an attack on a Red Cross facility, according to a report by Army Maj. Gen. George Fay into the role of Army intelligence units in Iraq prisoner abuse.
In subduing al-Jamadi on Nov. 4, 2003, a SEAL hit him on the side of the head with the butt of a gun, Fay wrote.
Two CIA personnel brought al-Jamadi into Abu Ghraib and put him in a shower room with a sandbag on his head. He was dead 45 minutes later. An autopsy determined he died of a blood clot in his head, probably caused by being hit with the gun, the Army has said.
Silverman said al-Jamadi had suffered cuts and bruises but was in good condition when he was handed to the CIA.
Three forensic pathologists reviewed al-Jamadi's autopsy and concluded he did not suffer a blood clot to the brain and did not die of blunt-force trauma, Silverman said.
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