Dog handler draws hard labor in abuse
Sergeant to forfeit $600 a month, be reduced to E-4
By Kelly Kennedy
Times staff writer
An Army dog handler was sentenced June 2 for dereliction of duty and aggravated assault in the abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
Sgt. Santos Cardona was convicted the day before, following a two-week court-martial at Fort Meade, Md., during which the defense put a high-profile two-star general on the witness stand in a failed bid to show that the noncommissioned officer was acting on orders from high up the chain of command.
The hearing officer ordered that Cardona, 32, spend 90 days in hard labor, be busted to E-4 and forfeit $600 a month for a year. The soldier had faced a maximum of 3½ years’ confinement, a dishonorable discharge and forfeiture of all pay and allowances.
Cardona’s conviction for dereliction of duty comes from willfully failing to properly handle his military working dog, as well as willfully failing to use his dog solely for authorized purposes between Nov. 15, 2003, and Jan. 15, 2004. He was found guilty of aggravated assault for unlawfully threatening a detainee Dec. 15, 2003, with a “means or force likely to produce death or grievous bodily harm.” He was found not guilty of aggravated assault against another detainee.
The court-martial panel of four officers and three enlisted members also found Cardona not guilty of maltreatment for allowing his dogs to bark and growl at detainees to harass them or make them urinate on themselves. He was also found not guilty of conspiracy for planning with another dog handler to see who could scare the most detainees into urinating or defecating on themselves. The other dog handler, Sgt. Michael J. Smith, was convicted on related charges in March, busted to private and sentenced to confinement for six months.
Defense lawyer Harvey Volzer had argued that Cardona acted on orders from far up his chain of command to use dogs during interrogations; that Abu Ghraib was a hub of confusion without clear direction; that Cardona used his dog to defend another military police officer; and that Cardona quickly reported any incidents in which his dog, Duko, had bitten someone.
“There wasn’t a heck of a lot of guidance going on,” Harvey said. “There was not one word on how to use your dog for an interrogation — not one word for using your dog on a detainee.”
After the Abu Ghraib scandal, the Defense Department added a rule to its dog-handler regulations in 2005 expressly forbidding the use of military working dogs during interrogations.
Prosecution lawyer Maj. Christopher Graveline argued in closing statements that Cardona acted on his own, lied about events he was charged with, conspired with Smith to see who could harass the detainees into soiling themselves first, and used his dogs to harass detainees when no interrogation was taking place.
“He knows how to object if he doesn’t believe his dog is being used right,” Graveline said. “Their mission was for their own entertainment, their own fun, their own laughter.”
Cardona serves with the 423rd Military Police Detachment at Fort Bragg, N.C.
Witnesses for the defense repeated several times that they were “set up for defeat,” that they could not get resources they needed, and that there was no standard operating procedure issued to dog handlers dealing specifically with interrogations. Interrogators, however, signed documents saying they would ask permission to use dogs from the commanding general, and those dogs would remain muzzled.
Witnesses for the prosecution testified that three Navy dog handlers refused to use their dogs for anything other than patrols and searches because they said the interrogations and scare tactics used by Army dog handlers for security purposes went against the Navy dog handlers’ training.
Cardona’s case was closely followed in national media because of the attempt to place blame in the Abu Ghraib scandal further up the chain of command. During the court-martial, the defense called Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller to the stand. Miller, who visited Abu Ghraib in late 2003 when he was commander of detention facilities in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, testified that he had not ordered Abu Ghraib leaders to use dogs during interrogation — only for custody and control.
He also testified that he was sent by the Joint Chiefs of Staff to look at intelligence, detention and interrogation operations.
The defense also presented a series of memos from Army Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, then commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, to demonstrate that he had authorized dogs to be used in interrogations. The prosecution, however, pointed out that the memos allowed that only if the dogs were muzzled and used with permission from the commander.
Cardona was the 11th soldier prosecuted for the detainee abuses at Abu Ghraib, which mushroomed into an international scandal after photos of the abuses were leaked by another soldier.