WASHINGTON – The Army is expected to begin filing charges soon against 26 soldiers following a probe into the late 2002 deaths of two detainees in Afghanistan.
Army investigators have recommended bringing abuse-related charges ranging from negligent homicide to dereliction of duty and failure to report an offense, The Washington Post said in a report for its Wednesday editions, quoting two Army officers familiar with the investigation. One sergeant has already been charged.
A Pentagon (search) spokesman said he had no information about the report.
The military has spent more than a year investigating the deaths of the two prisoners at the U.S. base in Bagram, Afghanistan (search), in December 2002. One died of a pulmonary embolism due to blunt-force injuries to the legs, the other from blunt-force injuries to his lower extremities complicating coronary artery disease.
The Post said that most of the soldiers facing charges are from the Fort Bragg, N.C.-based 519th Military Intelligence Battalion and the 377th Military Police Company, an Army Reserve unit based in Cincinnati.
Some members of the 519th intelligence unit were later deployed to Iraq and have also been implicated in the abuse of prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison that occurred in late 2003.
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