In his final report, Taguba named three civilians. He accused Steven Stefanowicz, a CACI interrogator, of instructing M.P.'s on how to handle prisoners, directions that, according to Taguba, "equated to physical abuse."

Taguba also cited Titan interpreter John Israel for lying under oath when he denied having witnessed detainee abuse. The last civilian named by Taguba was Adel Nakhla, also a Titan interpreter. In the widely leaked 53-page executive summary of Taguba's report, Nakhla's role is unclear. But more details about him emerge in the classified documents.

According to Nakhla's own résumé, which he had posted on a Web site devoted to the Rev. Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church, Nakhla had never worked as a translator before being sent to Abu Ghraib. Born and educated in Egypt, the 49-year-old Nakhla had lived in suburban Washington, D.C., for many years, working in computer sales, support and programming.

Like all other translators at Abu Ghraib, Nakhla began working for military intelligence officers in the interrogation center. But at some point, he was moved over to assist the military police with translating -- possibly because Nakhla didn't have the secret clearance required to work in interrogations. (Although that problem didn't hinder Israel, another Titan interpreter, who worked at the interrogation center without security clearance.)

A large man, Nakhla is seen in a few of the pictures from Abu Ghraib. According to Guy Womack, the lawyer representing Graner, Nakhla is the figure seen kneeling on or next to a group of three naked men, suspected of rape, handcuffed together on the floor.

In a sworn statement about the incident, made to the CID on Jan. 14, Nakhla presents himself as a Good Samaritan. He tried to lessen the detainees' pain by rearranging their cuffed hands, he said. He told the soldiers, "This is not acceptable behavior in this society," a plea that, according to Nakhla, moved the soldiers to end the abuse.

Four days later, Nakhla returned to the CID to made a second statement. He had left something out. "I did not say the part of how I held the detainee's foot that was on the floor so he would not run away," Nakhla admitted. He hastened to explain, that, although he did hold the man's foot down, it was "not in any powerful way." Nakhla was also contrite, saying that what he had done was wrong. On the other hand, he told the investigator that he had apologized to the alleged rapists that night: "I told them I thought what had happened was very degrading."

Asked if he had ever abused a prisoner, Nakhla replied, "I just held his foot down," but then added, "and I shook them by grabbing their clothes."

The questioning then suddenly veered into new territory:

"Q: Was there ever a time when you were in a cell with a detainee alone?
A: I do not recall ever being alone in a cell with any detainee. I always have a guard present when I am in the cell.
Q: Have you ever been in a cell alone and the detainee was nude?
A: No, not alone, only when they were being questioned by [Military Intelligence] or someone and I was translating.
Q: Did you ever engage in sexual intercourse with a male detainee?
A: No."

The interview ended soon after that exchange. In the classified interviews of the CID investigation, no one but Nakhla was asked similar questions.

But the CID report does have an allegation, made by a detainee, of a male-on-male rape. This was the written statement -- made two hours before Nakhla's second interview -- by Kasim Mehaddi Hilas. Hilas identified the rapist only by the pseudonym Abu Hamid. The man was a translator, recalled Hilas. He was also large ("not skinny or short"), and his accent was Egyptian.

In the CID report, Nakhla is never mentioned by the detainees in Tier 1, even though the translator had been reassigned there. When asked about Nakhla, Nelson says that he didn't really know the man. "He would have had much more interaction with the M.P.'s," Nelson says, "and especially the Tier 1 M.P.'s."

While Nakhla's name is absent from the detainee claims of abuse, there are references to a man named Abu Hamid (sometimes spelled Abu Hamed by an interpreter). Hayder Sabbar Abd was one of the six victims of the November night of torture and humiliation that was documented in photographs that have caused outrage around the world: pictures of men naked, hooded with sandbags, forced to form a human pyramid, to ride on each other's backs, and to simulate oral sex. Abd, whose prison number was 13077, said in his sworn statement that a translator named Abu Hamed was there, translating the commands of Abd's tormentors. In May, after Abd was released, he told a New York Times reporter the same thing. The translator's name isn't mentioned in the Times piece, just the fact that the man was Egyptian. Titan fired Nakhla on May 21, the same day as the U.S. Department of Justice announced that it was opening an investigation into possible prisoner abuse by an unnamed civilian worker at Abu Ghraib.

In a phone interview on July 30, Mark Corallo, director of public affairs at the Department of Justice, confirmed that the investigation is ongoing, but declined to say who was being investigated or for what specific crime.

Titan spokesman Wil Williams confirmed that Nakhla no longer works for the company, but he, too, declined to go into specifics, citing employee privacy rights.

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